BibleProject - The Spirit, Breath, and Wind Behind Everything

Episode Date: July 20, 2026

Spirit of God E1 — In 2017, we released a 3-episode series on the theme of the Holy Spirit. And now eight years later, we’ve decided there’s still a lot more to reflect on and explore! The word we translate in English as “spirit” is ruakh in the Hebrew Bible and pneuma in the Greek New Testament. The word refers to God’s personal presence, but it also often refers to wind, breath, and a human’s mind. So how can this word refer to God’s manifest presence and energy, but also created things? In this episode, Jon and Tim kick off a new expanded series on the Spirit of God. CHAPTERS The Frequency of Ruakh and Pneuma in the Bible (0:00-13:32) The Meaning of Ruakh (13:32-25:05) The Paradox of Wind and God’s Spirit (25:05-40:39) Ruakh as a Mind or Idea (40:39-53:39) OFFICIAL EPISODE TRANSCRIPT View this episode’s official transcript. REFERENCED RESOURCES Tim mentions the work of scholar Benjamin Kantor. Here is an introduction to his work: A Short Guide to the Pronunciation of New Testament Greek. Here is the original Holy Spirit podcast series and the original Holy Spirit video. Check out Tim's extensive collection of recommended books here. SHOW MUSIC "City Sunset ft. Marc Vanparla" by Lofi Sunday “But Hopeful ft. Maddox” by Lofi Sunday “The Kingdom” by Lofi Sunday, Marc Vanparla BibleProject theme song by TENTS SHOW CREDITS Production 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. Today, we begin a brand new, expanded series on the Spirit of God. Back in 2017, we did a short three-episode series called The Holy Spirit, and it was during those few short hours that Tim introduced me to the ancient and biblical idea of God as Ruach. That is, God is God's spirit. And today, we come back to this portrait of God to explore it more deeply. You know, in the many years of Bible Project, we've yet to ever revisit an idea, but here we are, ready for more spirit.

If there's one video and podcast topic we'd like to return to and fill out more, it's been this. The Spirit of God, Ruach Elohim. Ruach is a Hebrew word that we have difficulty translating into any one English word. And so, Ruach gets translated in our Bibles many different ways. What biblical authors could signal with one word. We have many words for in English. It's translated as wind, breath,

spirit and then mind. Ruach in Hebrew, Numa, and Greek. It's a concept that takes a while for our modern minds to appreciate. But we can get there. Look out your window and see Ruach blowing through the trees. Close your eyes. Take Ruach into your lungs. As you do this, you begin to realize that we live and breathe and exist within this invisible

energy. And so, it's no surprise that Ruach becomes one of the key ways the Bible talks about the nature of God. The invisible, personal energy of God that makes all things possible, that originated all things, and that sustains all things. Saying God is Ruach

invites us into this mystery about the nature of God, how we as mortal, finite beings, can experience an infinite God. Ruach is the way the biblical authors are uniting the divine and the human, creator and creation. It's the meeting place of the time.

to the point at which God can influence humans by uniting with them in this invisible way. There's a mystery, and that's at the heart of what the biblical authors are trying to say. Today, Tim Mackey and I kick off this expanded series on the theme of the Spirit of God. Thanks for joining us. Here we go. Hey, Tim. Hello, John Collins. Hello. Hi.

Here we are. Here we are. What are we doing? We're doing a new old thing. I guess you could call it a reboot conversation. What we want to do is re-explore the theme of the spirit of God throughout the storyline of the Bible. And we made a video called The Holy Spirit. Yeah.

And we had a podcast conversation, maybe four or five episodes. It's three. Oh, really? Only three. Well, at least in my notes. It's in three blocks. Wow. We were brief back then.

So, yeah, I think this was like year two or three of the project, and it was so new. We didn't have like a pattern for how we made stuff. We made some things after talking for 20 hours. And we made some things after talking for three hours. Yeah. And so we made a vehicle called the Holy Spirit. We talked for three hours. Okay.

And basically the goal of those conversations was to help do a reframe of just what the basic biblical vocabulary of spirit means. who refers to. And what was so interesting was we named it Holy Spirit. But then mainly the video wasn't about like the Trinity. Right. It was helping us recover

what a Hebrew or Greek speaker would have heard when they heard. The word spirit. The word spirit. Yeah. And then what does it mean that God is spirit?

That's right, yeah. Yeah. So we landed on the English word energy. Yeah. We translated the word spirit as energy. Yeah. And we even, qualified in the video that, you know, the energy that is of the personal presence of God.

