Patriarchs’ Bronze Age Languages

This topic discusses languages of the Bronze Age (approximately 3300–1200 BC) in the Ancient Near East (ANE), relative to the time of the Biblical patriarchs.

We don’t know what the language of Adam was (cf. Ge.2:19-20).  Many historians think Sumérian is the oldest written language.  Sumerian is called an isolated language, with no ancestor tongue.  But loan words have been identified in Sumerian writings.  So Sumerian as the first language is questioned.  Encyclopaedia Brittanica “The Sumerian language…first attested about 3100 BC in S. Mesopotamia.”

Wikipedia: Writing System “The Sumerian archaic cúneiform script closely followed by the Egyptian híeroglyphs are generally considered the earliest writing systems, both emerging out of their ancestral proto-literate symbol systems from 3400 to 3200 BC with earliest coherent texts from about 2600 BC.”

Dating from pre-3000 BC Súmer, pictograph was pictures that represent a word or idea.  Cuneiform script was wedge-shaped marks or symbols, on clay tablets.  Cuneiform was adapted from pictograph.

The sons of the patriarch Noah were Shem, Ham and Jápheth (Ge.9:18).  The family survived the Flood.  The Septúagint/LXX dates Noah’s Flood circa (c) 3200 BC.  After the Flood, his descendants migrated from old Armenia (Ge.8:4), to Shinár (Ge.10:10), and so on.  The Ge.10–11 account, with the tower of Babél zíggurat, coincides with the development of language families from a primitive root language.

Post-Flood, Ge.11:1-9 “The whole earth was of one language [lip, shore, Strongs h8193 Hebrew]. They found a plain in the land of Shinar and settled there. They said, ‘Let us build a city & tower whose top is in heaven.’ Its name was called Babel, because there the Lord confused the language [lip/shore], and scattered them over the whole earth.”  Wikipedia: Tower of Babel “The Akkadian name of the city was Babilim, meaning ‘gate of God.”  Shinar (Sumer, or Sínjar?) was an area in Mesopotamia (Ac.2:9, 7:2; it included ancient Babylonia).  Shinar means ‘two rivers’.  Mesopotamia (Greek) means ‘land between the rivers’, the Tigris and Euphrates.  Mankind spread out over the land; other languages emerged.

Language families developed through Noah’s descendants (ref Ge.10:1, 5, 20, 31).  Carlos Quiles From Adamic or the Language of the Garden of Eden Until the Tower of Babel “The language spoken by Noah and his descendants, whether the original Adamic language or the derived Chaldáic [?], split into 70 or 72 languages, according to the different traditions.”  People dispersed upon the earth through extended family lines, clans, languages.  It is said that 14 major language families exist today (e.g. Indo-European, Áfro-Asiátic the oldest).  Dialects developed within the major language groups/tree models as humanity spread geographically; numerous dialects of descent are within each.

Ge.10:6 “The sons of Ham were Cush, Mízraim [Egypt], Phut and Canáan.”  The Egyptian people descended from Ham.  Ge.10:22 “The sons of Shem were Elám, Asshúr, Arpachshad, Lud and Arám.  These were grandsons of Noah.  Semític languages are named from Shem.  (The Aramaic language would be named from Aram.)  Josephus Antiquities of the Jews 1:6:4 “Elam…the Elamites, ancestors of the Persians [Iranians]. Asshur lived at the city Nineveh, and named his subjects Assyrians. Arpachshad named…the Chaldéans. Aram…called Syrians. Lud…Lydians [W Turkey].”  (see the topics “Aramaic in the Bible” and “Chronology: Septuagint versus Masoretic Text”.)  Aram & Arpachshad were brothers.

Wikipedia: Arpachshad “Arpachshad was understood by many Jewish and Muslim scholars [pre-1920] to be an area in northern Mesopotamia. This led to the identification of Arpachshad with Urfa-Kasid, a land associated with the Khaldis.”  Wikipedia: Chalybes “The Chalybes and Chaldoi were…peoples living in N. Anatolia [Turkey]. Their territory was known as Chaldia.”  (Later they’d move south.)

Ge.10:24 LXX “Arphaxad begot Kaínan (not Canaan), Kainan begot Shélah, Shelah begot Éber.”  (The Hebrew people would be named after Eber, Josephus ibid.)  Eber was the great-grandson (or grandson) of Arphaxad.

Sumerian of Iraq is an extinct linguistic isolate.  At Ur in S Mesopotamia, the writings on the mud-brick walls of the Great Ziggurat (2000–2100 BC) are Sumerian cuneiform.  The ancient Elamite language of SW Iran, dating from c 2600 BC and now extinct, is also considered a language isolate.  Although Elamite was named from Shem’s son Elam (Ge.10:22), it isn’t considered a Semitic language.

There were multilinguals in Mesopotamia, speaking Sumerian, Akkádian…then other dialects.  Akkadian is an extinct E Semitic Afro-Asiatic language.  Ge.10:10 Akkád was in or near the land of Shinar (the exact location hasn’t been discovered).  Akkadian names are seen in Sumerian writings, dated c 2500 BC.  Wikipedia: Akkadian Empire “Akkadian gradually replaced Sumerian as a spoken language somewhere around 2000 BC.”  Near the commencement of the Middle Bronze Age.

Ge.11:10-27 Abrám descended from Arphaxad.  v.31 Abraham (born c 2100 BC) likely came from Ur/Urfa/SanliUrfa/Edessa, or Urkesh, in N Mesopotamia.  He migrated approx 25 miles S to Harrán (Akkadian ‘Harránu’, ‘crossroads’) in far S Turkey, 10 miles above the N Syrian border.  The region of Aram in Upper Mesopotamia.  Ancient Urkesh (Tel Mozan today) in NE Syria was 100+ miles E of Harran.  Abram later would migrate SSW through Damascus; cf. Ge.15:2 his “Eliézer of Damascus”.

Ge.11:16-27 the names of early Hebrews (descendants of Eber and ancestors of Abraham) are seen in the names of towns located in the vicinity of Harran, Turkey.  Péleg, the city of Paliga; Serúg, the city of Sarugi; Nahór, Nakhur in the valley; Abraham’s father Térah, Til-Turakhi (‘mound of Terah’).

Rudolph Klein Abraham’s Chaldean Origins and the Chaldee Language “He must have been literate & fluent in Sumerian, Akkadian, various other Semitic languages (e.g. Amorite), probably Egyptian as a trade language. His descendants would adopt the language of…Canaan [Phoenícian/old Hebrew].”

Mark D. Kaplan The Languages of the Bible “One of the earliest ancient cities was Akkad in Mesopotamia (Ge.10:10). Perhaps Abraham originally spoke an Akkadian dialect in Ur. Abraham went south to Canaan…the Canaanites were descendants of Ham [Ge.10:1, 6 Noah’s son]. In Canaan Abraham picked up the local language. His clan’s version of Canaanite became known as Hebrew [much later].”  (Hebrew is classed as a Canaanite NW Semitic Afro-Asiatic language.)

Eblaite, named after the city Ebla (Tel Márdikh today] in N Syria, is an extinct E Semitic Afro-Asiatic language dating from the (latter) 2000s BC.  Ebla was approx 90 miles SW of Harran & 190 miles N of Damascus.  Wikipedia: Ebla [3000–1600 BC] “At its greatest extent, Ebla controlled an area half the size of modern Syria, from Ursaum in the north [S Turkey] to around Damascus in the south, and from Phoenícia and the coastal mountains in the west to Haddu in the east. It is probable the inhabitants of 3^rd kingdom Ebla [2000–1600 BC] were predominantly Amorites, as was most of Syria at that time.”

Wikipedia: Eblaite Language “Similarity to Hebrew, Ugarític, or Phoenician.”  Eblaite is an E Semitic sister language to Akkadian.  Jeff Benner The Archives of Ebla and the Bible “The tablets were written [2300 BC at Ebla] with a cuneiform script, like Úgarit [N Syrian coastal city]. The Eblaite language shares many similarities to the Hebrew language.”  Kevin Drendel The Ebla Tablets Confirm Biblical Accounts “The tablets include Sumerian Eblahite vocabularies with thousands of translated words. Also an ancient language…related to [the later] Hebrew and Phoenician.”

Abram was also probably familiar with Hurrian, an extinct N Mesopotamia language dating from 2300 BC.  And Elamite (cuneiform).  Ge.14:1-17 Abram defeated Chedorlaómer, the powerful king of Elam.  Bible patriarchs knew Akkadian, some Eblaite & Hurrian.  And Amorite too, an extinct NW Semitic Afro-Asiatic language (and an ancestor of Ugaritic?).  Ge.10:15-16 the Amorites descended from Ham’s son Canaan.  Abram dwelt in the plain of his ally Mamré the Amorite (Ge.14:13), near Hebron.

Ge.12:10-20 while in Egypt, Abram perhaps spoke Middle Egyptian (an Afro-Asiatic language) with Pharaoh.  Ge.20:1-18 Abraham and an ancient Abimélech, king of Gerár (capital city), dialogued SE of Gaza (Ge.21:32-34).  There they possibly spoke an early form of Proto-Sináitic?  So-called “Philistine” territory was the SW coast of Canaan.  Those Philistines descended from Mizraim/Egypt, son of Ham.  Ge.10:13-14 “Mizraim begot Pathrúsim and Caslúhim, from whom came the Philistines, and Caphtorím.”  Josephus op.cit. 1:6:2 “All the children of Mizraim, eight in number, possessed the country from Gaza to Egypt; though it retained the name of one only, the Philistim.”  Ge.21:34 “Abraham sojourned in the land of the Philistines many days.”  Gill Exposition “For many years.”

Later the Israelites would say of their ancestor in De.26:5, “My father was a wandering Araméan [Arammíy h761, Syrian]”.  Referring to Abraham or Jacob.  Ge.14:13 “Abram the Hebrew” (Ibríy h5680) and grandson Jacob were from Eber’s line.  Abraham and Jacob (born c 1950 BC) had spent years in N Syria; both would have known Akkadian, Amorite, and Jacob the developing Proto-Aramaic.

