What if the story of the Virgin Mary carries echoes of a much older mystery?
Long before Bethlehem and Nazareth, ancient Jewish wisdom literature spoke of a feminine figure called Wisdom—Chokmah in Hebrew and Sophia in Greek—who stood beside God at the beginning of creation. Centuries later, Christianity would honour Mary as the Mother of Jesus and the bearer of the divine Logos.
The Woman Before Mary explores the remarkable relationship between these traditions, following Sophia from ancient Jewish scripture through the Gnostic writings of Nag Hammadi and into the developing Christian understanding of Mary.
Drawing upon Proverbs, the Wisdom of Solomon, Sirach, the Apocryphon of John, Pistis Sophia, early Christian thought and later philosophical and spiritual interpretations, Dominic C Ndulue examines some of the most intriguing questions surrounding the divine feminine.
Was Sophia simply a poetic personification of divine Wisdom, or something more? Why does she occupy such an important place in Gnostic cosmology? How did early Christianity understand feminine images of divine Wisdom? And why did language once associated with Sophia increasingly appear within Christian reflection on Mary?
Rather than claiming that Mary and Sophia are simply the same figure under different names, this book carefully explores where the traditions meet, where they remain distinct, and what their similarities reveal about one of the most enduring mysteries in Western religious thought.
The Woman Before Mary is an exploration of Gnosticism, early Christianity, philosophy, spirituality and the long history of humanity's search for Divine Wisdom.
