BibleProject - Let’s Take a Breath and Review

Episode Date: September 7, 2026

Spirit of God E8 —  We're halfway through our series on the Spirit of God, where we've talked about God's ruakh in the Hebrew Bible. We’ve covered a lot of ideas, many of which can be challenging for modern people to understand. So in this episode, Jon and Tim slow down, take a breath, and review what we've learned so far about God's Spirit in the Hebrew BibleCHAPTERSSpirit 1.0: God’s Essential Gift of Life, Breath, and Energy (0:00-20:03)Spirit 2.0: Individuals Supercharged for Specific Tasks (20:03-36:58)Looking Forward to the “Holy” Spirit in the New Testament (36:58-47:58)OFFICIAL EPISODE TRANSCRIPTView this episode’s official transcript.REFERENCED RESOURCESCheck out Tim's extensive collection of recommended books here.SHOW MUSIC“Pleasant Places” by Lofi Sunday, Yoni Charis“Chilling In London” by Lofi Sunday, Just DerrickBibleProject theme song by TENTS SHOW CREDITSProduction of today’s episode is by Lindsey Ponder, producer, and Cooper Peltz, managing producer. Tyler Bailey and Aaron Olsen edited today’s episode and provided the sound design and mix. JB Witty writes the show notes. Our host and creative director is Jon Collins, and our lead scholar is Tim Mackie. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Welcome to Bible Project Podcast. Take a big breath with me and let it out. What is that? Oxygen, breath, wind? Those are all words we use in English, but in biblical Hebrew, it's all one word. Ruach. And it's how the Hebrew Bible talks about God's personal, life-giving energy, his power and presence, or simply spirit. We're halfway through a series on the Spirit of God, and we've looked at how God's Ruach shows. up in many ways in the Hebrew Bible. And it's been a lot for me to wrap my head around. Maybe the same is true for you. So today, Tim and I slow down, take a breath, and review what we've learned so far in our study of Ruach. Thanks for joining us. Here we go. Hey, Tim. Hello, John. Hello. Hi. We are right in the middle of a series of conversations around the Spirit of God. We are

the Spirit of God. Yeah. Yeah. And in real, really, time, we recorded like seven in a row, kind of were in it. Yeah. And then took, what, three-week break? Yeah, it's been about three weeks. And I've done a bunch of other things since then. Yeah. Now we're jumping back in.

Now we need our mind back in. Yeah, that's right. So maybe this is a good opportunity to see what stuck from our conversations three weeks ago. Because a lot of ideas about work and parenting have gone through our mind since then. Okay, we're doing a refresh on Spirit of God. And so basics are, in the Hebrew Bible, Ruach, is a Hebrew word to describe an invisible energy that makes a visible impact in the world. And it can be described as the thing animating the trees, the thing animating you and me, our breath, that we inhale and exhale. And even though it's invisible, the space between me and the tree, if I'm standing in front of one, is filled with ruach.

And so it's very intuitive to say the thing blowing the trees is the thing that I inhale and blows me around. There's that. And then whoever it is that's behind all of reality, that's making all of it go, must be someone who is above and beyond all who's made. making it all work and carrying it, originated it, sustaining it. And so it's not just a something blowing the trees around or blowing me around. It's someone. It's God in my nostrils, as Job would say. So Spirit of God becomes a way to talk about the invisible personal energy, personal presence of a person that animates all things. And those are its three most basic meanings throughout the Hebrew Bible.

And as we got into that, I really wrestled with the paradox, which is that God is not the wind. God is not my breath. God is not in my nostrils. However, in God I live and move and have my being. Yeah, yeah, yeah. In the biblical imagination, when you watched the wind blow the water, to recede so dry ground was visible, and now you can walk through.

Yeah, like in the Exodus. Like in the Exodus. Yeah. That is God's ruach. Yeah. Well, actually what it says is, in Exodus 14, is God sent a ruach. God sent a ruach.

