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05-19-2013, 07:47 PM | #1 |
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Jewish Origins of the Holy Spirit
Could the Holy Ghost be Jewish?
The origins of the Holy Spirit came up recently. This articles traces the third part of the Trinity to the Jewish ru'aḥ ha-kodesh (literally, "spirit of holiness") via Philo. |
05-19-2013, 07:52 PM | #2 |
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The word appears in the Catholic OT, the so-called deuterocanonicals. I always supposed it meant the holy spirit of Yhwh, his divine presence, later taken by the Catholics to become one of the persons of the Christian God.
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05-19-2013, 09:01 PM | #3 |
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They touched on it a hair in this article that is vague and brief.
pneuma is a multi use word besides wind and spirit. They viewed it also as a substance. The Holy Spirit is a term that evolved through Judaism before the Hellenist perverted it in the NT Perspicuo did a decent job and accurate description. |
05-20-2013, 02:16 AM | #4 |
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There's even three instances of ruach qodesh in the Tanach - Psalms 51 and twice in Isaiah 63. These may have something with the idea of prophecy to do - although at least the first in Isaiah is rather obscure and weird.
Of course, even if the holy spirit does have a jewish origin, the important thing is the rich edifice of doctrine about it in Christianity - it seems that there's much less in ways of that in 2nd temple judaism. How much of it can really be traced back to palestinian or even hellenistic judaism and how much of it is more firmly rooted in non-jewish hellenism? |
05-20-2013, 05:23 AM | #5 |
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Sophia? Sex changing spirits - didn't we discuss this years ago here?
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05-20-2013, 05:30 AM | #6 |
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David Hendy in Noise comments that for possibly over a million years, humans when meeting echoes thought spirits were whispering back to them. Prehistoric cave and rock art is consistently in acoustically interesting places.
The other major part of sensory experience was wind and breath and gales and storms. God's breath is a logical conclusion when one has no scientific basis to make conclusions. God's breath and God's word are also logical conclusions. Formal structures of trinities maybe is a development of Roman political systems. Maybe we should look closely at technologies and political thinking that is around when we find religious beliefs. Maybe god being defeated by iron chariots is actually critically important for BCH. |
05-20-2013, 07:24 AM | #7 |
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That article originally cited about the Holy Spirit sparked this reaction from Forward columnist J J Goldberg http://blogs.forward.com/jj-goldberg...7QtkM.facebook
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05-20-2013, 07:56 AM | #8 |
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Early Christianity was a different understanding of Judaism (a sect of Judaism) attending the Synagogue as just one more of many undistinguishable members.
One curse was added to the Amidah in about 90 AD and that curse against the Minuth resulted in the parting of the ways: Christianity ceased to be associated with Judaism and orthodox rabbis warned against the heretics among them. Later the breakaway sect and Judaism became bitter opponents of each other: the Christians attacking the Judaizers in their ranks and Judaism labelling Christians as idolaters and therefore much worse than Islam. Christian Jewish rabbis developed Christianity in endless discussion with Gnostics and gentile philosophers from the second century onwards. |
05-20-2013, 08:52 AM | #9 | ||
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"10 emanations" sounds much more like Gnosticism that one-upping the trinity. It is influence from (heretical) Christianity, but it doesn't seem to have a lot to do with the Holy Spirit. |
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05-20-2013, 09:19 AM | #10 | |
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Iskander, the only problem with your claim is that there is NO EVIDENCE in rabbinic sources of any kind that the institution of the blessing concerning the heretics involved any "Christians" of any kind in Palestine. The minim were all sorts of Jews, usually Saduccees (with Samaritans included) but not a single mention of any "Jewish Christians." The attribution of Christians in this case is a very modern claim most often adopted in error even by Orthodox Jews (who you can even find posting online).
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