Why did Jesus use feminine nouns for his most momentous statements?

He did not fear goodness and strength ascribed to the feminine

Matthew 23:23: Woe to you scribes and Pharisees Hypocrites! For you pay tithe of mint and anise and cummin but have omitted the weightier matters of The Law the justice the mercy and the faith These you ought to have done but not leave the other undone

Comments: ^{Matthew 23:23} Isn’t it interesting that, because of gender-biased theology, many men, and to a lesser degree women, generally associate inferiority with anything feminine, though Jesus did not, and the Hebrew and Koine Greek texts of the Bible do not.

Jesus used feminine nouns to describe justice and faith in Matthew 23:23. Few would disagree that faith and justice (righteous judgment) are good things. Another feminine Greek word used by Jesus, is the word petra. He used it when he said, “Upon this PETRA I will home-build my Out-Called and the gates of hades shall not prevail against it.”

Why would Jesus use feminine nouns for such momentous statements if all things feminine were weak and sub-par to the masculine? Human ideas of feminine and masculine are obviously not aligned with the ALMIGHTY’s.

Throughout the Old Testament, the Holy Spirit is consistently referred to as the feminine RUACH, and in the New Testament, translators consistently refer the Holy Spirit in the masculine, … though the Greek texts do not.

We brook no argument that men tend to be physically stronger than women but can be weaker in other ways. Women tend to have an edge over men in emotional intelligence and resilience but tend to be physically weaker than men. Women and men have indeed been created complementary to one another but not in a superior or inferior sense, and certainly not in a hierarchical, authority and submission, sense.

Peter commanded all believers to love one another fervently and to submit to one another in a non-hierarchical manner ^{1 Peter 5:5 [present in over 5000 extant texts based on the Kione Greek]}.

Women are created in God’s image the same as men. Our amazing Creator did not create an inferior being when he saw that the lone human—âdâm (pronounced audawm and simply meaning human)—needed an equal and opposite counterpart.

It is time for every believer to have courage in speaking out against the onslaught of negativity hurled against women and girls—on a daily basis—through spoken word and literary semantics. Call out those using biased and hateful terms when describing women of all ages, abilities, and marital status. Stand up against social blowback in mainstream Christian circles when questioning hateful semantics. Speak up about the amazing things attributed to the feminine--both physical women and specific words used in biblical texts (including by Jesus himself) describing goodness and strength ascribed to the feminine.

Jocelyn Andersen is author of, Woman this is WAR! Gender, Slavery, and the Evangelical Caste System.

She writes and speaks about a variety of topics with an emphasis on the subjects of Christian response to domestic violence and God and Women. She is working on her first novel and is the author of several non-fiction books including, "Woman Submit! Christians & Domestic Violence" and "Woman this is WAR! Gender, Slavery, and the Evangelical Caste System." Her work has been featured in magazines, newspapers, radio, and television. She is open to requests for writing assignments, anthology contributions, and speaking engagement.

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