By the time of Jesus, Hebrew was a dead language; the Jews and their neighbors spoke Aramaic. The phrase that’s usually translated as the “kingdom” of God or Heaven is, in the Greek text, basileia. The Aramaic word is malkuta or malkuthakh. Hebrew scholars would write mamlaka. All of these words are feminine. Writing “queendom” is at least as accurate as “kingdom.”
I prefer “rule” or “reign” or “embrace” or “protection” because the Aramaic word is less about the territory of a ruler than about the reach of a ruler’s power. But feminists who reject Christianity should know that it was not always and will not always be a male-oriented religion.
An example: Women have received Holy Orders. Someone could write several great novels inspired by the last paragraph:
In Jerusalem the deaconess Eneon ran a hospital for the sick. Her companion, Sophia, is hailed as the “minister and servant of Christ, the second Phoebe.” The deaconess St. Genevieve of Paris is credited with having courageously fended off a marauding band of ferocious Vikings. In Antioch, a woman deacon known to us as Anonyma to protect her name converted, instructed and baptized the pagan governor’s son, all during a time of bloody persecution. But the crown, in my eyes, goes to the deaconess Theosebia who shared in the life and ministry of Bishop St. Gregory of Nyssa–as his wife!
And the Bible quote for the day is John 10:33-34:
The people answered, “We would not stone you for good deeds, but for bad words, because you, a man, make yourself God.
Jesus answered, “Isn’t it written in the law, “I said, ‘You are gods’?”
Later: Jesus is quoting Psalm 82:6, which says, “You are elohim, the children of elyown.” Perhaps the most literal translation of that is “You are mighty ones, the children of the highest.” Elohim is the second most common name for God in the Hebrew books.
Drawing conclusions about the meanings of words from their grammatical gender really doesn’t work, much as one would like it to. For instance, the Russian word for “cat”, “koshka”, is feminine. Do you think there are no tomcats in Russia?
I’ve encountered similar examples in other languages as well — enough to say they aren’t just exceptions — and can look up more when I have more time, if you want further examples.
Nolly, I don’t think anyone’s saying this means God is female. It’s just saying that whatever “malkuta” is, the concept applies to both male and female rulers. And maybe, if someone insists on using an English translation that implies gender, “queendom” is at least as accurate as “kingdom”.
I have seen wilder claims, that this is a holdover from ancient matriarchies, but I haven’t found anything to substantiate that.
Nolly, a PS: You are right to note that. I should’ve made it clear in my post. Thanks!
Orthodoxy FTW, (again). Note also the married priests & bishops, although it’s become tradition for the bishops to be either monastics or widowers, because it’s considered difficult to fully devote time & energy to both an actual family & a spiritual one. The bishops generally cover more parishioners per capita now than in ancient times. I’ve spent quite a bit of time in convent churches where the mother abbess often acts as deaconess, and the services are almost entirely conducted by women.
However, I take exception to this: “In the Greek and Syriac parts of the Catholic church, before its split from Rome…”
The author means before Rome became schismatic & left the Orthodox church. A single city deciding it is the center of Christendom, and a single man decreeing himself the head of it, is a significantly greater departure than the rest of the religion continuing on its self-governing & representational democracy. Rome had to systematically convert Orthodox Christians to Catholicism, and parts of Europe held out against the papacy for a long time.
I recently discovered, to my amusement, that in parts of India, Syrian Christians are of a higher caste than Catholics, because they are considered the original church. The Muslims have likewise always recognised their prior claim, and restored to them much of the lands & powers seized by the Crusaders.
Andrea, good catch! I skimmed right over it.
I used to blame Paul for everything that’s wrong with institutional Christianity. Now I blame Deutero-Paul and Constantine. I should research a little more to see if some scholars think Deutero-Paul was the work of Constantine’s boys.
Andrea, also, thanks for mentioning India! That took me here. The idea that Jesus’s Nazarenes survived as the Nasrani is totally the coolest.
I have heard people seriously argue that the Holy Spirit is female, based on grammatical gender alone, so thanks for clarifying. Without examples of usage, I’m not sure I’d feel confident in choosing a gender-neutral translation, but I’m only an armchair linguist, not an expert.
This nonsense can only come up among speakers of a language that has lost nearly all gender indicators.
I can’t speak to Hebrew, but in Greek, verbal nouns like kingdom tend to be formed like this:
Feminine form = abstract nominalization of the verbal concept
Masculine form = name of the agent of action
Neuter form = name of the thing acted upon
This behavior may be rooted in the I.E. origins of what we designate by the phrase “grammatical gender” in which the earliest forms were “things that are active” (e.g. people) and “things that not active” (e.g. rocks).
So at least in the case of Greek, English has led you into a rather amusing error: that the grammatical gender of a thing is in some way related to the biological gender of the individual who posesses it. To translate a grammatically “feminine” form with an invented, strongly gendered word, at least in this case, is just plain wrong.
Nolly, I think they just do that because they assume God, like Jesus, is male. But in Jesus’s Aramaic, the concept of elah is much more inclusive. If they thought about it, they would realize that for god to make us all in “his” image, “his” image has to include a female image.
Bill, I’ll happily reverse the way I stressed that, because I agree that “queendom” is ultimately as wrong as “kingdom.” We’re dealing with connotation here. The English Bible takes a number of terms that are not inherently masculine and uses explicitly male language, and that misleads people who are sensitive to the implications of gender.
Also, I’ve always thought it weird that Queen Elizabeth ruled a kingdom. Language is just funny sometimes.
“If they thought about it, they would realize that for god to make us all in “his” image, “his” image has to include a female image.”
That’s a different and significanly more mature arguement than the people I’m thinking of make.
I personally think that the concept of gender really doesn’t apply to God, but God chose to present as male in our world, so I’m comfortable using masculine pronouns for Him. On the other hand, I believe that “son”, in phrases like “sons of God”, is a role, a legal relationship with specific implications, not simply “male offspring”. I am female, but I am an adopted son of God, and therefore, a co-heir with Christ.
Nolly, everything I’ve read and believed about Jesus says he would agree with that conclusion.