Yeah. But I think it was easy to misunderstand. Yeah, that sounds like your... Like the Force. Like from Star Wars. Yeah. The Spirit of God's like a force. Depersonalizing God to some impersonal energy.

That's right. But the reason why we chose energy was because of that word Ruach has three dimensions to it. That's right. which it can mean wind, it can mean breath, it can mean the animated force of a person. And totally, yeah, I think even I want to buy it now for four. Oh, a four-part meaning. Including mind, what we call mind. Oh.

So we were talking recently and we're like, if there's one video and podcast topic we'd like to return to and fill out more, it's been this. Eight years go by. And I just have read and thought and talked with so many more people. And in my own journey of following Jesus, have encountered the Spirit in new and surprising ways. And mostly I just wanted to fill out a much more in-depth biblical theme study of the Spirit of God throughout Scripture and the storyline. And also aspects about the Spirit that I think maybe I knew about but hadn't fully appreciated or just hadn't taken the time to really sit in these manner. unfold dimensions of spirit in the Bible. So this is going to be a much more in-depth series,

and I'm just really excited about it. Cool, me too. I'm really excited. Yeah, let's jump in. So first, what I'd like to do is just kind of actually summarize the original series that we did, the basic ideas, but try and summarize them at one go. Yeah.

Which is the many dimensions of meaning that are wrapped up with the biblical vocabulary of spirit, and just try and inhabit what the mindset of the biblical authors when they use their words for spirit. And part of the problem is we have this English word spirit, which is just one of the meanings. Okay. So from this point on, I'm just going to use the original words,

Hebrew, Ruach, and then the Greek word, Peno. You put a Pian there. Yeah, you know, oh, okay, so quick note about... Panoma. Well, Pneuma. Panama. Yeah, probably actually Penevma. Whoa.

I know. There's a young New Testament scholar, Benjamin Cantor, who's just unleashing a tidal wave of historical research on the pronunciation of Coyne Greek in the first century. They hit that P. Yeah, he's overturning all kinds of misunderstandings. He found some audio recordings or something. Mispronunciations. It's not super cool. What he actually looks for is,

places where Greek is a transliterated or transliterated into Latin or Syriac or other dialects. And what he's looking for is mistakes. Huh. And it's actually in the mistakes in these multilingual transcriptions of Greek that he's able to

reconstruct how people were pronouncing Greek. And the one thing that is certain was that there was no silent pee at the beginning of words it was pronounced. Anyway, yeah. Penoma. I got used to that. I know. No more silent pee, Numa. I'm used to Numa.

I know. Me too. But it's Penooma. And probably Penevma, but that may be too far of a leap. So we're just going to go Penoa. Oh, boy. I know. So, all right.

Ruhach. Do I have to say Pannuma? You can say whatever you want. Okay. Don't work it out. I'm trying to retrain myself. All right. So Penauma.

So here we go. A quick recap of the many meanings of Ruach and Penauma in the Bible. Okay. So Hebrew Bible is three quarters of the, English Bible. New Testament is one quarter in terms of page length. With that in mind, consider these numbers, just some quick statistics on the usage of these words. The Hebrew word ruach, which we're yet to discuss its meaning, appears 378 times in the Hebrew Bible. And if you just look in one English translation for a translation count, so I'm just going to take

the new American standard, which is not widely read and used much anymore these days. it is in certain Christian traditions. But in the New American Standard, those 378 occurrences, it's translated as wind. In other words, it's used with the meaning of wind over a hundred of those times, about 114 times. Okay. Almost a third of the time, it's translated wind. Yep, that's right. About 119 of those times, it's used of the human spirit.

Okay. Or of the human mind, but it's a human rour. Okay. Then 30 times it's specifically about breath, like what humans inhale and exhale. Okay, that's considerably less. Considerably less. And then about 74 times, it's a reference to God's Ruach. Okay.

So wind, breath, spirit, and then mind are kind of the four main uses. Okay. What the biblical authors could signal with one word. We have many words for in English. So I want to take just some time to just try and recover what it's like to think natively with this view of the world. You have one word to talk about what we carve out into separate things, wind, breath, mind, and spirit. And when you say spirit, then you mean either God's spirit or human spirit? That's right.

And spirit as an idea of personal presence. Personal presence. The personal animated presence. So we'll talk about these things. We'll talk about it. just a breakdown with numbers. There's also a Hebrew synonym, the second place award. For a synonym du Roach is the Hebrew word, Neshama.

And it only appears two dozen times, 24 times. So Roach is the thing. It's the main word. Okay, so remember, that's Hebrew Bible's three quarters of the Christian Bible. It appears 378 times. The New Testament is one quarter of the whole Christian Bible in terms of page length. And the Greek word, Pneuma, appears 300. 179 times.

