Early Christian authors from the richly expressive religious environment of northern Mesopotamia were comfortable appropriating images of the femi­nine spirit of God known from the Hebrew tradition and developing their own language and images for her.

Syriac-speaking Christians, reading the Old Syriac or Peshitta translations of the Hebrew scriptures, had the ad­vantage of examining the biblical texts in a Semitic language and from a Semitic culture, similar to the environment in which the earliest texts had originated.

The goal of this essay is to examine the use of feminine imagery for spirit, especially this designation of “mother,”^[1290] in writings from Syriac­speaking Christian authors of the first several centuries of the Common Era. Because the use of feminine images and language is to be expected in a Semitic milieu and has been examined by other scholars,^[1291] I do not at­tempt to repeat the work of others. Instead, I outline the history of such use in northern Mesopotamia, including the discomfort with such images that developed, probably out of influence from the west, and the eventual shift to masculine terminology for the Spirit. I then turn to the principal contri­bution of this essay to the subject: the examination of mother imagery for the Spirit, especially as found in very early Christian literature from the region. The few representatives of Christian thought that survive from the region range in genre and outlook, but include references and allusions to the feminine Spirit. In particular, I analyze the development of the imagery in prayers contained within the first Christian novel to survive in complete form, the Acts of Thomas, a work whose principal witnesses are in Greek as well as in the Syriac language of the region. The prayers in question build on elements found in earlier works in addressing the Spirit as a re­vealer figure and as a mother, conceiving of her as a font of wisdom, and providing an image of her as a dove. In this way, the Acts of Thomas de­velops elements from the rich heritage of the region, and its elements are developed by others (Ephrem, Aphrahat), even while some aspects of the tradition are condemned (Ephrem).