kimvall

Sometimes I have a hard time separating the two; they both possess (not sure of that is the right word to use) people, inspire them to write divine texts, etc.

Pehaps I have just paid too much attention to Justin Martyr, where he makes Socrates a pre-Jesus Christian by having the Logos inspire him in the same way the Holy Spirit did with Jesus an onwards?

- J

mountainman

The concept of the Logos can be traced back to Heraclitus.
The tracking implicitly involves the lineage of the academies of the Greeks.
Specifically those related to Plato, Pythagoras and Aristotle.
The dates correspond to an antiquity well BCE.
It is a central concept to Greek philosophy.

The general conception of the Holy Spirit in its modern day form
is sourced from the new testament canonical literature, and all
associated historical citations (such as Justin etc, etc, etc).
Quite clearly, like everything else in this new testament package
it was appropriated by the authors of the new testament
from the Greek civilisation's philosophy, so that the new testament
would have a chance of appealing to the Greeks, to whom it
was addressed - in a bad and uneducated Greek manner.

The all important question is exactly when did the new testament
authors (and/or editor(s)) appropriate the concept of the Greek
Logos for their own personal ends. Scholarship seems convinced
that this authorship did not happen in the 1st century. This result
is at variance with the testimony of the fourth century christians
who would have us believe that the apostles authored the gospels,
and --- in other words --- the apostle John, authored his gospel
(all about the Logos) in the first century.

Thus we have integrity issues with the christian testimony.
They ripped off popular and central Greek ideas without attribution.
The heist of the Logos from the Greek philosophers by the authors
of the new testament was also conflated with the heist of the LXX
from the Hellenistic non christian Jews.

kimvall

Thanks for that reply.

So you would go as far as to say that the Holy Spirit is a Christian version/continuation of the Logos?

No Robots

As usual around here, the wholly Jewish origin of "spirit" in the NT is completely ignored. The word in Greek is 'pneumatos'. It corresponds to the Hebrew word 'ruach', meaning God's Spirit, and, "God's Spirit signifies in Hebrew God's mind or thought" (Spinoza).

That this Jewish concept of "spirit" was associated with the Greek concept of "Logos" is quite understandable: they really do designate the same thing. The absurdity of the "Holy Spirit" of the Christian Trinity is, of course, a later distortion of the concept of "spirit."

mountainman

Of course. It was a common robbery of ideas.
Whoever assembled the Christian fabrication
simply gathered up a great deal of the extant
literature. Common wisdom sayings, fragments
of poetry to Zeus etc. Highly regarded by the
NT authors were key Greek philosophical and metaphysical
conceptions, such as the Logos, and the Greek
notion of the "Good" - the "CHRESTOS" -
God as it appears in Plato and his followers.

All this original Greek philosophical material
(much of Platonic origin) was simply rebadged
in a collage (CUT and PASTE Ianity) as the
New Testament. It was a very clever
political move.


I would not go so far as to say that the Holy Spirit
is a Christian version/continuation of the Logos,
but rather it is a poor man's imitation of the
original Greek concept, and a number of backwards
steps removed from the original Greek philosophy.

Think of a stolen car. The car is taken to a scriptorium
and given a new number plate, engine serial number
and other new pedigrees, a new paint job, and is
then presented to the market as a "new car".

The LXX (Old Testament/Hebrew Bible) IMO is another
form of a "stolen car" which was mined for its interesting
"spare parts" which we find recycled through the new
testament as "backward references".

dog-on

Sure there is the Jewish concept, but the end result was anything but Jewish.

Par for the course, when the Romans borrowed your stuff.