Creates a little bit distance between God and the ruach. So there's a sense of distance. And here we, well, here we're to it. Here we are. This is biblical language about God is actually doing a lot of heavy, lifting in terms of what classically, these would be questions and conversations in their own,

what we call like philosophy of religion. Yeah. But conceptions of God that in, especially in monotheist religious traditions, of which ancient Israelite religion and Judaism and Christianity, where if you believe that all reality must have its source in one, who's the source of all things, we're talking about. someone who is above and beyond anything we could possibly imagine because it's outside of all categories of our thought. But if that one really has created something other than God's self

and is holding it in existence, sustaining it, then you can't go anywhere or any when or encounter anything or any who where you're not also in some way encountering that one. because the whole thing is sustained by the one. And the primary way the biblical authors talk about how you encounter the direct presence of God in the tree, in the wind, in the food, in each other, in my body, is to say that the ruach of Elohim is blowing those trees,

is parting those waters, and is animating me. But then there'll be other times where the biblical authors will really want to make a distinction. and say, God sent a ruach to part those waters. Yeah. And that's creating some distance to say like, that really was God parting the waters. But of course, we all know there's way more to God

than just the thing parting the waters right now. Yeah. Okay, so to try to say it clearly that in the biblical imagination, nothing exists or is sustained without God, but everything is not God. So there's this, we're in the middle of this paradox, which is nothing can exist without God. And so when we experience something like the wind, we are experiencing something that is closely connected to the energy of God. But at the same time, God is not the wind.

And so there's some separation. Yeah. And so in the same way as living, breathing humans, we could not exist in how. have life without God's sustaining power. But we are not God, but God is in us, and we are in God. Yeah. And this is the biblical frame. Yeah.

Yep. Yeah. In philosophy of religion or theology, you know, the words transcendence versus imminence are often the words used to talk about these. So transcendent above and beyond all, imminent meaning like right here in the midst of everything. And both are true. And actually both are necessary if God really is God, the way that monotheistic traditions conceive of God.

In a polytheist tradition, you can have a God who created everything, and then you can have many different spiritual beings who are like overseeing everything. And it's all delegated, right, and you can kind of split it out that way. But in a monotheistic worldview, you have to find a way to have language to talk about God being both outside and above the system, but also personally present within the system. Yeah. Because this system wouldn't be without that one. Yeah. And there you go. Okay.

Spirit of God is the primary way. The biblical authors talk about God within the system, present within the system. When God is within the system, spirit becomes the metaphor. It's not the only way. God's word, God's wisdom, God's name, and angels. Our other ways. But Spirit of God is a way of trying to name as direct as you can. Like, it's God.

It's the spirit of God that's animating everything. But it is also distinct from God. This is Genesis 1. This is beginning sentences of the Bible. In the beginning, Elohim created the skies in the land. Now the Spirit of God hovered. The land was right, without form, without inhabitant, darkness was over the surface of the abyss waters,

but the Ruach Elohim is right there fluttering in the midst of over the waters. So God created, but it's Spirit of God that's present within the unformed potential to create. And there you go. If we're trying to find an English word, we did this years ago, that gets underneath, what's underneath, what a wind and breath and the personal presence of a being have in common? What's a word to describe what's underneath all of them? And we did come across this word energy we were excited about. And as it turns out, as we're going to turn to the depiction of the Spirit of God in the New Testament,

what we're going to find is the two words that most associated with Spirit in the New Testament are holy and power. energy. It's the Greek word dynamis, from which we get dynamite, power. So, yeah, what we're after in talking about Ruach is there is something, and this is, again, we're recapping for ourselves. And it's saying things we said in episode one and two.

But there's something energizing everything all around us because everything's moving and changing all around us. Yeah. Nothing is static. if a human set of eyes starts being really attentive to everything happening around us, nothing is ever staying the same.

It's all in a state of flux and change. Our bodies, the environment, the rock, the tree, that it's all changing. So, in a way, what we think is real and permanent is actually the most transient, temporary, fleeting thing you could imagine. Have you ever done the thought experiment

of speeding up time and how it would feel like vapor. Right. Everything would. Totally. You've seen that like a flower, speed lapse photography. Yeah, right.

Blooms and then dies within like a few seconds. Yeah. Yeah. And other species help us with this, like the mayfly. You know what I mean? This is like they just come out of the water. No. I forget, are they the ones that have no mouths?

