HOLY GHOST Vs. HOLY SPIRIT

Ever since one good pastor around town burnt Bibles due to the term ‘GHOST‘ in the holy book of God, the tension still exists among some Bible readers.

I might not resolve it given the fact that some tensions are not built on facts but rather on emotions aka belief.

Now there are two approaches that attempt to explain this:

1. The linguistic approach that deals with both the source language (Greek) and the receptor language (English).
2. The theological approach thats deals with the question of how language and meaning might effect and affect belief.

Allow me to begin with the second approach. As a trained Theologian, I would like to thank the pastor whose acts/beliefs triggered this debate in (Uganda) because we have laboured to tell Bible readers that the Bible, like the Quran, was not written in our vernaculars (English inclusive) and they have ignored us to this day.

So the Theological approach to the issue of Ghost and Spirit used in the King James Version (KJV) would be to first inform the public that the Bible in all languages is a translation and not in the original language in which it was written or even transcribed.

The Bible was translated from Hebrew, Aramaic and Greek. Hebrew is the dominant language in the Old Testament (with some exceptions of Daniel 2:4-7:28 in Aramaic) while Greek is the primary language of the New Testament text.

So before we even begin to think which Bible versions are true and which ones are wrong, we must begin at two points:

1. Understanding that all that we have in our hands are TRANSLATIONS and whoever has been to a church service where the preacher is using English and the translator is transferring to Luganda/Swahili but is privileged enough to know both languages will have no problem understanding the weaknesses or strengths of their translated Bible version.
2. Whoever stands to challenge a translation must prove his capacity in both languages, that is the Source Language (Hebrew, Aramaic and Greek) and the Receptor Language (English and/or any other vernaculars). Theologically, if an individual lacks in any, then regardless of how annointed the woman or man of God might be, we shouldn’t give an ear to such. So are your Bible teachers (not preachers) theologically trained to attempt a doctrine or a belief system out of the Biblical text?

Now let me turn to the first approach which is the Linguistic Approach. From this perspective, we see that GHOST and SPIRIT are different, not in MEANING but in TIME. Students of languages know about language evolution and how words attract different meanings culturally, depending on the place and time. This does not apply to all words but Ghost is one of them.

Etymologically, it has Germany origins that phonetically evolved into the English ‘GHOST‘ from ‘gast‘ that means breath or air. Spirit (good or bad, angel or demon), so the word means spirit (omwoyo.. guyinza okuba omubi oba omulungi). So Ghost is just a Spirit that can only be labelled by the adjective one chooses to add to it. Evil-ghost is a bad spirit and HOLY-ghost is a good spirit.

My friend Stewart had this to say about the KJV translation process :

There is no theological reason why the Holy Spirit is sometimes referred to as the Holy Ghost. The reason for the difference is found in the story behind the translation of the King James Bible. When the King James Version was translated it was done by different committees. One of the committees consistently translated the Greek words hagion pneuma as “Holy Spirit” while the other committee translated it as “Holy Ghost“. When the translation was completed, these differences remained. Thus, you have the Spirit of God referred to as both the Holy Spirit and the Holy Ghost.

There is no theological difference but one which is linguistic. In Hebrew, the word Spirit is Ruach (as transliterated) and if it is the Holy Spirit, the adjective is Qodeshkha while in Greek the word Spirit is Pneuma and if the distinguishing adjective is Hagion.

As you can see, this is how we approach serious Biblical matters and allow me to take this opportunity to thank Pastor Bujingo of House of prayer Ministries who tripped into these matters and sparked off this debate.

And this is but just a tip of the iceberg of how the Bible is abused and used to abuse the belief psychology of the laymen in our churches and on media as well.

So take heart, the Ghost you see in your Bible will not eat you as long as it has a proper adjective and you have a proper Bible teacher to help you with the context.

God bless you, I invoke Truth, Reason and Truth

Pr ITM WHITE
The Gospel Hawker (0793822833)