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"But Where Shall Understanding Be Found?" Searching For Sophia, Personified Wisdom, Kathleen Damiani

Institute for the Humanities Theses

The thesis examines the image of Sophia, divine feminine wisdom, from the point of view of -archetypal psychology. The paper describes the emergence of Sophia in the Old Testament against the background of the development of monotheism in Judaism. Modern scholarship defines Sophia in religious terms, thus restricting her meaning to the limits imposed by the Judaeo-Christian concept of God. When the "problem" of Sophia is removed from the language of theology, however, and re-examined from the perspective of archetypal psychology, new meanings emerge. The position taken is that Sophia is an archetypal image which personifies the capacity of reflection …