The salmon fly has no mouths. There's other things. There you go. Okay. Yes. There's some species of fly that has no mouse. I'm sure there's lots. Because they don't consume any energy after they have.

They just exist for a couple of weeks and spend all their energy laying eggs, mating, and then they die. So that's sped up for us, but for that creature, that's like their whole lifespan. Their perception of times is super different than ours. And that's what the biblical authors are trying to say, of God is Ruach.

God is the thing underlying that's the most real and permanent and stable in the midst of the sea of change and transient. And to say God is spirit is to make that kind of claim. And which is say that God isn't material in the way we imagine it. God's more real than material. Yeah. To be immaterial is actually to be more real in the biblical imagination.

Okay. God is Ruach, and he has given a gift of Ruach to all living things. This is in the early Genesis narrative we covered. So the life that I have and the body that's animated by it and the mind that can perceive and be responsible and then make distinctions between what is good and bad and better and best. All of that is a sharing in and a gift of God's ruach to me. Okay. Yes. So that is God's ruach, a gift to me. And then the next wrinkle becomes, well, in some way, actually, that's my ruach. Right. Yeah. That's right. It's loaned.

It's on loan. So I can now talk about having a spirit or a ruach. Right. My thoughts, my intentions, my perceptions of the world, my ability to do things in the world. All of that is now my ruach. Yeah. I don't have it unless God has given it to me. But now it's not strictly gods.

It's also mine. Yeah. God shared. God shared. God shared. And so now it's a thing that God and I are doing together. My life is a thing God and I are doing together. But my ruach can get misaligned with God's ruach.

That's right. Yes, that's right. So to think of them as kind of one thing, like God gave it to me and now I share it with him. There's a union there. But there's a sense of enough separation where my ruach could go a completely different way. That's right. Well, yeah. I mean, there's limits.

you know. Yeah. So I have to work within the grain of my limitations as a creature. Yeah. But within that realm of limitations, there's just huge opportunity and freedom given to us. And this is the picture of the humans in the garden. And what God says is, hey, let's do this together. Like, take care of this for me.

Work and care for this. You've got my breath. And this are interpretive framework of the Eden story. I'm going to teach you what you need to know. don't try and learn by yourself by taking from the tree trust my word and my command and we're going to do this together

so that you can share in the kind of oversight over this tiny bit of creation that's like an image of God's oversight over all reality. My spirit is already is giving you life

now let my word and wisdom give you life more union. That's right. So that goes wrong. Humans make a foolish, they're deceived, to make a foolish decision.

And so then when God chooses to exile Adam and Eve, from the garden, back to the dust of death from which they came, it's a decision on God's part to say, humans aren't capable of having my ruach for as long as it's possible to carry them. It could carry them forever, because it's God's ruach. I mean, it's like infinite ruach, but it's too real for the humans.

It's too much power for this state. of folly that they're in. So better to loan them Ruach for a short duration so they can only do so much damage to each other and themselves. And then God's going to work a plan to bring about someone who will fix this mess so that the ruach can be restored to the humans permanently. That's one way to imagine the arc of the biblical story.

Yeah. So when the biblical prophets start talking about the ruach, they talk about someone, like a Messiah figure, who's so in union with God's ruach. We looked in passages in Isaiah, for example, to talk about this child from the line of David who just breathes the spirit of Yahweh and wisdom and justice. So they're just in union with Yahweh animated by God's spirit. But then that one is going to share that spirit with a crew and start recreating a new humanity that can really live with the Eden spirit of God in them in a way that we'll get the project back on track.

Wait, so the crew? But yeah, Messiah's got a crew. He's going to share his spirit that makes him one with God with a crew. can, as it were, restore the spirit to them. And so we looked at Ezekiel and about God replacing the heart, which got all screwed up by that snake's deception and what the heart wants and desires. And we talked about how the heart is a pretty closely related idea to the spirit.

Oh, yes. They're often close synonyms, the heart and the spirit. This was another thing for me to try to reorient myself too. Yeah, good. Because they become very similar in something. passages, but they're different. There are different ways to talk about the human experience. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yeah. The heart is a very holistic way to think about it. My inner life. Then the heart I think and I feel and I have ideas and motivations and planning. Desire and purpose.