Basically the same number of times. Right. So four times per capita. That's right. But even though it's, you know, like a third shorter kind of body of literature than the Hebrew Bible. So there's a lot of Pannoma going on in the New Testament. Yeah. Like a lot.

So what is interesting, again, if you just do the same experiment, pick one translation. I'll pick the New American Standard. Penaena gets translated as spirit, referring to the invisible personal presence. in some way of either God or of a human 373 times. So all the times basically. Yeah, totally. There's only three times in the New Testament where it clearly and exclusively

means breath. Okay. There's other places where there might be a double meaning intended, but three times where it exclusively means breath. And only two times where it exclusively and only means wind. Now, there's other places, again, where it's packed with double meaning. Okay.

But within the New Testament, invisible personal presence is the predominant meaning of spirit. We've talked before that the New Testament letters and gospels, they're written in Greek, but you're thinking in Hebrew? Yeah, or they're thinking in terms of Hebrew Bible and Jewish thought. Yeah. Yeah. So when they use the words Pneuma,

they are using it to translate the Hebrew idea of, Yeah, though, you know, the New Testament authors also didn't just grow up in Jewish culture. They grew up in a melting pot of first century Greco-Roman culture. So wasn't they were exclusively thinking in Hebrew words, they also had a meaning of this word that had a first-century Greek context? Yeah, but it just so happens that there's a huge amount of overlap and commonality between the associations of Ruach and Hebrew and Peneuve. in Greek. So we're going to take this in two steps. We're going to like think of the word from a Hebrew imagination and then think of the word from a point of Greek. As always, we're going to spend a lot of time in the Hebrew Bible. And then we'll step into the Gospels and then the rest of the New

Testament in the kind of the latter third of this series. Okay. Yeah. Thank you. It's a great clarification. From this moment on, we're just talking about Ruach for a while. The Hebrew word Ruach within the Hebrew Bible. We're rock the rock. We're rocking the rock. Here's a simple starting definition. Ruach in the Hebrew Bible refers to the invisible personal energy that is the animating, sustaining presence that makes all things possible, that makes anything, anything.

So the invisible personal energy that is of God, that originates. all things and that sustains all visible things. So it's invisible, but it actually is the creator and sustainer of all visible and material things that we see happen in the world. That's the basic idea. Invisible. Can't perceive it. Yeah, okay. So let's start there. Okay.

So the coolest thing happened in the last week at the bus stop from my younger son, who I'd take the bus stop a couple blocks away. So we walk there, and it's March real time. We're having this conversation. The bird's song is just everywhere, signs of fading winter. And at the bus stop in the bushes, I don't know how my younger son saw this a week ago. They're hummingbirds all over our neighborhood. They're amazing creatures.

They grace us with their presence all the time, especially this time of year. And so he saw a hummingbird up, and then he saw it fly into the bushes, like, right, 10 feet from where we wait for the bus stop. And so he looked over in the bushes and he walked over and he was like, Dad, Dad. And he was kind of stooping down and there was a tiny little hummingbird that had made a nest. It was perched like sitting in the nest. And so then we got close up and it got freaked out. And so it went up into the tree. And I mean, if there is such a thing as a perfect circle in nature, this hummingbird made it.

The perfect little circle and a tiny. I mean, just, I don't even know. It goes in it? Yeah, it's like a donut, but with the solid bottom. Okay. And in it were two tiny eggs. Oh, my goodness. I mean, quarter inch in size.

I mean, they're just. And then so we backed off, and this hummingbird came back down and sat on its nest. And then we got to get so close to it as it got used to us. And so we visited this hummingbird now every morning. Oh, wow. and it was there this morning again before I came here. Wow. So it's like rocking eight days of sitting on that nest.

We're just like, how many days are going to sit there? Does it eat during the day? Does it leave the eggs? Yeah. So it's become this very special little experience for my son and I. And for me, we've been talking about it. And the other night at dinner, he was, at the end of the week, we talked about gifts of God. God's given us during the week, and he brought up the hummingbird.

And I was like, yes, buddy, that's right. like, it feels sacred to encounter this creature. Because normally they're high up in the trees, you don't see them. But it's a creature nursing like the next generation. And it's putting itself in danger of these giants, like, right, coming around it? And anyway, I don't know why it was such a special encounter. So what's remarkable is that creature, you can see its tiny little chest. It has these orange speckles on its tiny chest.

You could see the chest moving. and it's breathing. And like, that's it, right there. Wait, what's it? The Ruach. So lock in to watching a little creature, inhale and exhale, and then just take a moment to stop and ponder. The fact that I, as the observer, am inhaling and exhaling.