Abraham told his servant, Ge.24:1-4 “Don’t take a wife for my son from the Canaanites, among whom I live; but go to my country to my relatives and take a wife for Isaac.”  v.10 “He went to Arám-of-the-two-rivers, the city of Nahór.”  Wikipedia: Aramaic “Ancient Aram…Syria”.  The city of Abraham’s brother Nahor was in N Mesopotamia, Syria-Turkey, 400 miles distant.  The servant brought back Rebekah for Isaac.  Ge.25:20 “Isaac was 40 years old when he took Rebekah, the daughter of Bethuél the Aramean of Paddán-Arám, the sister of Labán the Aramean [Arammiy].”  Ge.22:20-23 Bethuel, the son of Nahor, was Abraham’s nephew.  90 years later, Ge.28:5 “Isaac sent Jacob to Paddan-Aram, to Laban, son of Bethuel the Aramean.”  A form of primitive Aramaic was likely the dialect at the ‘plain of Aram’.  Jacob brought his wives Leah & Rachel from the old country to the Land of Canaan.

Laban was an Aramean.  Pre-Aramaic and pre-Hebrew are reflected in the same verse in Ge.31:43-48. “They took stones and made a heap, and ate there. Laban called it Jegár sahaduthá, but Jacob called it Galéed.”  They made a “heap of witness” c 1865 BC at Mizpáh of Gilead, E of the Jordan River.  Laban called the memorial by a proto-Aramaic name, but Jacob called it by a precursor of Hebrew.  Barnes Notes “Here is the first specimen of Aramaic, as distinguished from Hebrew.”  Jacob would’ve learned both dialects in Canaan, Proto-Canaanite pre-Hebrew and his mother’s primitive Paleo-Syrian.

Codex 99 Proto-Sinaitic “Around 1900 BC the Proto-Sinaitic script began to appear in Egypt, the Sinai and the Levánt. Associated with hieroglyphic or hierátic signs. It was adopted by the Canaanites (hence Proto-Canaanite) and later by the Phoenicians.”  Omniglot: Proto-Sinaitic/Proto-Canaanite “Proto-Canaanite is a version of the Proto-Sinaitic script as used in Canaan, modern Lebanon, Israel, Palestine and parts of western Syria. It is also used to refer to an early version of the Phoenician script as used before 1050 BC, or an ancestor of Phoenician.”  Phoenicia was a 150-mile coastal region, Lebanon today.  (cf. Mk.7:26 “The woman was a Syrian-Phoenician.”)  Phoenicia included the cities of Tyre, Byblos, Sidon.  Ge.10:15 Sidón was the firstborn son of Canaan.

Ge.40:15 Jacob’s son Joseph was from the “land of the Hebrews”, peoples racially disliked by the Egyptians (Ge.43:32).  Descendants of Eber lived in N Syria and then Canaan.  After Pharaoh made Joseph a ruler in Egypt, Jacob/Israel and his sons’ families moved from Canaan to Egypt c 1827 BC.  see “Chronology: Abraham to the Exodus”.  Ge.42:23 an interpreter was necessary, since the Middle Egyptian language and the Proto-Canaanite (and the Akkadian of the Old Assyrian period) differed.

Joseph died in Egypt c 1757 BC.  The Amorite Hammurabi (1810-1750 BC) wrote his famous law Code between 1755–1750 BC in Akkadian cuneiform text at the ancient Babylon city-state.  He was the 6^th king of the First Babylonian Empire (1894-1595 BC), ruling Mesopotamia.  (Later, after Israel exited Egypt, two Amorite kings in NE Canaan c 1575 BC were Sihon and Og. ref De.31:4.)

While in Egypt, the descendants of Jacob/Israel became slaves and learned Middle Egyptian.  Ac.7:22 “Moses was educated in all the learning of the Egyptians; he was mighty in words and deeds.”  Ex.2:16-19 Reuél’s daughters (1600s BC) in the land of Midián thought Moses was Egyptian, from his speech & dress.  Moses spent years in Midian near Mt Sinai, where he was called by God (Ex.3:1-ff).

Ex.31:18 after the Israelite exodus from Egypt, the Decalogue at Mt Sinai was written by the finger of God.  In Canaano-Akkadian, Proto-Sinaitic/Canaanite script, Eblaite, hieroglyphic or hieratic scripts?  The Lord’s Old Covenant too.  F.F. Bruce Who Wrote Genesis? “A man [Moses] ‘learned in all the wisdom of the Egyptians’ would have been conversant with the Egyptian hieroglyphic and hieratic.”

John C Lennox Seven Days That Divide the World, p.126 “The scribal use of cuneiform script spread from Mesopotamia as far as Canaan, Hazor [in Upper Galilee], and even Hebron [between Jerusalem and Beershéba] by the 17^th century BC.”

In the Land of Canaan after 215 years in Egypt, the Israelites/‘mixed multitude’ (Ex.12:37-38) of 1550 BC likely took on Proto-Canaanite.

Andre H. Roosma The Written Language of Abraham, Moses and David “The Paleo-Hebrew script developed from a script that was used in the W Semitic area during the 2^nd millennium BC. It is often referred to as Proto-Canaanite or Proto-Sinaitic script.”  The Israelites would then use the developing Old/Paleo Hebrew (and Phoenician) in the Land of Canaan.

The Amarna Letters (1360-1332 BC) are 382 tablets found in Upper Egypt, but written in Akkadian cuneiform script (not in Egyptian).  They’re correspondence between the kings of Canaanite cities and Pharaoh.  Wikipedia: Amarna Letters “The letters, though written in Akkadian, are heavily colored by the mother tongue of their writers, who probably spoke an early form of Proto-Canaanite.”  Not long before the time of Gideon in the book of Judges (6:11-ff).  see “Chronology: the Exodus to Samuel”.

There’s no indication that Paleo-Hebrew was spoken in Mesopotamia.  Cambridge Bible Ge.11:1 “That Hebrew was the primitive language….has been disproved by the scientific comparative study of languages, and of Hebrew and the Semitic languages in particular.”  Wikipedia: Canaanite Languages “Hebrew, Phoenician…derived from the Proto-Canaanite alphabet to record their writings.”

That brings us to the approaching end of the ANE Bronze Age, c 1200 BC.  Further archaeological findings may bring to light other ancient dialects and/or revisions to those discussed here in this topic.

The Paleo-Hebrew (Old Hebrew alphabet) script would become the language of south Canaan.  Is.19:18 “language of Canaan”.  Language historians say the Phoenician language was spoken in NW Canaan.  Old Hebrew and Phoenician were very similar; both contained the same 22 letters.  (Aramaic too has 22.)  Wikipedia: Paleo-Hebrew Alphabet “Like the Phoenician alphabet, it is a continuation of the Proto-Canaanite script, which was used throughout Canaan in the Late Bronze Age. There is no difference in Paleo-Hebrew vs Phoenician letter shapes.”

For more on Aramaic & Hebrew in the ensuing centuries of the Iron Age, see “Aramaic in the Bible”.

Aramaic in the Bible (2) – New Testament

This Part 2 is the continuation and conclusion to “Aramaic in the Bible (1) – Old Testament”.  Material covered in (1) won’t be repeated here in (2); I suggest you read Part 1 first.

Prior to being taken captive by Assyria (721 BC) and Babylon (586 BC), Israelites & Jews had spoken Old Hebrew or Judahite (Jehudíth Strongs h3066) in the Land of Canáan.  But when Jews returned to the Land from captivity in the days of Zerubabbél (530s BC), and with Ezra & Nehemiah (c 450 BC), they spoke the Aramáic language.  They’d learned it in the East, during the time of the Neo-Assyrian, Neo-Babylonian (Chaldéan), and Persian empires.  Aramaic was the língua fránca of those empires.

Most Israelites & Jews no longer spoke Judahite ‘Hebrew’, the old “lip of Canaan”.  Ne.13:24 “As for their children…none of them was able to speak in the language of Judah [Jehudith h3066].”  Benson Commentary Ne.13:24 “The language which the [common] Jews then spoke was Cháldee; this language they learned in their captivity, and after their return never assumed their ancient Hebrew tongue.” 

The returnees and their descendants spoke Aramaic.  Some of the later chapters in the Old Testament (OT) timeline were written in Aramaic: Da.2:4b–7:28, Ezr.4:8–6:18, 7:12-26.  see Part 1.

Then Greek became the language of commerce for the Grecian and Roman empires.  Most historians say that at the New Testament (NT) time of Jesus/Yeshúa, Aramaic (also called Chaldee and Sýriac) was still the language spoken by the majority of common Jews in Judea.  In most Judean synagogues, the OT scriptures were read from Hebrew scrolls, and interpreters (meturganim) translated them into Aramaic for the hearers.  cf. Ne.8:8.  But there was no Aramaic text of the entire OT (there was an old Greek text).  So the Aramaic Tárgums were written. 

The Targums are OT paraphrases.  They were written in Aramaic, beginning in the 1^st century AD.  With them, Aramaic-speaking people could understand the OT text.  The Targum of Ónkelos (the Law) and the Targum of Jonathán (the Prophets) were composed prior to 200 AD.  They are official.  Another Targum of the Law/Torah/Péntateuch is the Jerusalem Targum (also known as the Targum Pseudo-Jonathan).  There’s also the Targum Neofití, for the Pentateuch.  And a few others.

Perhaps the Aramaic Targums wouldn’t have been necessary if most Jews still knew Hebrew.  But most no longer knew Hebrew.  They spoke Aramaic or Greek.  Bruce Metzger The Jewish Targums “Such versions were needed when Hebrew ceased to be the normal medium of communication among Jews.”

Whenever the Targums came to passages where YHVH was anthropomorphized or seen (appearing human), or where plural YHVHs are indicated…Targums substituted the “Word of YHVH” for “YHVH”!  The Aramaic term for “Word” is Mémra.  In Greek, “Word” is Lógos g3056, e.g. Jn.1:1.  The Targum Neofiti was written in Palestine before 200 AD.  Targ Neofiti Ge.1:1 “From the beginning with Wisdom the Memra [Word] of the Lord created and perfected the heavens and the earth.”  (Of note also is Targ Jonathan Is.52:13, “Behold My Servant the Messiah…!”  Disbelieving medieval rabbis claim “My Servant” here was the nation of Israel…but this earlier Targum indicated Is.52–53 refers to the Messiah an individual.) 

Again, a few chapters of the OT were written in Aramaic.  Ezr.5 is in Aramaic.  Ezr.5:2 “Yeshúa the son of Jozadák.”  Yeshua (a common male name) is also Messiah Jesus’ name in Aramaic.

