[B-Greek] Absent Definite Article strips Personality from The Holy Spirit (Correction)
Robert George
4examp at gmail.com
Sat Jun 13 18:30:45 EDT 2009
The Watchtower's 1st Bible "dictionary" (1971), titled "Aid to Bible
Understanding" was superseded by "Insight on the Scriptures" (1988).
Do you agree that Greek grammar warrants such a conclusion for the
text I capitalized?
I would like to quote your comments (so please let me know if I may
ALSO include your name & title).
"Lacks personal dentification. ~ Since God himself is a Spirit and is
holy and since all his faithful angelic sons are spirits and are holy,
it is evident that if the "holy spirit" were a person, there should
reasonably be given some means in the Scriptures to distinguish and
identify such spirit person from all these other ‘holy spirits.’ It
would be expected that, at the very least, the definite article would
be used with it in all cases where it is not called "God’s holy
spirit" or is not modified by some similar expression. This would at
least distinguish it as THE Holy Spirit. But, on the contrary, in a
large number of cases THE EXPRESSION "holy spirit" APPEARS IN THE
ORIGINAL GREEK WITHOUT THE ARTICLE, THUS INDICATING ITS LACK OF
PERSONALITY.-— Compare Ac 6:3, 5; 7:55; 8:15, 17, 19; 9:17; 11:24;
13:9, 52; 19:2; Ro 9:1; 14:17; 15:13, 16, 19; 1Co 12:3; Heb 2:4; 6:4;
2Pe 1:21; Jude 20, Int and other interlinear translations."
(Insight p.1019 / Aid p.1543)
Thanks. / Robert George
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