And what we are both inhaling and exhaling is the same thing. And intuitively know that the thing we inhale and exhale, is the thing keeping us alive, keeping me alive. And it's the same thing keeping that hummingbird alive. And so let's ponder a little more. Let's take a walk and think about that. What's so wild is that same air.

Am I thinking about this like an ancient? Am I thinking about this like a modern? Yeah, we're taking a walk now with like Jeremiah. Okay. Or with Moses. So I don't know about oxygen. No, but you know that we're breathing in and out something that I cannot see. Got it.

let's like any human, take five minutes to think about your existence. We're all taking in and breathing out something that isn't ours. It's outside us. We're taking it in. And every single living creature I ever encounter taking in and not the same stuff. So what do you want to call that? And then what do you want to call that in light of other implications if you think about that long enough? So that thing that I'm breathing in and out,

I first inhaled when I came out of my mom's womb. I don't remember it, but she told me about it. So not only do we share it right now, but we've been sharing it since we came into the world. And what's wild is that our moms could each tell a story about how they took their first inhalation of the same stuff. And that was before you and I ever existed. So we're talking about something that is keeping us all alive,

that has preceded all of us that has to have preceded all of us all the way back. But then the moment you and I die, it's going to still exist. Right? Yeah. So what do you call that?

The thing that precedes me that has been sustaining my existence, that has to have preceded all living things going all the way back, and that will outlast us going on in the future. Yeah, I mean, I have to do the mental exercise of getting out of my modern mind. Sure.

Because I just immediately go to, well, we're talking about oxygen. And all those things apply. Yeah. It's all around us. We're all sharing it. And I don't know how an oxygen molecule actually works or atom or whatever. Well, it's got some protons.

Yeah. All that stuff. Got it. Yep. From an ancient perspective. Yeah, yeah. I'm trying to get into that mindset. I'm walking around.

Air. breathing in, I know it's something. I feel it come into my lungs. I can feel it as it exhales. I can blow it into my hand, but I can't see it. You can't see it, but it's sustaining my existence. And it's sustaining my existence. And I see that it's also sustaining your existence. And I see that it's sustaining my cattle and the wild creatures and even the hummingbird in that nest. And what is so interesting is that you and I come onto the scene and we think, we think, Think of ourselves as real? We think of ourselves as real.

We do. Yeah, of course. In one sense, that's true, but also think, what is human existence, any creature's existence, except constant change. Oh. And transition. Yeah. So we think of ourselves as real, but in fact, you and I, from moment to moment, are never

even the same. Okay. Because we're just constant change. And it's just happening in such slow motion from. From our point of view, we don't feel like we're changing. We feel like there's a me. There's a sense of a constancy of myself. And that's true.

But the material makeup of my body right now in my mid-40s is hardly the same material makeup of the body that came out of my mother's womb. I'm like shedding myself all the time. Dry skin. Yeah, every seven years. Right? Yeah.

But the thing that we're inhaling and exhaling and that everything else is inhaling and exhaling, that's just still there. It's still the same. it's enduring. It's long before. I see what you mean by real. So the material self feels very real,

even though it's actually changing. Constant changing and coming out of nothing going back into the desert. Some invisible reality that's giving me life. Yes. That's more constant. More constant. But that's what I mean by real. If we want to compare real and real,

in a way, whatever this invisible thing is, that's keeping us all alive, is much more fundamental and real. It was here before me, it'll be here after me. That's right. And it's in and around everything. That's right. Okay.

Yes. So here's a meditation from Isaiah 40. Humans are like grass. The wind blows and they go away. The wind blows, the ruach. So the ruach becomes an image for what is enduring and permanent and fundamental to all that is. Ruach is a way that the biblical authors are trying to talk. about what is primary and like ultimate cause.

Okay. A fundamental reality without which nothing that exists can exist. Hmm. And in our minds it would be something like these forces. Isn't it funny we have to go to the word force? Hmm. The gravitational force, strong and weak, nuclear force.

Something, yeah, that's a great example. Magnetic force. The gravitational force is invisible, but it affects everything. And as soon as I start saying, well, what is it as a thing? I can't start talking about as a chemical. Right. I can't start talking as a compound or any sort of material structure.

Mm-hmm. That's helpful. Yeah. In our minds, I think gravity or the strong, weak nuclear force or magnetic force is our equivalent of how the biblical authors conceived of ru us. That's really helpful. Yeah. Okay.