Yeah. That's in the heart. In the Bible, that's the heart. It's not the brain. Yeah. In the Bible. Right. Yeah. Yeah, we would call that the mind or the brain. Right, and actually, there are times when mind is actually a really good English word for spirit to translate some uses of heart in the Hebrew Bible and sometimes for uses of spirit. Yeah. Yes. Okay, because if that's heart and spirit is it's those things, but you're really talking more about the energy? Yeah, the invisible thing that's driving me and that goes on to make a visible.

impact in the world. Yeah. So it's still my thoughts and it's still my perceptions and all that stuff. Yeah. But when I'm talking about it as Ruach, I'm thinking of it more as... The energy. The energy. The energy. The idea that's invisible, but that comes to me and then makes it home in me. And then the energy that drives me to make that idea into reality in the world. so that now there exists a cup of coffee. I'm holding a cup of coffee. That was an idea in my mind when I walked in to work today. So this is a lot of reorientation, though.

It's the inner life of the heart. We would maybe even sometimes call that our mind. Yep. But you could also call that your spirit. So these are all really interconnected ideas. Yes. But again, spirit's more about the energy. Heart is about specifically desire and purpose.

Okay, okay. If you look at uses of heart versus spirit in the Hebrew Bible and in the New Testament, it's typically the associations. And the prophets say we need a new heart and we need a new spirit. We desire the wrong things and then we are energized in the wrong way. In the wrong way. Yeah, just like bad, yeah, bad news. Yeah. But man, look at the stuff humans do to each other.

And look at the stuff that humans think up and want to do to each other. Yeah. It's not good. Yeah. There is a lot of good. But it's not all good. Some of it's really, really, really horrible. Well, I think you traced the main line of our conversation.

There was a couple other things. I just want to flag because they're hard for me to process. So in the Hebrew Bible, when the Spirit of God shows up and a lot, fresh way for someone. Like, we all exist because of God's spirit, but then the Spirit of God could come up in a new way. And you start calling that like a 2.0. Oh, sure. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I wanted this really clean story where when the Spirit of God comes in that fresh way, it just...

It sticks. It sticks, and it pluses you up in the right way. And you create a couple wrinkles for me. Oh, yeah, yeah, yes, with the Saul's story. Yes, the Saul story. One wrinkle is that in the culture, of the time of the Hebrew Bible, when people were filled by a spirit,

not necessarily Yahweh spirit, but just prophets. Yeah, yep. That there was this conception that you would lose yourself and get connected to something else. So you'd kind of lose your mind. Yeah, yeah.

So Saul ends up naked on the ground, losing control of himself. That's right. Right, and so that would be a normal, you'd be like, oh, that's what the prophets do. Mm-hmm, mm-hmm. People being so overpowered or overwhelmed by the presence of a divine presence of Ruach, that they, as a word, lose their mind or they become a madman.

We looked at that phrase, like a maniac. It's connected to a divine spirit coming on certain prophets. And while that was a typical understanding of what happens when a divine ruach gets a hold of a human, the biblical authors want to highlight something else as the ideal union of God's ruach and a human. Yeah. And what they depict as a human who's very much in possession of all their faculties. Yeah. Yeah.

Yes. Yes. And when we look at a story of like Joseph or Daniel, when they're David in a lot of situations, when they're filled with God's ruach, they're just, they, the things that they were already good at. Yeah. Get real plused up. Get supercharged.

Yes. Supercharged. Yes. Okay. So that's a flip that the authors of the Bible want, especially for their setting. Yeah, yeah. Yes.

Because in my setting, that's what happens. You just get plused up. You get plused up. Yeah, that's right. No, and we're going to see that in the New Testament too, especially in Luke and Acts. Well, and also in Paul. They want to make very clear that you can tell the special,

spirit of God that comes from Jesus as a human being who's in possession of their faculties, all directed in the purpose of love and service of God and neighbor. But then that's the wrinkle, is that in the Hebrew Bible, that's not taken for granted. Right? Okay. So actually, I have thought about this since we talked less. So one way to think about is Adam and Eve are like human getting spirit 1.0, like life breath. Yeah.