The gospel writers record Jesus speaking Aramaic in red-letter text of our Bible, and they record places in Judea with Aramaic names.  Following are some of the Aramaic words in the NT:

Jesus called the brothers in Mk.3:17, “Boanergés, that is, ‘Sons of Thunder”.  Expositor’s Greek Testament “As pronounced by Galileans, in Syrian.”  Jesus said to the dead girl in Mk.5:41, “Taleetháh koómee (which translated means ‘Little girl, arise!’)”.  JFB Commentary “The words are Aramaic, or Syro-Chaldáic, the then language of Palestine.”  Jesus said to the deaf man in Mk.7:34, “Éffathah!’, that is, ‘Be opened!”  Cambridge Bible “The actual Aramaic word used by our Lord.”  Jesus prayed in Mk.14:36, “Abbáh! Father!”  Geneva Study Bible “The word Abba is a Syrian word.”  (The Hebrew word for Father is Awb h1, the Aramaic is Ab h2, also Abbah g5.)  Abbah is also seen in Ro.8:15 and Ga.4:6 of Paul’s epistles.  The above verses reflect (Western) Aramaic words.

Luke wrote, Ac.1:19 “In their own language that field was called Hakeldamáh, the Field of Blood.”  Luke recorded the Aramaic name of the field at Jerusalem purchased by Judas…“in their language”!  Poole Commentary Ac.1:19 “The Syriac language then in use after the Babylonish captivity.”

The Jewish historian Josephus (37-100 AD) was a priest born in Jerusalem.  His language was Aramaic.  Wikipedia: Language of Jesus “Josephus differentiated Hebrew from his language and that of 1^st century Israel. Josephus refers to Hebrew words as belonging to ‘the Hebrew tongue’ but refers to Aramaic words as belonging to ‘our tongue’ or ‘our language’ or ‘the language of our country.”

John recorded places at Jerusalem with Aramaic/Syriac names.  Jn.5:2 Bethesdáh.  Ellicott Commentary “Bethesda means ‘house of mercy’. The ‘Hebrew tongue’ is…what we ordinarily call Aramaic, or Syro-Chaldaic.”  Jn.19:13 ESV “A place called the Stone Pavement, which in Aramaic [Hebraistí g1447 adverb] is Gabbatháh.”  Gill Exposition “The Jews, who at this time spoke Syriac.”  Jn.19:17 CSB “The Place of the Skull, which in Aramaic is called Golgotháh.”  The NASB center margin notes the (bold) above terms as “Jewish Aramaic”…not Hebrew.  Strong’s Dictionary of terms, and the commentaries quoted above, say these NT words are Aramaic/Syriac/Chaldaic…not Hebrew.

Wikipedia: Aramaic “The Christian New Testament uses the Koine Greek phrase Ἑβραϊστί Hebraïstí to denote ‘Aramaic’, as Aramaic was at that time the language commonly spoken by the Jews.”

Jesus said to Peter, “Blessed are you Simon BarJonáh” (Mt.16:17).  Bar-Jonah means ‘son of Jonah’.  Cambridge Bible “Bar is Aramaic for ‘son.”  bar h1247.  But the Hebrew term for “son” is ben h1121.  So here Matthew records Jesus speaking Aramaic, not Hebrew.  The Aramaic BarAbbás = son of Abbáh (Mt.27:16).  Wikipedia op. cit. “Barabbas is a Hellenization of the Aramaic Bar Abba, literally ‘son of the father.”  Also: BarTholomew = son of Tolmai/Ptolemy (Lk.6:14); BarTimaeus = son of Timaeus (Mk.10:46); BarSabas = son of Sabas (Ac.1:23 & 15:22 – two men); Barnabas = son of encouragement (Ac.4:36); Barjesus = son of Yeshua (Ac.13:6).  Wikipedia ibid “The most prominent feature in Aramaic names is bar, meaning ‘son of’. Its Hebrew equivalent, ben, is conspicuous by its absence.”  Those NT personal names are strong internal evidence that Aramaic language use was predominant!

Aramaic too is a language used by God!  Stephen Missick The Language of Jesus, p.60 “Jesus is God incarnate and He spoke Aramaic.”  The hand from God wrote in Aramaic the “handwriting on the wall” in 539 BC…‘MÉNE, MÉNE, TÉKEL, UPHÁRSIN’ (Da.5:24-28)!

{Sidelight: We don’t know what language Jesus wrote at the scene of the woman taken in adultery, writing on the ground with His finger (Jn.8:6).  Jesus could’ve written in the common Aramaic, or perhaps He quoted the OT Hebrew or old Greek version.  Jn.8:6 “Jesus with His finger wrote on the ground.”  Maybe Jesus quoted or referred to Je.17:13 as He wrote the names of her accusers?  Je.17:13 “Those who depart from Me shall be written in the dirt.”}

Jesus and 11 of His 12 disciples were from Galilee (Judas Iscariót likely was from Keriot in Judea).  Galileans had a noticeable accent in their Aramaic dialect.  ccaugusta.org “Jesus principally spoke a Galilean dialect of Aramaic.”  A dialect of regional Western Aramaic.  aramaicnt.com “Early Galilean Aramaic, the mother tongue of Jesus.”  Ac.2:7 “Are not all these which speak Galileans?”  Pulpit Commentary Ac.2:7 “The Galilean accent was peculiar and well known.”  It is thought that their accent was more guttural or the gutterals (throat articulations) were blurred.  One of the bystanders said to Peter in Mt.26:73 NET, “You really are one of them; even your accent gives you away”.  Meyer NT Commentary Mt.26:73 “The natives were unable to distinguish especially the gutterals properly.”

Jn.11:1 the NT name Lázarus was Eleázar in Hebrew and Alázar in Aramaic.  The ‘A’ was dropped and the Latin declension ‘us’ was added, resulting in Lazarus in our NT.  Comparably, Englishmen today pronounce ‘Henry’ as ‘Enry’ (dropping the ‘H’).  An older occasion of pronunciation difference in Israel is in Jg.12:6, where the Ephraimites said sibbóleth, but couldn’t say shibbóleth (with the ‘h’).

Aramaic is called a metallic-sounding language.  The Lord’s Prayer in Aramaic (Mt.6:9-13):

“Abwoon d’Bwashmaya, Neet Kah Schmaakh

Teh Teh Malkutah, Neyweh Tzevyanah Aikhanah,

d’Bwashmayah Aph Buh Arh Ah Howlahn Lakhmah d’Soonkhanan Yaow Manah,

Wash Boh Klahn Kaow Behn, Wahktahehn,

Aikhanah Daph Knanahn Soobwoh-Khan Lahkhai Ah-Ben                                   

Welah Tahlah Le Nesyunah, Elah Patzan Min Bishah                                                 

Metohl Delakhih Malkutah, Whyallah Wateshbuktah, Lah-Allam, Allmin.”

It is said that Jesus’ red-letter words in the gospel accounts are powerful when they’re retroverted from Greek manuscripts into Aramaic!  But that they don’t back-translate as well into Hebrew.  John’s gospel is thought to have the strongest Aramaic flavor or substratum (underlying layer) of any gospel account, especially Jesus’ sayings.

In the gospel quotes above, Jesus spoke Aramaic words.  Also He likely spoke Greek in “Galilee of the gentiles” (Mt.4:15), and with Greek-speaking business clients there.  In the Nazareth synagogue (Lk.4:16-21), Jesus read from the scroll of Isaiah, either from the Hebrew OT or the old Greek version.  

Ac.21:40-ff Paul, in making his own defense, chose to address the crowd of Jews in Jerusalem in Aramaic (not Greek).  The NASB center margin notes the language Paul spoke here as “Jewish Aramaic” (Hebraís g1446 noun).  Robertson’s NT Word Pictures Ac.21:40 “The Araméan which the people in Jerusalem knew better than the Greek.”  

Interestingly, the OT never refers to the ancient language of the Israelites or Jews as the ‘Hebrew language’!  Rather, in the OT their tongue was called the “language of Canaan” (Is.19:18) or Judahite (Jehudíth: 2Ki.18:26-28, Is.36:11-13, 2Ch.32:18, Ne.13:24).  see Part 1.

Wikipedia op. cit. “A small minority believes that most of the New Testament was originally written in Aramaic.”  The Aramaic Primacy view.  At this point, that is speculation.

The Tálmud of rabbinic Judaism was written in Aramaic (200–500 AD).  Yehuda Shurpin Why is the Talmud in Aramaic? “The Western Aramaic languages were used largely in the area that was under Roman (and later Byzantine) rule. The Jerusalem Talmud, composed in Israel, is written in a Western Aramaic dialect. The Eastern Aramaic languages flourished in the Persian Empire, and as a result the Babylonian Talmud, written in Persian-dominated Babylon, is in Eastern Aramaic. The Talmud was written in Aramaic, the language of the masses, so that it would be accessible to all. ”

Aside from the sectarian Dead Sea Scrolls (DSS) religious community, to date most surviving inscriptions of Jesus’ period on artifacts, tombs (Caiáphas’ tomb too), ossuáries/bone boxes, etc. in the Holy Land…are in Aramaic or Greek.  Some are in Hebrew.  Pieter van der Horst Jewish Funerary Inscriptions “In Jerusalem itself about 40 percent of the Jewish inscriptions from the first-century period (before 70 CE) are in Greek.”  (cf. Ac.6:1-5 Stephen was a Greek-speaking Jew in Jerusalem.)

Breakdown of DSS text scripts: Old/Paleo Hebrew 1%, Hebrew/Áshuri square 78%, Aramaic square 17%, Greek 3%, other 1%.  Historians say that some Hebrew language usage was redeveloping in Christ’s day in pocket areas (e.g. the DSS at Qumrán).  Some was known by the educated and priests.  Shurpin op. cit. “Hebrew was used for ‘holy’ matters, such as prayer, and not for ordinary activities.”      

Wikipedia: Language of Jesus “According to DSS archaeologist Yigael Yadin, Aramaic was the language of Hebrews until Simon Bar-Kókhba’s revolt [132-135 AD in Judea]. Yadin noticed the shift from Aramaic to Hebrew in the documents which had been written during the time of the revolt. Yadin said, ‘It seems that this change came as a result of the order that was given by Bar Kokhba, who wanted to revive the Hebrew language and make it the official language of the state’. Yadin points out that Aramaic was the lingua franca [common language] at the time.” 

Both Aramaic and Hebrew are classed as NW Semític Áfro-Asiátic languages; Hebrew is sub-classed a Canaanite language.  Much later, c 800 AD, vowel points were added to the Hebrew language.

