pneuma / ruach / spirit

[sami]

 

What are pneuma and ruach?

In the Christian Greek texts "pneuma" is always designated as a neuter noun - meaning the writers understood it as a what or a which but never a who, let alone a he or him [note for clarification for those who would hope to salvage the "who" for trinity purposes, ho parakleetos is a descriptive masculine noun used in reference to the neuter noun pneuma in John 14:16, 26 and John 15:26. The demonstrative pronoun of ho parakleetos is ekeinos, meaning "that" or "that one." The author has appropriately used ekeinos in reference to ho parakleetos as "that one," whereas most translations incorrectly translate ekeinos as "He." ]

This is consistent with the Hebrew cognate ruach [the Hebrew word you often see translated as "spirit"], which merely means, literally, in its concrete, an impersonal force which enacts upon other things. Like the "wind" which enacts upon the leaves of a tree and appears to make the tree animate. "Wind" is in fact how the word ruach is first used in the biblical text in Genesis.

One example: John 3:8, "“The wind [pneuma] blows where it wishes, and you hear its sound, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit [pneuma].” [ESV].

The same word and gender and form is used in both places. In one instance, those performing the english translation hold true to existing koine Greek grammatical rules - and in the second instance, they blatantly depart from those rules - any suppositions as to why?

[The Librarian]

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