And they do poorly with it. They make dumb decisions. And so it's taken from them, and they return back to death. So at baseline, then every human you're going to meet in the story has the ruach of God in their nostrils for a short duration of time. And then they go back to the grave. But God's not satisfied with that. Like, that's not the ultimate dream. So what God's going to do is pick a family out of humanity

and give his presence, give his word, his wisdom, his commands to them so they can be the vehicle of, like, changing this whole situation. And what God will do occasionally for some of the people from that family is give them a gift of the Ruach. And that's these passages that we're looking at, Joseph, a Bezalel, a Saul, a David. And so that's what I'm calling 2.0 Because they're already breathing.

Yeah. So they already have the Spirit of God in them in one sense. Yeah. But then they get this additional charge. Yes. It's the additional boost. And the additional charge should make you more of yourself. Well.

But in a plus-step way. Oh, right. That's the ideal. That's the ideal. That's the ideal. And then all of a sudden, though, you get Saul, and he's doing Adam and Eve-type folly with his supercharge of the Ruach. Yeah. So it's like the double crisis.

It's like he's both abusing his 1.0 Ruach by directing it towards foolishness and he's squandering this super boost of God's Ruach and how tragic is that? That's why Saul's story is so tragic. And then the story focuses in on his heart. The language is about his heart

and how fundamentally he was just not aligned with God at his core. Whereas David is depicted in his early years as someone who just his heart was in alignment with Yahweh. So when he gets the 2.0 spirit boost charge, you get what in the author's eyes is ideal Eden type stuff breaking out into the world. Yeah. Until.

At least for a while. Until he blows it big time. Mm-hmm. So 2.0 spirit, this new energy breath of God toward God. that people get to have. At a baseline, it's meant to not make you get out of your mind. It's meant to make you become more of who God made you. Yeah, more in line with the mind and energy of God.

Yeah. That's what Moses wanted for all of the people. Yes, that's what it's meant to do. And that's different than what was happening in the cultures around them. However, that doesn't mean that's what's going to happen. when you get the plused up energy, you could still use it for folly. You're saying in the same way that 1.0 spirit can be used for folly.

That's right. Yeah. That's helpful. Yep. And why can some people handle it and other people not handle it? And you're saying there's something about the heart. It's connected to the heart. That's right.

Which is why Ezekiel puts the most precise language to it that you get in the Hebrew Bible. It says, okay. If God's going to ever have a humanity to work with that's going to create the Eden ideal in the world, it's going to have to be a new heart. God's going to have to take out the normal type of human heart and put in a new heart directly. And God's going to have to, I will put my ruach in you and make it so that you walk in my decrees and my commands and my laws. So Ezekiel can only imagine this story working out in a positive way if God does something to the humans that no human in the story

has been able to do with their work. And then paragraphs, after saying that, Ezekiel starts talking about a figure called a new David. Actually, what he starts talking about is how basically, even though all humans are alive and Israel's alive, they're dead. They're like a valley of dry bones. and they need to be filled with the Ruach to do what God has designed them to do.

Then you start talking about, okay, and when that happens, then this guy, David's going to come and lead the people into that new Eden. Yeah. Okay, one more thing. So in the New Testament, we'll get into it, when the spirit comes, it's for everyone. In the Hebrew Bible, it seems like the spirit just comes on

very specific people for specific things like a Bezalel for a moment, or like in the judges, which we didn't look at. These figures will, like, empower them to do the thing that they needed to do. And then we also talked about how, especially when it relates to the leader who's supposed to lead Israel, like the spirit only comes on one person at a time. So the spirit was on Saul, but then went on David. What's the idea? Is the idea that who gets to get 2.0 in the Hebrew Bible?

Yeah, that's interesting. So I think Moses sets the baseline hope, everybody. I wish all of them were so filled with the 2.0 Ruach of God that they were all prophets. If you heard any Israelite talking, you would hear God talking. That's what he hopes for. Yeah. So that's the many, the spirit on the many. but in order to make that happen,

you have to begin with at least the 2.0 spirit working for someone. And I think that's how the Saul and David story is where that's focusing is who's the one who's going to responsibly hold and steward that spirit 2.0 power and it's going to need to be someone like David

was in his early years. Because there's so much potential for it going wrong. Yeah, yes, right, right. That to give that power to a person. Ooh, yeah, that's good. That's good. There's so much at stake. That's right.