Prior to 1948, (Ashkenázi) Yíddish was the language of most Jews.  The national language in modern Israel today is called ‘Hebrew’.  It’d been near 2,500 years since Judahite/Hebrew was the language of common people (am-harétz) in the Land!  But Modern Hebrew (Ivrít) has been influenced by Yiddish.  Yiddish is classed a Germanic Indo-European language, not a Semitic.  The tongue spoken today in Israel isn’t the ancient Canaanite/Hebrew “language of Canaan” (Is.19:18).  Amir Zeldes wrote, “Modern Hebrew is a hybrid language. Modern Hebrew never was exactly Biblical Hebrew, and in many ways it has been a very different language for as long as it has existed.”  Jewish Agency Jewish Languages “Only a minority of the Jewish people today can speak Hebrew…It is more common to use English.”

Aramaic was gradually superceded by the Semitic sister language Arabic during the Moslem conquest (c 700–1300 AD).  Arabic is the liturgical language of Íslam. 

Very few Aramaic dialects are spoken today.  It is an endangered language.  Some Christian groups in areas of Iraq, Syria, Iran, SE Turkey, speak an Aramaic dialect called Syriac.  Churches in the East still use Aramaic as their liturgical language.  Some refer to themselves as Assyrians or Chaldeans.

The prophecy of Zep.3:9 NASB, “I will give to the peoples purified lips [h8193], that all of them may call on the name of the Lord. From beyond the rivers.”  Including heathens too, outside the Holy Land.  Ge.11:9 the penalty for the sin at Babel was the confusion of the language/lip/shore (h8193).  But eventually there’ll be no more ‘idol’ tongues speaking idolatry.  Zec.14:9 “The Lord will be King over all the earth in that day.”  

In the tongues miracle of Ac.2:1-11, pilgrim visitors at Jerusalem heard them speaking in their own languages.  In many dialects.  v.11 “We hear them speaking the mighty deeds of God.”  In a sense, this heals the breach which occurred back in Ge.11!  The penalty is removed.  Words may be spoken from a pure heart/lips in any language.  Ps.22:27 “All the ends of the earth will turn to the Lord. All the kindreds of the nations will worship before Thee.”  Praise the Lord!  

 

Aramaic in the Bible (1) – Old Testament

Our Bible books were written in (at least) three ancient languages; Hebrew, Aramáic, koine Greek.  This two-part topic is about Aramaic.  Part 1 discusses Aramaic in Old Testament (OT) times, BC. 

Noah and his family survived the Flood (Ge.7:13, 8:15-16).  Ge.9:18 “The sons of Noah who came out of the ark were Shem, Ham and Jápheth; and Ham was the father of Canáan.”  Ge.10:22, “The sons of Shem were Elám, Asshúr, Arphaxad, Lud and Arám.”  Aram and Canaan were grandsons of Noah.

Josephus Antiquities of the Jews 1:6:4 “Asshur lived at the city of Nineveh, and named his subjects Assyrians. Arphaxad named…the Chaldéans. Aram…called Syrians.” 

Semític languages are named from Shem.  The Aramaic language is named from Shem’s son Aram.  Cambridge Bible “The people denoted by Aram were destined to exercise great influence. The Araméan language gradually prevailed over the other Semitic dialects, even Hebrew.”

Ge.10:24 Septúagint/LXX “Arphaxad begot Kaínan [not Canaan], Kainan begot Shélah; Shelah begot Éber.”  The Hebrew people were named after Eber.  Josephus ibid “Eber, from whom they originally called the Jews, Hebrews.”  Eber was the great-grandson (or grandson) of Aram’s brother Arphaxad.

Much later, a language in the “Land of Canáan” Holy Land would be called Hebrew.  Tel Aviv’s Bar-Ilan Univ: Daf Parashat Hashavua (No.112) “It’s clear from extant epigraphic material that Hebrew is a Canaaníte language.”  Aramaic and Canaanite are classed as NW Semitic languages.  Hebrew and Phoenícian are sub-classed as NW Semitic Canaanite languages.  All four are primary-classed as Áfro-Asiátic languages.  Aramaic would become widely used geographically in the Near East.

Wikipedia: Aramaic “Ancient Aram, now called Syria, is considered the linguistic epicenter of Aramaic, the [later] language of the Arameans who settled the area during the Bronze Age. Aramaic is a Semitic language. By around 1000 BC, the Arameans had a string of kingdoms in what is now part of Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, and the fringes of southern Mesopotamia [Ac.2:9, 7:2] and Anatólia [Turkey]. Aramaic rose to prominence under the Neo-Assyrian Empire (911–605 BC), under whose influence Aramaic became a prestige language after being adopted as the língua fránca [common tongue] of the empire. Its use spread throughout Mesopotamia, the Levánt and parts of Asia Minor. At its height, Aramaic, having gradually replaced earlier Semitic languages, was spoken in several variants all over what is today Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Palestine, Israel, Jordan, Kuwait, E. Arabia, Bahrain, Sinai, parts of SE and south central Turkey, and parts of NW Iran.”  Aramaic became the language of Mesopotamia.

Wikipedia: History of Mesopotamia “Mesopotamia literally means ‘between the rivers’ in ancient Greek. The oldest known occurrence of the name Mesopotamia dates to the 4^th century BC, when it was used to designate the land east of the Euphrates in north Syria. Later it was more generally applied to all the lands between the Euphrates and the Tigris, thereby incorporating not only parts of Syria but also almost all of Iraq and SE Turkey. The neighboring steppes to the west of the Euphrates and the western part of the Zágros Mountains are also often included under the wider term Mesopotamia. A further distinction is usually made between Upper or N. Mesopotamia and Lower or S. Mesopotamia. Upper Mesopotamia, also known as the Jazíra, is the area between the Euphrates and the Tigris from their sources down to Baghdad. Lower Mesopotamia is the area from Baghdad to the Persian Gulf.”

Prior to Aramaic, the main language of the ancient Near East was Akkádian, an East Semitic Afro-Asiatic language, now extinct.  Holman Bible Dictionary: Akkadian “Akkadian was the international language of diplomacy & commerce in the Near East before 1000 BC.”  Wikipedia: Akkadian Language “Its gradual replacement by Akkadian-influenced Old Aramaic among Mesopotamians.”  The ancient Old Aramaic period was c 1000–700 BC.  (Historians differ some in their period designations/dates.)

The OT term for “Aramaic language”, Aramíth Strongs h762 Hebrew (rendered “Syrian language” in the LXX), occurs 4 times: 2Ki.18:26, Is.36:11, Da.2:4, Ezr.4:7.  The term for a Syrian/Aramean person is Arammíy h761, 11 occurrences.  Aram h758 is both a man’s name and the Syrian region, occurring over 100 times.  Mesopotamia/Arám Naharáyim h763 (Aram-of-the-two-rivers, rendered Mesopotamia in the LXX), occurs 6 times: Ge.24:10, De.23:4, Jdg.3:8, 10, 1Ch.19:6, Ps.60:1.

Ge.12:5 Abrám (born c 2100 BC) migrated to the land of Canaan from Harrán (Akkadian “Harránu”), which was in the region of Aram.  Harran is in far south Turkey, 10 miles from the north Syrian border.

Abraham told his servant in Ge.24:2-4, “Don’t take a wife for my son from the Canaanites, among whom I live; but go to my country to my relatives and take a wife for Isaac”.  v.10 “He went to Aram-of-the-two-rivers, the city of Nahór.”  The city of Abraham’s brother Nahor was in N. Mesopotamian Syria, 400 miles distant.  The servant brought back Rebekah for Isaac.  Ge.25:20 “Isaac was 40 years old when he took Rebekah, the daughter of Bethuél the Aramean of Paddán-Arám, the sister of Labán the Aramean [Arammiy h761].”  Bethuel, the son of Nahor, was Abraham’s nephew (Ge.22:20-23).  Then Ge.28:5 “Isaac sent Jacob to Paddan-Aram,to Laban, son of Bethuel the Aramean.”  Jacob later brought back his wives, daughters of Laban on the Syrian “plain of Aram”…to the land of Canaan.

Of the Israelites’ ancestor, De.26:5 “My father was a wandering Aramean”.  Referring to the semi-nomad Abraham, or Jacob.  Abraham and grandson Jacob (born c 1950 BC) had spent several years in Aram/Syria.  Ge.14:13 Abram the “Hebrew” (Ibríy h5680) descended from Eber.  The term “Hebrew”, Ibriy h5680, occurs 34 times in the OT.  But that OT term always meant a people, not a language!

Circa 1865 BC, Laban and Jacob made a “heap of witness” at Mizpáh of Gilead, E. of the Jordan River (Jephtháh later lived there, Jg.11:34).  Ge.31:44-47 “They took stones and made a heap, and ate there. Laban called it Jegár–sahaduthá, but Jacob called it Galéed.”  Laban the Aramean called the memorial by a pre-Aramaic word, but Jacob called it by a pre-Hebrew word.  Jacob had learned both developing dialects growing up in Canaan, pre-Hebrew and his mother Rebekah’s pre-Aramaic.

Later, God’s nation of ancient Israel knew the developing Old Hebrew dialect (and Phoenician) in the Land of Canaan.  In 1954 AD, Solomon Birnbaum coined the term “Paleo-Hebrew alphabet” for the Old Hebrew.  The Old Hebrew script would be used from c 1000–500 BC to record Biblical texts.

There’s no evidence that Old/Paleo Hebrew was spoken in Mesopotamia.  Cambridge Bible Ge.11:1 “That Hebrew was the primitive language….has been disproved by the scientific comparative study of languages, and of Hebrew and the Semitic languages in particular.”  The ‘Old Hebrew’ alphabet script became a Canaanite language of (south) Canaan.  Is.19:18 “language of Canaan”, Israel’s language. 

Historians say the Phoenician language was spoken in north Canaan.  Phoenícia was a 150-mile coastal region.  (cf. Mk.7:26 “the woman was a Syrian-Phoenician”.)  Phoenicia included the cities of Tyre, Byblos, Sidón .  Ge.10:15 Sidon was the firstborn son of Canaan.  Old Hebrew and Phoenician were very similar; both contained the same 22 (consonantal) letters.  Aramaic too has 22.  Wikipedia: Paleo-Hebrew Alphabet “There is no difference between Paleo-Hebrew vs Phoenician letter shapes.”