Yeah. Because there's what's wild is that I encounter that hummingbird. Mm-hmm. And I do some meditation. I'm like, it's more real than anything because it's keeping both of us alive, me and that hummingbird. And it's been here long before me.

It'll be here long after me. And it's the stuff making the trees move and dance. It's more powerful than the trees. Yeah. But the same thing I'm inhaling is the same thing making those trees move. What ancient people had as a huge advantage over us is that they aren't as distracted

and lulled into apathy and mental laziness as you and I are. Yeah, okay. And so they just had a lot more time to sit and meditate on like the fundamentals of human existence. Watch an animal breeze. Yes.

Think about it. Totally. So what they just intuitively put together is the stuff moving the trees, is the stuff that me and that hummingbird are inhaling and exhaling. It's keeping me alive. It's got to be fundamental to all life

because it has to precede any living thing because it's the thing that all living things depend on. Okay. So it's pretty cosmic. Whatever this thing is, it's cosmic. It's more permanent and real than anything I see. Yeah. And what do you want to call that?

What do you want to call that? And Ruach is the Biv Award for that. So let's dive into some examples. I think will be helped immensely. So first, let's just look at some examples of what we would call wind. Okay. And notice that this wind is directly connected to God. It's God's wind.

Yeah, it's God's wind. So wind, for us, is impersonal. It's just like an energy, impersonal energy blowing around, not for the biblical authors, which is why they use this word. So the first line of the Bible, in the beginning, God created skies in the land. Now, the land was wild in waste, and darkness was over the face of the deep waters, and the ruach Elohim was fluttering. over the service of the waters. There's a lot of layers to this that I don't want to get into,

but I just want to note that the Ruach Elohim is doing some kind of wind-like activity, hovering or fluttering. It's the word used to describe a bird's wings flapping over the waters. So in that sense, it's not just simply wind,

but it has wind. Wind-like qualities. Wind-like qualities, yes. You can imagine wind whipping over water. Yeah, that's right. And you can see it. You can see the effects. There you go.

You can see the effects of it. Okay. That's in the background of these other instances I want to look at. So after the flood, the great flood story from Noah and the ark and the animals, the key turning point in the flood storm, when it all changes and the floodwaters stop rising and they start receding and lowering is in Genesis 8 versus. one where God causes a ruach to pass over the land and the water subsides. It's very clearly like a wind.

He causes a wind. Pushing the waters back. What's different is in Genesis 1, it was the ruach Elohim. That's right. That's right. And this is just a ruach. Yeah. Here it's God doing something to a ruach.

It's a tweak on Genesis 1, which is God's ruach. And this is now God making a ruach blow. over, which you could say, well, I guess if God can do that with a Ruach, you could say that's God's Ruach, but it is creating a bit of a distinction. It feels different from this is my personal presence you're experiencing versus I am animating something other than me. Right, yeah, that's right. Okay. Yep, yep. And that is the most common use of Ruach in our categories of wind, when it gets translated when.

And so in the famous parting of the Sea of Reeds in the Exodus story, where the Israelites go through on dry land, Pharaoh and his army are destroyed in the waters. The waters are parted because Exodus 14, verse 21, Moses stretched out his hand all that night. Yahweh drove the sea back with a strong eastern ruach, ruach from the east, and turned it into dry land. So actually very similar. It's echoing the flood story. Okay. So this is a very common use of ruach. It's associated with blowing the clouds in that bring rain.

So there's many description of storms in the Bible that use the word ruach to talk about the force, invisible force, making those white puffy things up in the air move and drop their rain. Okay. So that is ruach, but it's not God's ruach, it's ruach that God is using. But God's connected to it. It's under the direction of God. So in one sense, you could say it's God's ruach. In another, as you could say, it's something distinct from God. And actually, that's so important.

Okay, this is important. From one angle, it's God's Ruach, Genesis 1, verse 2. But then from another angle, Genesis 8 verse 1, it's something distinct from God. It's God who is above and beyond all, but yet it's God, when I want to talk about that, above and beyond all, God, interfacing and within in the terrarium present in the terrarium ruach is one of the key words

used to describe that personal presence so what's so tricky is then signaling that personal presence is what is behind uses of the word ruach that we would call spirit gets translated spirit or spirit

of God so like in Genesis 1 verse 2 the spirit of God fluttering over the waters or the hundreds of uses of the word ruach that is just the phrase the spirit of Yahweh or the spirit of God. So when

the prophets or when kings, I'm just literally to sample that random. Here's a moment from the book of Judges chapter 6 where there's a tribal chieftain who does this great battle rescue of the Israelites from certain death. We're told that he was empowered

by God's spirit, but specifically is the phrase the Ruach of Yahweh closed Gideon enrobed Gideon Okay, so this is the same word for Wynn So I have to make a decision here Am I going to translate it wind or spirit? Yeah, yeah

But the ancient Hebrew thinker didn't have to make that decision So they're just saying The wind spirit of Yahweh Clothed Gideon And what's interesting it's not saying, this is not a description of the day he was born and took his first breath. He's an adult.