And so to do that for everyone is almost reckless. Totally, yeah. So while that's the ideal, let's at least get it right with one person. That's right. And then that one can set the pattern for, what a human life looks like, fully supercharged, plused up with the Ruach of God. Let that be the pattern.

And what's interesting is in David's early years, he's depicted as somebody who refuses to take the life of Saul. And even though he is a warrior and he fights other battles, so he kills people, those battle efforts are depicted by the author in the sense of rescuing and defending life, but he refuses to act violently towards Saul. So there's a non-violent strand of David's activity

that the biblical authors really want a highlight, that he didn't seize power by force. So all of this is setting a mold, as it were, for how the biblical authors want, in the New Testament, to portray Jesus as somebody who's fully in union with the Spirit of God more than anybody has ever been. and then his life pattern sets the mold for what a real 2.0 spirit human life looks like.

And what looks like is a life of sacrificial love for your neighbor. So sometimes in the Hebrew Bible, the hope is the spirit on the many. Other times it's focusing in on one leader at a time. And you need that one. And I think the way the spirit on the many and the one, how those ideas go to together in the Hebrew Bible is you need the one to pave the way for the spirit to come on the many. Yeah. Because if it comes on the many too soon.

Right. Well. Many problems. Yeah. Okay. And then there's also, there's that distinction. But then there's also a distinction of the spirit of Yahweh coming in order to empower that David type leader. Then there's a spirit of Yahweh coming just to help out for a special.

task that needed to be done. That's the Betzelel kind of thing. Or I'm thinking about like Joseph. Yeah, I think all of those, whether it's Joseph or Betzelel or Moses, any of the judges, or David, those are all different variations and narratives exploring how we need someone. We need the spirit to come on the one. Even a Betzelel story is that way? Yeah. Yeah, because it's about one thing that will result when the Spirit of God comes on someone and it works right is you get Eden

and you get the tabernacle which is a symbolic Eden Yeah, okay, so the spirit coming on someone in a new way in the Hebrew Bible it's a more rare event. It's a very special event. Yeah, I mean it's not a huge list like a dozen

like Joseph, Betzelel Moses, the judges, Saul David, the prophets. So you can add the prophets here, but they're more specifically towards word and signs spoken to God's people, whereas these leaders are about action in the world,

making stuff happen. Prophets were more like political commentators. So this is interesting. So everyone's filled with God's spirit. We all exist because of God's spirit. That's 1.0. Well, this is not working. maybe the solution is more spirit.

Right? Yeah, more. More spirit. Yeah. More power. Yeah. And what we see is God giving that opportunity, but very selectively.

And not to the many. And not to the many. That's right. Because obviously. Yeah. If humans can't deal with spirit at one point out, yeah. Right.

That's an interesting way to kind of put it together. I like that. Which helps me then when you get to someone like, Moses being like, I wish everyone was filled with spirit. You'd be like, hold on, dude. Hold your horses. Do you know what you're asking? Yeah, you're always asking.

And then if you get to Ezekiel and he's like, yeah, everyone's going to have a new heart with the new spirit. He'd be like, really? Is that even possible? Yeah. And it's as possible as dead people rising and living again. That's how possible it is. Okay. Right.

That's how it's supposed to feel. To me, coming from a Christian tradition, coming from where the spirit in everyone, that That's just take it for granted. To look back from that lens, it's hard for me to have a perspective of how rare and special and strange that should feel. Oh, man, that's so good. That's why the gift of the spirit was so apocalyptic for the apostles. That's why pre-Pentecost, post-Pentecost is like a major, major fault line in New Testament thought. Whereas if you grew up in the Christian tradition, 2,000 years post-Pentecost, you're just kind of like, well, hasn't Spirit always been around?

Isn't that what it means to be a Christian? You're like, yes, but it was shocking. That that was the moment that the Spirit finally was going out to the many through the gift of the Spirit through the one, risen Jesus. And it's new creation, resurrection from the dead life kind of spirit coming. Yeah. Yeah, but once it becomes a new normal, as it were, it's easy to forget. I really appreciate how you put that together. It's too much to handle.