Wikipedia: Old Aramaic “Emerging as the language of the city-states of the Arameans in the Levant in the early Iron Age [c 1000 BC]. From the 10^th century BC, the alphabet seems to be based on the Phoenician alphabet. From 700 BC, different dialects emerged in Assyria, Babylonia, the Levant and Egypt. The Akkadian-influenced Aramaic of Assyria, and then Babylon, started to come to the fore.”  Circa 800 BC, Aramaic was becoming the trade language of the Near East.  It generally was spoken by Syrians, Assyrians, Chaldeans, etc., E. of the Euphrates.  (cf. “Patriarchs’ Bronze Age Languages”.)

encyclopedia.com aramaic-language “Aramaic is the general name for various dialects often difficult to classify.” 

Canaanite is the general name/class for the Hebrew, Phoenician, Moabite, Edomite, Ammonite dialects; these developed gradually and were ‘mutually intelligible’. 

Presently, no Old Aramaic or Old Hebrew inscriptions have been discovered that predate 1000 BC; all are more recent!  No evidence has been found yet as proof either script existed prior to 1000 BC.

Ancient Jews called their language Judahite (Jehudíth h3066), not “Hebrew” (Ibriy h5680).  Jehudith occurs 6 times in the OT: 2Ki.18:26-28, Is.36:11-13, 2Ch.32:18, Ne.13:24.  2Ki.18:26-28 Jewish officials in Jerusalem wanted the threatening Assyrian commander Rabshakéh to speak to them in Aramaic (Aramith h762), not Judahite/Judean, so as not to frighten people on the wall.  In King Hezekiah’s day, 700 BC, common Jews in Judah didn’t speak Aramaic.  However, the Jewish officials understood Aramaic, the language of diplomacy in the Near East from c 800 BC (after Akkadian).

Nowhere in the OT is the language of Israelites/Jews called the ‘Hebrew language’!  James F. Driscoll Hebrew Language and Literature “The name Hebrew [Hebraistí g1447, Greek] as applied to the language is quite recent in Biblical usage, occurring for the first time in the Greek Prologue of Ecclesiásticus [Wisdom of Sirách], about 130 BC.”  Not occurring until that book in the Apócrypha.

In 721 BC, the northern kingdom of Israel was deported to Assyria.  2Ki.17:23-24 “Israel was exiled from their land to Assyria.”  Aramaic-speaking foreigners from Babylon etc. were brought into north Israel.  They’d assimilate as the “Samaritans”.  (see the topic “Israelite Deportations By Assyria”.)

In 597 BC, the southern kingdom of Judah was taken captive to Babylon, the next empire.  Je.10:11 is in Aramaic…Jeremiah was telling his Jewish people what to say to their Aramaic-speaking captors. 

Aramaic was the lingua franca of both the Neo-Assyrian and Neo-Babylonian (Chaldean) empires.  Israelites and Jews learned to speak Aramaic in their places of captivity beyond the Euphrates.  The Aramaic language was also called Cháldee (a misnomer?).  Easton’s Bible Dictionary “Chaldee is the Aramaic dialect, as it is sometimes called, as distinguished from the Hebrew dialect.”  Aramaic was also the official language of the Persian/Achaeménid Empire (559–333 BC), which followed.  The period of Old Aramaic (c 1000–700 BC) evolved into the period of Imperial/Official Aramaic (c 700–300 BC).

Wikipedia: Biblical Aramaic “King Darius the Great declared Imperial Aramaic to be the official language of the western half of his empire in 500 BC, and it forms the basis of Biblical Aramaic.”   

God inspired some scriptures of the OT from this time to be written in Aramaic.  The following chapters were written in Aramaic: Da.2:4b-7:28, Ezr.4:8-6:18, 7:12-26.

Of the total verses comprising Daniel & Ezra, 56% are written in Hebrew, 44% in Aramaic.  Jews then knew Aramaic.  Da.2:4 “The Chaldeans spoke to King Nebuchadnézzar in Aramaic [Aramith h762].”  Ezr.4:7 “The text of the letter was written in Aramaic [Aramith].”  To Artaxérxes, king of Persia.

{Sidelight: The Divine Name or Tetragrámmaton YHVH (h3068) occurs 6,500 times in the OT.  But the Name never occurs in any of the OT Aramaic chapters.  It seems that Daniel and Ezra weren’t ‘sacred name’ advocates who thought that God’s (Old Hebrew) Name must be commonly used!}

The hand from God even wrote in Aramaic the “handwriting on the wall” (539 BC)!  Da.5:24-28 “This is the written inscription: ‘MÉNE, MÉNE, TÉKEL, UPHÁRSIN.”  The words are monetary weights.  The wise men of Babylon spoke Aramaic, but Daniel could decipher the writing.  Wikipedia: Belshazzar’s Feast “The Chaldean wise men are unable to…interpret it. As Aramaic was written with consonants alone, they may have lacked any context in which to make sense of them.” 

Jews began returning to the Land of Canaan from captivity in 538 BC.  They returned with Zerubabbél, Ezra, Nehemiah.  These returnees brought the Aramaic language with them to the Land of Canaan. 

By the time of Nehemiah (450 BC), many Israelites and Jews no longer knew Judahite.  Ne.13:24  “As for their children…none of them was able to speak in the language of Judah [Jehudith h3066].”

The Holman Christian Standard Bible indicates they “could not speak Hebrew”.  Benson Commentary Ne.13:24 “The language which the Jews then spoke was Chaldee; this language they learned in their captivity, and after their return never assumed their ancient Hebrew tongue.”  Commoners didn’t resume the lip of Canaan or Judahite in Judea.  Pulpit Commentary Ne.13:24 “All the children [450 BC] spoke a jargon half Ashdódite and half Aramaic.”  (Áshdod was on the old Philistine coast.)

Ne.8:1-8 Ezra the priest-scribe read publically the Hebrew scriptures in Jerusalem on Rosh Hashánah.  v.8 “They read from the book of the law of God, translating so the people could understand.”  The returnees no longer could read the Judahite scriptures.  Pulpit Commentary Ne.8:8 “They translated the Hebrew words into the popular Aramaic or Chaldee.”  Ellicott Commentary “They naturally translated into the vernacular Aramaic dialect.”  Aramaic was the trade language of the then Persian Empire.

Some Bible scholars think that Ezra translated (or redacted) OT books into Aramaic/Chaldee.  Talmud: Sanhedrin 21b “In the times of Ezra, the Torah was given in Áshuri [Neo-Assyrian] script and Aramaic language.”  Juanjo Gabina How Similar Was the Phoenician Language to the Hebrew Language? “The ‘Paleo-Hebrew’ language is a Canaanite Phoenician language with writing. As evidenced by the Samaritan Torah that preserves these ancient [Old Hebrew] texts. According to tradition, Ezra adopted the square script of the Aramaic alphabet instead of the Canaanite Phoenician, nicknamed the Paleo-Hebrew [1954 AD], during the post-exile restoration of Israel in the 5^th century BC. When the Aramaic alphabet became the Hebrew alphabet, Hebrew parchments were written mainly in Aramaic characters.”

{{Sidelight: The Jewish philosopher Philo (c 20 BC – 50 AD) lived in Alexandria, Egypt.  Philo On the Life of Moses 2:5:26 “In olden time [450 BC?] the laws were written in the Chaldean language, and for a long time they remained in the same condition as at first, not changing their language.”  Then prior to 132 BC, Jewish scholars translated the OT into the old Greek version.  ibid 2:7:38-40 “In the case of this translation of the law, exactly corresponding Greek words were employed to translate literally the appropriate Chaldáic words, being adapted with exceeding propriety to the matters which were to be explained. If Chaldeans were to learn the Greek language, and if Greeks were to learn Chaldean, and if each were to meet with those scriptures in both languages, namely, the Chaldaic and the translated version, they would admire and reverence them both as sisters, or rather as one and the same….to go along with the most pure spirit of Moses.”  ibid 2:41:224 “The Passover is celebrated, which in the Chaldaic language is called páscha.”  Philo On the Embassy to Gaius 1:4 “This nation of the suppliants is in the Chaldaic language called Israel.”  Marg Mowczko The Septuagint “Philo refers to the original language of the Old Testament as Chaldean rather than Hebrew.”  Ezra had translated the OT into Chaldee?  (And Philo didn’t use the Greek term Hebraís, “Hebrew” g1446 noun, to refer to Aramaic.)}}

Omniglot: Paleo-Hebrew “By the 6^th century BC the Paleo-Hebrew alphabet was gradually replaced by the Imperial Aramaic alphabet, which developed into the Hebrew square script.”  The Ashuri script.

In 330 BC, Greece conquered the Persian Empire.  Greek became the trade language for the Grecian Empire.  No longer was it the Aramaic of the Persian Empire.  Koine/common Greek, a (Hellénic) Indo-European language, was now spoken.  Many Jews in the diáspora (dispersion) accepted Greek culture, becoming Héllenized and speaking Greek.  Some continued to speak Aramaic.  Most Jews in Judea kept speaking Aramaic.  During this period, regional dialects of Imperial Aramaic began to emerge.

Most Jews everywhere no longer knew the lip of Canaan, Old Hebrew Judahite.  So Jews translated all the OT scriptures into koine Greek.  This old Greek version was completed before 132 BC.  Literate Greek-speaking Jews in the diaspora could then read the OT text!  The old Greek version later became our Septuagint/LXX.  The LXX wouldn’t have been so needed if most Jews still knew Judahite.

The Grecian Empire lasted until the 1^st century BC.  The Roman Empire followed. The Greek language continued as the commercial language of the Roman Empire too.  (Latin would become the language of the Roman army and higher administration.)  Many Jews, Hellenists, spoke Greek.

This topic is continued and concluded in “Aramaic in the Bible (2) – New Testament”.  It notes the Aramaic Tárgums, Aramaic words seen in the gospel accounts, and traces Aramaic to the present day.

Coveting – Wrong and Right Desire

The verb covet came into English in the 1200s AD from the Old French word covoitier.  “Covet” was used in the Wycliffe Bible (1395 AD), Coverdale Bible (1535), Tyndale Bible (1536), KJV (1611), and others.  In the middle English of that period, covet could refer to either a right/good desire or a wrong/bad desire.  “Covet” was like a synonym for the verb “desire”.

Use of the word covet is becoming less common in today’s society.  Merriam-Webster Dictionary defines covet: 1. “To wish for earnestly. [e.g.] covet an award.”  2. “To desire (what belongs to another) inordinately.”  Coveting is a desire for what a person doesn’t have, or doesn’t have enough of.  An earnest desire can be right or wrong, good or evil.  Coveting of itself is ‘morally neutral’.  The context of the Bible verse/passage shows whether that coveting was good or bad.