He's been breathing for a lot of years. Something new. Something remarkable happened to him that day, so remarkable that this incredible, against all odds, rescue of his people happened when there were violent, you know, armed soldiers attacking them. and the only way you could account for that preservation of life in the face of death is something happened to that guy. Like he got the extra breath that day. He took some extra deep breaths. I don't know.

He was super oxygenated. But it was the Ruach of God that gave him his first breath, but then gave him some special breaths that day. I'm using my English words to try and get at death. So there's the Ruach of God. When you want to tie it to the one who is above and beyond and creates and sustains all things, you can talk about as the Ruach of God. And when you do that, you're specifically talking about the activity of God, usually.

Yeah. Right? But you're trying to tie it to the person of God. But you're tying it to the person of God. That's right. It's not just a mindless force. You're tapping into the person, the someone who is behind all things. Yeah.

But the Ruach is the way of talking about the one who is above and beyond and behind. all things, being personally involved in the nitty and gritty of all the change in events and the flux of human history and human life. The Ruach is the way the biblical authors are uniting the divine and the human, the divine creator and creation. It's the meeting place of the two. It's a remarkable word. I think that's why years ago we actually were excited about the word energy. Yeah. To find a word that does the same work.

You know, years ago when we had this conversation, I was trying to use the word spirit when I referred to wind. Not in conversation, because that's weird, I guess. But like to myself in a poetic way, like, oh, the spirit moving through the trees. Yeah. I'm breathing in the spirit. Yeah. But what's uncomfortable about it is then I start to conflate that with God's personal energy.

Right, right. which I'm like, oh, but it's different. But I think that's actually part of the point. Part of the point. The discomfort I'm supposed to feel, the tension I'm feeling. You know, when you just said that, the discomfort was saying, I'm breathing in God. Yes.

Because I think that why that makes you uncomfortable is because when you breathe in God, all of a sudden, what that language can make you think is, I've contained God. Yeah. But I think part of what this concept is trying to invite us to see is actually the opposite. it's actually I'm contained within God and everything that I am is sustained and is within and because of God's ruach. So anytime I'm inhaling ruach, it is God in me, but all that is is God in me as a part of an ecosystem in which I am in God. How clearly are they thinking in that category because like when we looked at Genesis 8, God caused a ruach.

it could have said and God's ruach parted the waters and been more explicit so there seems to be this understanding that while I am enveloped by God and I exist within God

it isn't as simple as I'm breathing in God this is so great man this is so great this is such an ancient conversation in Jewish and Christian tradition we're trying to name one thing

but it's so super real that we can only name it with two different names. Okay. What are you talking about? That feel opposite to us. Okay. What we're trying to say is a core claim of Jewish and Christian tradition, something that exists cannot be the author of its own existence. Something whose existence depends on something else can't have brought about its own existence.

Yeah. And everything that you and I encounter visibly with our five senses, is something whose existence is actually dependent on something before it. So it's real, but it's real as a kind of dependent real. So there must be something like whatever it is, its highest up the chain of cause and effect, has to be something that isn't dependent on any other thing for its existence. This is one of the classical kind of ways of thinking about God,

It's the unmoved mover, the first primary cause. So by the word God, we're designating the one who is. The one who is. The one who is. So that's key. So anything that is, then is because God is, which means that in a way it's in God or its existence is dependent and sustained by God. Okay.

So that could very quickly lead you, though, to think like, oh, so I guess I'm God. because I only exist in and from within God. It's like a little gut bacteria being like, I'm human. Yeah, so now we have to flip and we have to say what we're dealing with in the Jewish Christian claim of God is the creator of all things, is that God exists in and of God's self, but God has also, by God's will, chosen that something else should exist other than God as itself, as a thing to exist with its own identity other than God,

so precisely for relationship. It's like the generous, God's the generous host, that phrase. And while that thing that God has brought into existence is not God, it has a kind of independence, but that independence is relative because it only exists in full dependence on God. So how do you develop language for talking about... Something that's independent but still fully dependent.

A dependent independence. and its very existence can only exist if the one who is pervades and sustains and keeps it alive. And so Ruach Elohim is one of the ways the biblical authors are talking about that, metaphysical concept, is that it's God, the Ruach Elohim, Genesis 1, 2. But then also, once God has brought something into being with its own relative independence, the way God personally interacts with it, but as its own thing.