Yeah. Even Spirit 1.0 is too much to handle. Right. So God will work with a few to give Spirit 2.0. And then we get all these stories of just how messy that is. Yes, sometimes it works. Most often, it's complicated. Yeah.

And sometimes it really doesn't work. Yeah. Like a Samson or a Saul. Yeah. Yeah. But you got these figures like a Josiah. or David or Daniel, and it really does seem to be working in a beautiful way. Yeah, yeah.

And those stories become the model that, especially Isaiah and Ezekiel, build off of, as they look forward. And they say, well, it's going to need to be, a rescue figure is going to need to be like the 2.0 spirit David from his good period. And that's the hope. And what if the spirit that's on that one could then go out to a many through that one, I think then we could make something happen in the world. And that's the hope of the Hebrew Bible.

And that's exactly what the apostles are trying to tell us is what happened. Through the life, death, and the resurrection of Jesus and the gift of the Spirit at Pentecost. And that sequence of events is the pivot of Him. history, the apocalypse of history. The other thing that you have foreshadowed is that when we get into the New Testament, the phrase Holy Spirit will become very common, where as we've been reading through the Hebrew Bible, that phrase maybe showed up a couple times. Oh, yeah, great.

Okay, this is perfect. That's great. So let's do a quick vocab check as we shift from the Hebrew Bible into Second Temple literature and New Testament. A really interesting concordance fact that anybody. could look up for themselves if you know how to use concordance is in the Hebrew Bible, ruach appears almost 400 times, but it could be wind or breath. About 75 of those are referring to God's ruach. 75. And of those 75 times that God's ruach is talked about

with a phrase holy ruach, or a ruach of holiness, appears two times. So Holy Spirit, you'll find it twice in the Old Testament. If you flip to the last quarter of the Christian Bible, which is the New Testament, in terms of the page length, the last quarter, the Greek word Penevma, or Pneuma, as Westerners. Or Numa. Or Numa. The word Numa, as nobody ever said.

Okay. In terms of ancient Greek, no one ever said it that way. The word appears, again, almost 400 times in the New Testament. and the phrase Holy Spirit appears. How often is it referring to God versus? Oh, yeah, I've got to break down here. And the New American Standard, it refers to either a human spirit or a divine spirit,

373 of those 379 times. Yeah. So breath is just used a few times, and wind is only used a couple times too. It's super interesting. But the phrase, Holy Spirit, which only appeared two times in the Old Testament, appears 90 times in the New Testament.

And Spirit of God, which was the typical way. Which is the main way using the Hebrew Bible, only appears 12 times in the New Testament. So there's a vocabulary shift that has happened. And what's interesting is if you look in Second Temple literature, like the Dead Sea Scrolls, in the literature that today, some of it is found

in the Catholic Duderocan or the Apocrypha, You can watch the vocabulary shift taking place real time. Because those are texts that date from like the 3 to 200s BC on into the 1 and 200s AD. And you can trace the vocab development. Like tracing it mean you can watch Holy Spirit become more popular. Become a more common term. Yeah. And Holy Spirit is just taking an attribute that's true of God.

He's holy, meaning unique set apart. Other. Other. and that is true of God all over the Hebrew Bible. Yeah. And so as language and awareness of God's presence in the spirit gets developed, the phrase Holy Spirit becomes more and more dominant in Jewish thought and literature. Is there any hypothesis about why that is?

Yeah, probably. I probably should have found that book and read it, but I didn't. I've just more done the concordance search to see through. Actually, probably, there are some hypotheses out there, and I don't know what they are off the top of my head. I mean, holiness is a core attribute of God in the Hebrew Bible. Like think of Isaiah 6, what the seraphim are singing about God in the heavenly temple, holy, holy, holy.

Maybe in the Greek and Roman environment that was so saturated, polytheism. so many deities, that the unique otherness and transcendence of the God of Israel, that became a more important attribute, maybe, in the Second Temple period? I don't know, I'm making that up. I've to test out that hypothesis. Since spirit is such a common idea, right, that you're breathing it in, that it's around you, that it's a way to help you just remember.