We may usually think of coveting as a wrong desire, for something a person cannot rightfully have some day.  The Lord’s Ten Commandments/Decalogue/Testimony doesn’t forbid all coveting; basically they forbid the coveting of what belongs to another, an inordinate desire.

Ex.20:17 “You shall not covet [chamád Strongs h2530, Hebrew] your neighbor’s house, you shall not covet [chamad] your neighbor’s wife, his servants, his work animals …anything that belongs to your neighbor.”  De.5:21 “Neither shall you desire [chamad] your neighbor’s wife, neither shall you covet [aváh h183] your neighbor’s house, his field, servants, work animals…or anything that is your neighbor’s.”  (Also idolaters desired/coveted other gods.)

Following are Old Testament (OT) verses which contain Hebrew and Greek Septúagint/LXX verbs translated “desire”, “covet”, “delight”, etc. in English.  Verses which reflect a right/good desire are in bold text; verses which reflect a wrong/bad desire are in normal text.

One such Hebrew verb is chamad h2530.  It occurs 20 times in the OT: Ge.2:9, 3:6; Ex.20:17, 34:24; De.5:21, 7:25; Jsh.7:21; Jb.20:20; Ps.19:10, Ps.68:16; Pr.1:22, 6:25, 12:12, Pr. 21:20; SSol.2:3; Is.1:29, 44:9, 53:2; Mi.2:2.  Chamad usually referred to wrong/bad desires.

Another Hebrew verb translated “desire”, “covet”, “lust for”, “long for” “crave”, etc. is avah h183.  It occurs 26 times in the OT: Nu.11:4; De.5:21, De.12:20, De.14:26; 1Sm.2:16; 2Sm.3:21, 2Sm.23:15; 1Ki.11:37; 1Ch.11:17; Jb.23:13; Ps.45:11, 106:14, Ps.132:13-14; Pr.13:4, 21:10, 21:26, 21:10, 23:3, 6, 24:1; Ec.6:2; Is.26:9; Je.17:16; Am.5:18, Mi.7:1.  Avah reflects both wrong/bad and right/good desires.

The Greek verb translated “desire”, “covet”, “lust for”, etc. in the OT Septuagint/LXX is epithuméo g1937.  It occurs 42 times.  This Greek word corresponds to both the Hebrew OT chamad h2530 and avah h183.  Epithumeo in the LXX also shows covet/desire as being either bad or good.  As good, ref LXX: De.12:20; De.14:26; 2Sm.3:21; 1Ki.11:37; Ps.45:11; SSol.2:3; Is.26:9.  Bible scholar Spiros Zódiates: Epithumeo “To desire in a good sense…[and] in a bad sense.”

This same Greek verb epithumeo g1937 occurs 16 times in the New Testament (NT): Mt.5:28, Mt.13:17; Lk.15:16, Lk.16:21, Lk.17:22, Lk.22:15; Ac.20:33; Ro.7:7, 13:9; 1Co.10:6; Ga.5:17; 1Ti.3:1; He.6:11; Ja.4:2; 1Pe.1:12; Re.9:6.  Epithumeo in the NT can be either a right/good or a wrong/bad desire.  Again, “covet” is a verb.

Some Greek nouns also relate to coveting.  Pleonexéa g4124 is rendered “covetousness” or greediness.  Dr. Spiros Zodiates: Pleonexea “Covetousness, the desire for having more or for what he has not.”  It occurs 10 times in the NT: Mk.7:22; Lk.12:15; Ro.1:29; 2Co.9:5; Ep.4:19, 5:3; Col.3:5; 1Th.2:5; 2Pe.2:3, 14.  The noun pleonexea, covetousness, indicated a wrong or inordinate desire in scripture.  Never a right desire!  This is unlike the (three) Hebrew & Greek verbs examined above, where “covet” or “desire” of itself was neutral; those verbs could reflect a desire either bad or good.

This Greek noun pleonexea g4124 in the OT LXX is rendered “covetousness” 4 times, “gain”/“spoils” 2 times: Ps.119:36; Is.28:8; Je.22:17; Hab.2:9; and Jg.5:19; Ezk.22:27.  In the LXX verses, covetousness or dishonest gain as a noun indicated a wrong desire…not a right or good desire.

(A corresponding OT Hebrew noun is béhtsah h1215; it occurs 23 times.  The KJV renders it “covetousness” in 10 of those 23 times; all reflect a bad desire: Ex.18:21; Ps.119:36; Pr.28:16; Is.57:17; Je.6:13, 8:10, 22:17, 51:13; Ezk.33:31; Hab.2:9.)

Another Greek noun is pleonéktes g4123, rendered “covetous”.  Although it doesn’t occur in the LXX, there are 4 NT occurrences: 1Co.5:10-11, 6:10; Ep.5:5. The apostle Paul took wrong coveting seriously!

Other Hebrew and Greek nouns relative to “lusts” (e.g. epithumía g1939) aren’t detailed in this topic.

The Greek verb zaylóo g2206 (corresponding to the OT Hebrew qanáh h7065) meant to “envy, be jealous, be zealous, desire strongly”.  It occurs 30 times in the OT LXX.  Also 12 times in the NT: Ac.7:9, 17:5; 1Co.13:4, 1Co.14:1; 2Co.11:2; Ga.4:17 (2), Ga.4:18; Ja.4:2; Re.3:19.  Paul exhorted in 1Co.12:31 KJV & 1Co.14:39 KJV, “Covet earnestly [zayloo] the best gifts”…. “Brethren, covet [zayloo] to prophesy.”  Zayloo g2206 reflects both right desire/coveting/zeal and wrong envy/zeal.

There are additional Hebrew and Greek verbs rendered in English as “take delight in”, “to desire”, “to please”, etc. in various Bible versions.  Those verbs aren’t addressed here.

The Wýcliffe Bible, completed by 1395 AD, was the first Bible in (middle) English.  It was handwritten and copied prior to the invention of the printing press.  Three sample verses from the Wycliffe Bible that reflect “covet” as good:  David and his son Solomon desired to build the house for God, the temple.  Solomon said in 2Chr.2:5 WYC, “The house which I covet to build is great, forsooth [indeed] the Lord our God is great over all gods”.  Paul wrote to the saints in Php.1:8 WYC, “I covet all (of) you in the bowels [inner self] of Jesus Christ”.  In the apocrypha, Sirach wrote of Wisdom in Sir.24:26 WYC (with modern spelling), “All ye that covet me, pass or come to me, and be ye filled….”  Coveting can be good.

The Tyndale Bible, translated from Hebrew and Greek texts, was completed by 1536 AD.  It preceded the 1611 KJV by 75 years.  The Coverdale Bible date is 1535 AD.  1Tim.3:1 TYN/COV “If ye man covets the office of a bishop, he desires a good worke.”  Again, coveting could be good; in middle English the word “covet” meant either good or evil desire.  However, coveting usually reflected evil desire (as in Ex.20:17 KJV & De.5:21 KJV).  In regards to the sluggard in Pr.21:26 KJV, “He covets greedily all day long, but the righteous gives and spareth not”.

bible.org: Everything You Ever Wanted To Know About Coveting “We must be very careful not to conclude that all coveting is evil.”  ecclesia.org: To Covet and Lust Can Be Good, Not Evil “Covet’ and ‘lust’ are neutral words.”  Woodlands Bible Church: Thou Shalt Not Covet “The word ‘covet’ can be used both of good things and bad things.”  av1611 KJV Dictionary Definition: Covet “To desire or wish for, in a good sense. To desire inordinately, in a bad sense.”

The middle English usage of “covet” better reflects the meanings of the old Hebrew verbs for “desire”, chamad h2530 and avah h183.  Again, both of those Hebrew terms could reflect an evil/wrong desire or a good/right desire.  The same goes for the Greek verb epithumeo g1937; it reflected either good or bad.

Although those ancient language terms usually indicated bad desire, the terms of themselves were neutral.  Again, the context determined whether they referred to bad or good, wrong or right.

The Aramaic Bible in Plain English Pr.21:20 “There is coveted treasure and oil in the dwelling of a wise man.”  This Aramaic translation too reflects that “covet” could be good (or bad).

When “covet” is used in modern English, it often denotes bad desire.  Yet saying ‘I covet your prayers’ indicates good desire.  Our word “covet” still reflects both.  As did “covet” in the KJV.  And the KJV continues to be the most popular Bible version in America.  That dual moral intent is still read today.

The task of Bible translation has been called an ‘inexact science’.  Languages change over the centuries, as etymology shows.  Yet more than 400 years ago, “covet” could indicate either right or wrong desire.

The Ten Commandments of Ex.20 and De.5 forbid theft…the act of stealing wives (adultery), property, possessions belonging to another.  Also, the Decalogue forbids idolatry, the act of desiring/worshiping pagan gods (cf. Col.3:5 coveting & idolatry).  But the 10^th Commandment regarding wrong coveting forbids the desiring (the craving, lusting), the thought of the heart, for that which belongs to another.

Jesus referred to the 7^th commandment in Mt.5:27, “You shall not commit adultery”.  v.28 “Whoever looks at a woman [wife, guné g1135] to lust [epithumeo g1937] for her, has committed adultery with her already in his heart.”  Such lusting/coveting broke the 10^th Commandment.  Again, in the Greek OT LXX Ex.20:17 & De.5:21, the verb rendered “covet” is epithumeo.  Coveting preceded taking/theft.

Inordinate coveting can lead to more sins, such as stealing, perjury, and even murder.

We read of incidents of wrong desire/coveting in scripture.  Jsh.7:21 Achán wrongly coveted a garment and silver & gold from among the spoils of Jericho.  1Ki.21:1-29 king Aháb of Israel desired the vineyard owned by a man named Nabóth.  When Naboth refused to sell it to him, Ahab & queen Jezébel conspired to have Naboth stoned to death.  Coveting led to murder.  2Ki.5:14-27 the prophet Elisha’s servant Gehazí coveted, wanting to get presents from the recently healed Syrian general Naamán.  But instead, Gehazi got Naaman’s leprosy!  Ac.5:1-11 Ananías & his wife Sapphíra coveted the proceeds from their land sale in Jerusalem.  They both died.  (see the topic “Lying – Ananias & Sapphira”.)

Ja.1:14-15 “Each person is tempted when he is enticed by his own evil desire [epithumia g1939, noun]. Then when the desire has conceived it gives birth to sin; and when sin is finished, it brings forth death.”  That’s a grave cause and effect, written by Jesus’ relative James!  1Jn.2:16 the desire (epithumia) for wrong selfish gratification, ever-increasing possessions, boastful pride…isn’t from Father God.