And that's what you get it with Genesis 8, verse 1. God causes a ruach. And there we're like, oh, it's a wind. So it's not God. Right. But it's, I don't know, man, we're at the coincidence of opposites here. Okay, so if I'm an ancient thinker,

and you're telling me the story, and I say, you're telling me, Elohim caused a ruach. I'm thinking to myself, okay, the God of the universe, first mover within which I exist and everything has life is causing spirit to push off these chaos waters. Yeah, that's right. And so am I kind of simultaneously thinking it's an independent thing from God, but also in some way...

Is God? Is God? Yeah. I am thinking both things. It's distinct from God because it's right here in creation. I can feel it, and I inhale it. I can even contain it within my lungs. Yeah.

So obviously it can't be God. So that can't be the whole of who God is. That can't be all that God is. Sure. In the same way that I am not God in the sense I am not all that God is. But yet in another sense, I am filled with the Ruach of God. And I only exist because of the Ruach of God. And so in some way, I do really participate.

Now, is there a verse? I think in Job or something we looked at before, that kind of makes it pretty explicit, that it's the ruach of Elohim in you. Yeah, I mean, we're going to get there. We'll get there. But, yes, just to make it clear, Job in Job 27,

says, the ruach of God is in my nostrils. Yeah. The same phrase of Genesis 1, verse 2, Ruach Elohim. Okay. Is in my nostrils. Okay. God's in my nostrils.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. By which he doesn't mean, like, all that God is above and beyond is in my nose. Sure. But that's something very real that is divine and comes from the divine as God's gift to me, as someone who's both contained in God and other than God, is in me. It's, I guess, a classic version of a paradox.

How can all creation be both distinct from God, but yet wholly dependent and participate in God's existence? Yeah. And the word ruach of God, in Genesis 1, verse 2, or God causing a Rurach to blow within creation, Genesis 8, verse 1, are two ways of staying at paradox. Hmm, okay.

And, you know, within human knowledge or to the point where is it this or is it that? Because both seem real. Usually that's the invitation to the greater thing that transcends them both. And the limit is just my limited understanding. There's a whole other set of uses of Rewa in the Hebrew Bible, that the only word I can think of that does justice to these uses is our word mind.

So, for example, in Genesis 41, the Pharaoh King of Egypt has a dream about these wonderful seven cows grazing by a stream. And then these seven mutant nightmare cows come up from the land and then devour the healthy cows. And what we're told is that he wakes up in the morning and his ruach was agitated. His ruach was troubled. The pharaohs. Yeah, Pharaohs is. After dreaming this thing. Yeah.

So he sends for the magicians of Egypt, nobody can tell him what his dream means. He comes across his Hebrew slave who can tell him what it means. And what he says is we'll look at in a couple conversations. But his ruach is troubled. So I guess it could mean that his breathing was... Couldn't breathe quite well. Yeah. But here, let's stack this alongside.

Another example. Numbers 14 was the story of Moses sending the spies into the land. And 10 of the 12 spies come back to the report that's like, no, there's giants in the land. They're going to kill us. We can't go in there. God can't rescue us. And a guy named Caleb and Joshua say, no, the Lord can deliver us. Like, he brought us out of Egypt.

He can do this. And when God compares Caleb to the 10 spies who didn't trust him, what he says is, Caleb has a different ruach, and he has followed me fully. When David is sharing the blueprints for the temple in Jerusalem, he says that he had a dream, and he saw the blueprints in like a divine dream that God gave him. It says that he gives to Solomon the plan, then, this blueprint plan, and the plan of all the temple that was in the ruach with him.

The plan of everything that was in the ruach with him. So there's a ruach with him. I guess you could say it's his ruach. Yeah. And the plans are in there. The plan of the temple are in his ruach. Yeah, okay. Yeah, yeah.

That feels a lot like mine. Yeah. So there's many more examples like this, but we're talking about the same thing. I think our closest is our concept of, oh no, an idea. Like, what is a concept? What is an idea?

And where does it live? That's right. Yeah. Like if you come to me and share an idea, which you have many times over the course of this project, where, like if I got an x-ray? Yeah. No, no, like a cat scan or whatever.

MRI and scanned your brain. Yeah. Where would you see it? Am I going to see the idea molecule? Right. It was very mysterious part of human cognition is what we call ideas or concepts. Or information.

