Metalogos The Gospels of Thomas & Philip & Truth

point, traditionally obscured in scriptural translation
and largely ignored by commentators, clearly has
the most far-reaching theological implications.
It is simply ungrammatical, whenever there are
alternate forms either available or readily
constructed in a given language, for a word to be
used to refer to a being of the opposite gender—
thus for example Hebrew/English )ybn/prophet
and h)ybn/prophetess. 1 But furthermore, xwr itself
is very occasionally used as of masculine gender,
as in Ex 10:13: hbr)h-t) )#n Myrqh xwrw, ‘the
east wind brought the locusts’, where the verb )#n
is in the qal perfect third-person masculine
singular. Thus xwr could elsewhere in the OT
have been employed in the masculine in referring
to the Divine Spirit, if that had been considered
more appropriate.
Let us also note the salient parallel between
Isa 66:13 LXX and Jn 14:16:
1 Nonetheless, the contrary grammatical gender can be used in order to
obtain a determined cognitive effect— thus an ordained female may be
called a ‘priest’ rather than a ‘priestess’, in order to emphasize an equality of
ecclesiastical rôle between the two sexes. ‘The metaphorical meanings of
sentences in which are used the masculine or the feminine of ... terms, [are]
completely distinct’, Pedro José Chamizo Domínguez, Metáfora y
conocimiento, Universidad de Málaga, 1998.
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