All men have desires (chamad & avah); we covet, for right or wrong.  But to desire anything that God disallows us is wrong desiring, wrong ‘coveting’ in a sense!  The desire to amass excessive wealth or possessions far beyond the needs of our family members can be covetousness or avarice.  Perhaps that was the mindset of the rich young ruler who questioned Jesus (Mk.10:17-23)?  Paul wrote in 1Ti.6:8-10, “Having food and clothing, with these let us be content. For the love of money is a root of evil.”  Money as a medium of exchange or even as a store of value/wealth isn’t bad of itself…it’s the love of money or greed that’s bad. (see the three-part series “Money”.)  Php.4:19 God will supply all our needs!

Pornography is a form of wrong desire.  It’s not wrong for a man to view beach pictures of his own wife or a single woman who may well become his someday.  But to lustfully view explicit pics of another man’s wife or a woman he could never in time come to rightfully have…is wrong coveting.

Wrong coveting can be insidious.  The sin of coveting may not show any outward manifestation at first.  It may not be apparent to other people.  They may not be aware that a wrong craving exists in the heart of another.  But God knows our hearts!  1Ki.8:39 “You alone know the hearts of all the sons of men.”

In Ro.7:7 KJV (and Ro.13:9) Paul referred to the Lord’s law about coveting, “Thou shalt not covet [epithumeo g1937]”.  Paul’s brief truncation here of the 10^th Commandment may give the impression that all coveting is bad.  But that’s not always the case in scripture, as we’ve seen!  Again, Ex.20:17 & De.5:21 only refer to wrong, inordinate coveting/desiring for that which belongs to another person.  Ro.7:8-ff Paul went on to confess his own struggles against coveting and sin.  He agonized in v.24, “O wretched man that I am”.  It’s part of our human nature to pursue self-indulgence, not always for good.

Merriam-Webster defines self-indulgence: “Excessive gratification of one’s own appetites or desires.”  Most all persons naturally love themselves and want to preserve their life.  Yet we may indulge in, crave or covet things, practices or habits which don’t truly reflect love of self (or love of others).

We all need leisure time & recreation.  But some fill their minds with violent video games or too much gaming and entertainment in general.  People may crave and become addicted to: drugs, smoking, alcoholic drink, gluttony, sugary desserts & soft drinks which make our bodies too acidic, excessive TV watching or time on the cell phone, sloth, gambling, sports, ‘keeping up with the Joneses’, etc.

Self-control/self-restraint is a fruit of the Spirit (Ga.5:23)!  Our lives should reflect a right balance of beneficial activities.  Pr.25:27 “It’s not good to eat much honey.”  We should practice moderation.  BibleReasons: Moderation “Don’t be obsessed with anything in your life, except for the Lord.”  We’re not to idolize or value any person or thing more than the true God!  We’re to be doing His will.

Ask ourselves…What would Jesus do regarding an inclination or a want we have, if He was in our shoes today?  Paul said, “take every thought captive to obey Christ” (2Co.10:5).  Pr.4:23 “Guard your heart with all diligence.”  How may we guard our heart against wrong desires?  Our hearts tend to wander.

Maintaining an attitude of thankfulness is a means by which we can protect our heart from improper thoughts taking root.  We’re to be thankful for the Lord’s provision and how He’s blessed us!  Paul exhorted in 1Th.5:18, “Give thanks in every circumstance. For this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus.”  And Ep.5:3-4, “Let sexual immorality, impurity, or covetousness [pleonexea g4124] not even be named among you. Not obscene or foolish talking or vulgar joking, but instead, giving thanks.”

Jon Bloom Fill Your Wandering Heart With Thankfulness “The more it [thankfulness] grows in you, the more spiritual health you will experience, and the less power sin will wield over you.”

We can cultivate the habit of thankfulness, of gratitude.  A grateful heart focuses more on the blessings God has given us, less on (wrong) wants we don’t have.

Yet that’s not to say we shouldn’t have right desires or plans for our future, according to God’s will for us.  Ps.37:4 “Delight yourself in the Lord; and He will give you the desires of your heart.”  The Lord will fulfill the right desires He puts in our heart!  Php.2:13 “It is God who is at work in you, both to will and to do His good pleasure.”  God works in our hearts through the Holy Spirit He has given, 1Co.6:19.

So let’s say ‘No’ to wrong desires (some of chamad & avah, Hebrew) if/when they come to mind.  Instead, let’s be mindful to follow the lead of the Holy Spirit in our daily walk.  And may the Lord graciously influence our hearts by His Spirit, to accomplish His desires & His purposes in our lives!

Holy Spirit’s Identity

The identity of the Holy Spirit remains somewhat of a mystery to many Bible readers.  This topic is a composite of material excerpted from my previous topics relating to the Godhead: “Tri-unity of God”, “Godhead in Prehistory”, “Holy Spirit Personification”, “Holy Spirit versus Mariolatry”, “Names/Titles of God in the Old Testament”.

In the English language, the word “God” is customarily used for Deity.  Only the true God is Divine.

The Bible indicates there are 3 “Persons” in the Godhead, the Godkind or God Family: Father, Holy Spirit, Jesus the Son/Word.  They are identical in essence, fully divine, a tri-unity of subsistences having self-awareness.  The God Family is uni-plural, as “one” (echad, Hebrew Strongs h259) in nature.

The tripartite Godhead is revealed to us by Jesus the Son’s coming in the flesh and His words in the New Testament (NT), by other scriptures, and by the Holy Spirit (HS) indwelling us as Christians.  It’s been said in analogy that the Father is the wall outlet, the HS is the cord, Jesus is the lamp (Re.21:23).

Father God is in heaven.  God has operated through the HS and Jesus.  Ac.2:34 Jesus ascended into heaven and now sits there at Father’s right hand (and Jesus lives mystically in Christians, Jn.17:21-23 & Col.1:27).  The human Jesus wasn’t omnipresent.  The HS is on earth…omnipresent.  David wrote in Ps.139:7-10, “Where can I go from Your Spirit, where can I flee from Your Presence?”  Not anywhere.

The Father sent Jesus.  Jn.12:49 Jesus said, “The Father who sent Me has given Me commandment.”  The two are distinct.  The Father also sends the HS. Jn.14:26 “The Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send.”  Jesus too sends the HS (Jn.16:7).  So all three are distinct!  But neither Jesus nor the HS sends the Father!  They differ in order and subordination.  The human Jesus wasn’t omniscient.  Mt.24:36 “Of that day and hour no one knows, not the Son, the Father only.” (see “Jesus Is God…Jesus Has A God”.)

The HS belongs to and was part of Father God, has personality, but isn’t the totality of God.  God is a triad: 2Co.13:14 “The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the fellowship of the HS be with you all.”  2Co.1:21-22 “He who establishes us in Christ and anointed us is God, who also gave us the Spirit.”  Ep.4:4-6 “There is one Spirit, one Lord, one God and Father of all.”  (That’s three!)  Ac.7:55 “Being full of the HS, Stephen saw Jesus standing at the right hand of God.”  He.9:14 “Christ, who through the eternal Spirit, offered Himself without blemish to God.”  1Co.12:4-6 “The same Spirit…the same Lord…the same God.”  (Again, that’s three.)  1Pe.1:2 “Elect according to a foreknowledge of God the Father, sanctified by the Spirit, sprinkled with the blood of Jesus Christ.”

The triune God is thrice holy: One Spirit…one Lord…one Father (Ep.4:4-6).  Is.6:3 “Holy, Holy, Holy is YHVH of hosts.”  A three-in-one Godhead.  The heavenly worshipers in Re.4:8 “Do not cease to say, Holy, Holy, Holy is the Lord God, the Almighty”.

The terms for God as “Father” and “Holy Spirit” rarely occur as such in the Old Testament (OT).

The Holy Spirit in the OT: Is.48:16 “The Lord God and His Spirit have sent Me.”  Job.33:4 “The Spirit of God has made me.”  Pr.1:20-23 “Wisdom lifts her voice, ‘I will pour out My Spirit on you.”

Every human has a spirit within.  Jb.32:8 “There is a spirit in man.”  Our human spirit gives biological life to our body of flesh (Ge.2:7).  Ja.2:26 “The body without the spirit is dead.”  Without our human spirit, we’re just a clod.  Our spirit in God’s image imparts self-awareness and intellect to our brain.  It’s a non-physical component which differentiates human mind from animal brain instinct.  Our spirit gives us a moral sense of conscience, based mostly upon the self and cultural customs & laws.  The HS will join with our human spirit (1Co.6:17); we become linked to God, able to obey God’s morality.

The Holy Spirit, ministering spirits (angels), our human spirits…aren’t an impersonal Star Wars type force!  Our human spirit is me, is you, within our flesh ‘suit’.  (see “Spirits – Made by God in Light”.)

Ontology is the study of being.  God, angels, humans are called personal beings.  But God’s Being isn’t finite or limited, as we are limited.  Scripture doesn’t define ‘person’ (the term we use in modern English), and doesn’t apply that term to the triune God.  The Latin persona was a ‘face’ worn by Greek/Roman dramatic actors.  Church fathers applied the Greek term hypostases (entities) to God.

The HS speaks in 1^st Person as “Me” and “I” in Ac.13:2. “The Holy Spirit said, ‘Set apart for Me Barnabas and Saul for the work which I have called them to.”  Also ref Ac.11:12, Jn.16:13, Mk.13:11, which indicate the HS is personal and speaks.  2Sm.23:2-3 “The Spirit of YHVH spoke by me. The God of Israel.”  The HS is God/YHVH.  But who was/is this Holy Spirit of God?

Theóphilus, the 6^th bishop of Antioch (born approximately 20 years after the apostle John died), was the first to use the term trinity/triad.  In 175 AD he wrote To Autolýcus, 2:10. “God, having His own Word internal within His own bowels, begat Him, emitting Him along with His own Wisdom before all things.”  Theophilus’ triad was “The Trinity of [Father] God, His Word, and His Wisdom.” (Autolycus 2:15)

Wikipedia: Theophilus of Antioch “Theophilus’s apology is most notable for being the earliest extant Christian work to use the word ‘Trinity’ (Greek: τριάς trias), although it does not use the common formula of ‘the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit’ to describe the Trinity. Rather, Theophilus himself puts it as ‘God, his Word (Logos) and his Wisdom (Sophía)’ [To Autolycus 2:15], perhaps following the early Christian practice of identifying the Holy Spirit as the Wisdom of God [Autolycus 1:7].”