Information. So I don't want to try and do a full discussion of that, but to say it's very intuitive to say that you received, you came into contact with something that was outside you. Yeah. That you received from somewhere outside you. The inspiration. And because you and I, in biblical thought,

are porous, our bodies and our hearts and minds and will are porous, things can enter into us from the outside, like an idea, like a plan, to build a building. And then you share it with somebody else, and what you could say was, it was your ruach, because it's invisible, it comes from within you, but also came to you from outside. So it went into you, you received it from somewhere, some input you got, then you somehow think about it, whatever thinking is. And then you say something or do something, and now that invisible thing that came to you

is within you and then goes out of you has a visible effect in the world. Now there's a building where there wasn't one before. And one of the words for that in biblical Hebrew is Ruach. We have to use the word mind at that point. But ruach. Yeah, mind not meaning your brain, mind meaning that that inviative.

visible processing, storing, contemplating, communicating these abstract invisible things. Yep. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And in David's case, I think why it's phrased in this unique way, in the ruach that was with him, is it wants you to see this as both something that's David's Ruach, but also that comes to him from God. because we're told that it was a divine blueprint that he saw. Right.

So it was both his ruach and God's ruach. In other words, Ruach is the point at which the divine and human meet. And the point at which God can influence humans by uniting with them in this invisible way. Yeah. So thinking like an ancient, you got this invisible ruachian. you got this invisible Ruach energy, I'm breathing it in, it's sustaining everything. And at some point, I need to start talking about my own sense of mindful agency. And it's this invisible part of me that's very real and almost more real to a sense of myself than anything.

And the word I have also is Ruach. and we call that the human spirit. But just like there's this blurring between, is that the spirit of God in the trees or is that a rock? The God sent. It's like something other than God. Yeah. It's a tension there, but there's also a tension in like,

is this my spirit? Or am I being filled with the spirit of God? Exactly. Yes. And this is my spirit because I'm an independent creature made in God's image, but I'm independent, but then I can't exist without gods. Yeah, totally. Okay. So right there at that intersection of divine and human, there's a mystery,

and that's very much at the heart of what the biblical authors are trying to say. And so what's so fascinating, we'll look at some of these passages later on in the series. So the Apostle Paul in his letter, Corinthians, we call it One Corinthians, knows these people intimately. He planted the church in Corinth. It's a bunch of terrible things happening from his point of view going on. He wishes he could be there,

but he can't right now, so he's writing a letter. And so there's a bunch of instances in Chapter 5 of 1st Corinthians where he talks about, hey, listen, right now at this moment, I am absent from you guys in body. Like I'm not physically present with you.

But what he says is, I am, this, 1st Corinthians 5 verse 3, I am present in Pneuma with you. Where he says in verse four, in the name of our Lord Jesus, when you are assembled together, and I am with you in Pneuma. And so our translators have a challenge right there. Because what he's saying is that because God's spirit is there with you,

gathering with you when you gather, and because I am connected to God's spirit right now, through God's spirit, it's like I'm with you. Is that what he's saying? Okay. Or is what he's saying is my spirit is so joined and connected with you and with God's spirit.

Anytime you guys get together, I'm there. So the debate in English translations is, do you capitalize the word spirit? Is Paul Spirit or God Spirit? Exactly. Okay. And the longer I've sat with that paradox of how to translate spirit right here in 1 Corinthians 5, I've begun to wonder if the point isn't the paradox.

Paul is with them, but not because he's physically there, but because he is united to God's spirit, and God's spirit is united to them. And there's passages in John that we could look at of when Jesus says, I will be in you, my disciples, and you'll be in me, and will be in the Father. So this isn't just a Hebrew Bible thing, this idea of the union of God and creation of divine human is part of the point of the word ruach. And it's pretty intuitive because the hummingbird and I are both depending on something that's not us to keep us alive. And that long precedes us and it also blows in the trees. What do you want to call that?

And that's the fundamental meaning of ruach. Okay. So essentially what we just did was what we took about three hours to kind of work through years ago. We did a little more that we're going to fill out more. But that's the first step. Okay. That's the refresher. So I guess if there's a million unanswered questions right now that just got raised,

that's very much the point. Yeah, okay. That will begin to address all the loose ends as we go forward. Okay. What we should look at next then is how Ruach, is fundamentally associated with what we would call life, but also with death. Ruach is talking about the knife's edge between life and death

that all living creatures live on. So we'll look at a whole bunch of biblical texts about that. That's it for today's episode. Next week, we're going to explore how the spirit of God is the originator and sustainer of life, and how thinking about the spirit in this way draws attention to our own mortality. This is the biblical author's way of exploring humans as frail, as mortal, as not sustaining their own existence. And we'll look at how the story of the Bible is an invitation for the mortal to somehow become more.

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