Yeah, we're talking about the spirit of the one and only. and only. That, like, while it feels very common, you're breathing in all the time. Remember, this is from the transcendent, completely other. So it's to help keep that paradox? Yeah, that's great. That's great. Your question's now going to bother me.

Stick with me. Now you've got to go find that book. No, the next time we talk, I need to go figure out who's written about that. But there you go. The vocabulary shift is right there. Two times in the Hebrew Bible, you get Holy Spirit, 90 times in the new. New Testament. It's just a huge shift. So let's just name, as we turn to the New Testament, let's just name something that all of the New Testament literature, which is Second Temple Jewish

literature that comes from a messianic sect or group connected to Jesus of Nazareth, the New Testament literature is uniquely saturated with the language of spirit and Holy Spirit. And that all all through the narrative accounts of the Gospels, of Acts, of the letters of Paul and the other apostles that actually are older than those narrative accounts, language about them having a new experience of God's presence is foundational to this literature. Phrases like God has given us the Spirit, or these phrases receiving the Spirit, or the Spirit dwelling, using the language that Israel used about its temple and tabernacle. So the God dwelling, like the cloud or the fire dwelling in the temple, the Christians use that to talk about the spirit living in them.

However you want to give an account of what the New Testament is and its language of spirit, you have to say something has happened that made them start talking in this way. Language permeated with the language of spirit, of receiving as a gift, this new experience of the spirit. And it's associated with prophecy, with speaking, with signs and wonders, with healing, with joy,

laughter, happy, like happiness, generosity, people sharing their stuff with each other, people eating and celebrating meals. This is all connected to the Spirit throughout the New Testament. Something happened. And when the New Testament authors give account, of what happened, Luke Axe is really the place to go. The Spirit is mentioned six times in the Gospel of Mark.

For example, the Spirit's mentioned 12 times in the Gospel of Matthew. The Spirit's mentioned 18 times in the Gospel of John. You're like, okay, wow, we're ramping up. And the Spirit of God is mentioned 20 times in the Gospel of Luke. So Spirit's mentioned more in Luke than of any of the other accounts of Jesus in the New Testament. And then Luke is Volume 1 of the 2-volume. work acts where the spirit appears 58 times. So far and away, Luke acts is the runaway winner when it comes to a narrative account from Jesus into the early church highlighting

the activity and presence of the spirit. So what I think we should do is take two episodes to just focus on the spirit and the story of Jesus and Luke and track the main lines, like what are the basic ideas and how they develop? And then what is going on with the Spirit in the Book of Acts? What are the main themes? How does it develop? And in doing so, we'll, I think, discover somebody telling us the story of Jesus and his early followers that fits like the hand in the glove

for all of these themes from the Hebrew Bible that we just recapped. At least I think that's what will happen. But I never know where these conversations are going to go. So, does that sound good? That sounds great. Okay. Cool. Thanks for listening to this episode of Bible Project podcast.

Next week, we'll start exploring the Spirit of God in the Gospel of Luke. And we'll see that the gospel begins with a lot of Ruach. Luke's pulling out all the stops. Everything about Jesus of Nazareth, his conception, his transition into public life, it's an outpouring of the spirit. Bible Project is a crowdfunded nonprofit. and we exist to help people experience the Bible as a unified story that leads to Jesus. Everything that we create is free because of the generous support of thousands of people just like you.

Thank you so much for being a part of this with us. Hi, my name is Hayden, and I'm from Roswell, Georgia. Hi, my name is Cheyenne, and I'm from Portland, Oregon. And I first heard about the Bible project at Multnomahuner University as a student. I use a Bible project in my studies and also from my own. illumination. I first heard about Bible project from my church in South Carolina, where they played a video about the book of John. I used Bible Project in a similar way to enrich my understanding of different parts of the Bible and help clear up confusion around some of the more

difficult topics, like what Jeremiah and Ezekiel are talking about. My favorite thing about Bible Project is that it is totally free and open to all and going into 55 different countries, and I thank you for doing this for us. My favorite thing about the Bible Project is that it keeps going. There's so much to explore, and there's no topic off limits. We believe the Bible is a unified story that leads to Jesus. Bible Project is a nonprofit funded by people like me. Find free videos, articles, podcasts, classes, and more on the Bible Project app and at

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