“This is also expressed in the works of his contemporary, Irenáeus of Lyons, who writes [Ps.33:6], ‘By the word of the Lord were the heavens established, and by his spirit all their power. Since then the Word establishes, gives body and grants the reality of being, and the Spirit gives order and form to the diversity of the powers; rightly and fittingly is the Word called the Son, and the Spirit the Wisdom of God’. [Demonstration of the Apostolic Preaching] ‘In like manner also the 3 days which were before the luminaries, are types of the Trinity, of God, and His Word, and His wisdom. And the 4^th is the type of man, who needs light, that so there may be God, the Word, wisdom, man.’ [To Autolycus 2:15]”

Irenaeus is called the most important theologian of his time.  He lived from 130–200 AD, having been taught by Polycarp (in Smyrna), who was a disciple of the apostle John.  

Residing in Lyons, France, Irenaeus wrote in Against Heresies. “The Son is rightly and properly called Word, while the Spirit is called the Wisdom [Sophia] of God”.  Ibid 4.7.4 “The Son and the Holy Spirit, the Word and Wisdom [Sophia], whom all the angels serve.”  4:20:3 “God tells us through the mouth of Solomon that Sophia is the Spirit.”  Sophia (Strongs g4678) is the Greek term for Wisdom.

Christian historian Robert Grant Greek Apologists of the 2^nd Century, p.169 “Theophilus and almost every early Christian theologian agreed the Logos (like Sophia/Wisdom) was originally in God”.

Jesus referred to the apocryphal Wisdom of Solomon (WSol).  cf. Mt.27:43 & WSol.2:13, 18; Lk.11:31 & WSol.8:1.  (The apostle Paul referred to WSol too.  cf. WSol.13:5, 8 & Ro.1:19-20 KJV “Godhead”.)

Jesus said the Queen of Sheba “Came from the ends of the earth to hear the wisdom of Solomon” (Mt.12:42, 1Ki.10:1-4).  Jesus also referred to the apocryphal Wisdom of Sirach (WSir)/Ecclesiasticus.  cf. Mt.6:14 & WSir 28:2.  WSol was written ca 20 BC; WSir was written ca 180 BC in Hebrew.

WSol.7:22, 25 “In herself, wisdom is a spirit that is understanding, Holy. She is the breath of the power of God, and the emanation of the pure glory of the Almighty.”  Wisdom is the Holy Spirit, split-off or spirated or emanated through God’s breath/mouth.  WSol.8:3-4 “She glorifies her noble birth by living with God, and the Master of all loves her.”  Pr.8:30 “I [wisdom] was daily His delight.”

WSol and WSir reflect how Jews believed and interpreted Proverbs & Wisdom in latter BC times.  Wisdom is sophia (g4678) in Greek, and chokmáh (h2451) in Hebrew.  Orthodox Bible “The Holy Spirit receives eternal existence only from the Father.”  Wisdom says in Pr.8:25 LXX, “He begets [gennáo g1080] Me”.  Philo On Flight and Finding (p.325) “Wisdom, even if it be most ancient of all other things, still has only second place to that Omnipotent Being.”  Father God is the Most High God.

Solomon’s prayer of WSol.9:4, 10, 17, “Give me the wisdom that sits by Your throne…Send her forth from Your holy heavens…Send Your Holy Spirit from on high.”  Wisdom the HS sat beside God’s throne in the heavens, as a Queen beside the King’s throne.  The real ‘Queen of Heaven’ isn’t Ishtar, or other pagan goddesses (cf. Je.44:17)…rather, She’s the feminine HS.

In Lk.7:35, Jesus indicated His Mother is Wisdom, the HS.  Connecting in order the following seven verses will identify the (feminine) HS: Jl.2:28a, Pr.1:20, 23, De.34:9a, Nu.27:18, Mt.1:18b, Lk.7:35.

The Works of Philo, p.85, 331, 405 “The Word [Logos, Greek] has received wholly pure parents…God being the Father and husband of wisdom, the mother of the Word….the Divine Logos flows forth from Wisdom.”  Creation reflects/teaches that it’s impossible to have a father without having a mother!

In our various languages, we use terms which correspond to the ancient Hebrew & Greek terms chosen by the Bible writers to identify and describe the ‘Persons’ of the God Family.  Jewish and Christian theology usually refers to God in male language and images, yet agrees it doesn’t adequately express all that the Divine is.  The Godhead possesses all the masculine and feminine attributes.  God is so great!

Wisdom is a personified hypostasis (a Greek term used in early Christian writings) or entity of God’s divine essence.

God reflects masculine roles: Ps.103:13 Father.  Ho.2:16 husband.  Ps.98:6 king.  Ex.15:3 warrior.

God reflects feminine roles: Is.66:13 Mother.  Is.42:14 pregnant.  Ps.22:9 midwife.  Ps.123:2 mistress.

Again, Wisdom is the Holy Spirit.  WSol.1:4-5 “Wisdom won’t enter the soul that plots evil. For a holy spirit of discipline flees from deceit.”  Again, WSol.9:17 “Unless You have given him wisdom and sent Your Holy Spirit from on high.”  Nu.27:18 “Joshua the son of Nun, a man in whom is the Spirit.”  De.34:9 “Joshua the son of Nun was filled with the Spirit of wisdom.”  Omnipresent, at God’s throne in heaven, and within Joshua, was the HS Wisdom.  And Wisdom is “Her”.

Jesus was conceived in the virgin Mary by the HS (Lk.1:35 the HS came upon Mary); and John the Baptizer was filled with the HS in his mother’s womb (Lk.1:15).  Speaking of Himself and John, Jesus said in Lk.7:33-35, “Wisdom is justified by her children”.  Jesus, the Child conceived by Wisdom the HS, speaks of Wisdom as “her”!  (As did Proverbs, etc.)  Jesus’ words are authoritative and truth!

The Hebrew grammatical gender of Bible nouns has significance.  But this doesn’t mean God the HS is literally a woman!  Yet the HS is grammatically and figuratively “she/her”.

In OT scripture, the ancient Hebrew (Heb) language attached gender to Spirit essence.  The Heb term for spirit (rúach h7307, and Aramaic rúach h7308) is feminine (fem).  The Heb term for wisdom (chokmah h2451) is fem.  In the OT Septúagint/LXX and NT both, the Greek (Gr) term for wisdom is sophia g4678.  Solomon wrote in Pr.7:4, “Call wisdom your sister”.  Sisters are of course feminine, not masculine (masc).  In Pr.9:1-3, wisdom is “she/her”.  WSir.4:11 “Wisdom exalts her children.”  WSir.24:18 of Wisdom, “I AM the mother of love that is beautiful. I therefore, being eternal, am given to all My children who are picked by Him.”  (Father God picks His elect: Ep.1:3-5, 17, Jn.6:44.)  And Jesus knew Himself to be a Child of Wisdom/Sophia/“her” in Lk.7:35.

Elóah h433 is a Heb term for God, occurring 55 times in the OT (mostly in Job and poetic passages).  Jb.27:3 “The spirit of God [Eloah h433] is in my nostrils.”  The –ah ending is indicative of fem singular.  The most common OT Heb term for God is Elohím h430.  Elohim is a masc plural ending –im (Father and Son), combined with the fem singular root Eloah (HS/Wisdom) or possibly El.  Three.

Also the modern Heb fem term ‘shekínah’ represents the Divine Presence, the OT fire-cloud of glory.

Heb grammar too uses masc pronouns for God.  Heb & Aramaic has no neuter (no “it”); all nouns are masc or fem.  Again, the Heb term for spirit (ruach) is fem.  But unlike Heb, the Greek term for spirit (pneúma) is neuter.  The Latin term for spirit (spirítus) is masc.  Noun gender varies in languages.  In translated languages, gender doesn’t have the significance as in the original inspired Hebrew scripture.

In English, translators render pronouns with the Gr pneuma/spirit (neuter) as he masc, e.g. Jn.14:26. (or it neuter, Ro.8:26 KJV.)  Some of this is revisionism.  This practice subconsciously makes men seem more like God than do women.  Yet in 2Co.6:18, Paul wrote that God said, “You shall be sons and daughters to Me”.  In Jn.14:26, the Gr masc term paráclete is translated Comforter/Helper, and refers to the Gr neuter term Spirit.  Here translators chose to use the pronoun He.  But since God has both masc and fem characteristics (Is.42:13-14, Ps.123:2), Heb personal noun gender is more meaningful.  Later languages such as Greek, Latin, English don’t maintain the original Heb gender in translation.

The most ancient of the rare Old Syriac copies, the Siniatic Palimpsest (300s–400s AD), was found in 1892 in the Covenant of St. Catherine by Syriac Professor R.L. Bensly (Cambridge Univ).  Jesus’ words in Jn.14:26 read: “But She—the Spirit-the Paraclete whom He will send to you-my Father in my name —She will teach you everything; She will remind you of that which I told you.”  The Spirit is feminine to the Syriac church (as the ancient Aramaic ruach/spirit was fem), unlike Greek and Latin grammar.

J.J. Hurtak: “The Spirit is not called ‘it’ despite the fact that pneuma [spirit] in Greek is a neuter noun. Church doctrine regards the Holy Spirit as a person, not a force like magnetism. In the Eastern Church, Spirit was always considered to have a feminine nature. She was the life-bearer of the faith.”

The Westminster Leningrad Codex (1008 AD) is the oldest complete Heb manuscript.  In its ultra-literal interlinear English translation online: Is.11:2 “And she rests on him, spirit of YHVH.”  Ps.143:10 “Good spirit of you Elohim, she shall guide me.”  Nu.11:26 “The spirit, she is resting on them.”  Ezk.37:1 “She becomes hand of YHVH on me in spirit of YHVH.”  Jb.33:4 “Spirit of El, she made me; breath of Who-Suffices, she is keeping me alive.”  (Ec.12:1 “Remember Ones creating you.”…“Us” in Ge.1:26.)

From our Is.11:2. “The Spirit of the Lord shall rest on Him [Messiah], the spirit of wisdom and understanding, the spirit of counsel and strength, the spirit of knowledge and the fear of the Lord.”  The LXX adds “godliness”.  Seven attributes!  And they’re all fem nouns!  Wisdom is primary (Pr.4:7).

In Pr.8:12-14, Wisdom speaks in 1^st Person. “I, wisdom, dwell with prudence, I find knowledge and discretion. The fear of the Lord. Counsel is mine. I AM understanding, strength is mine.”  These attributes are all fem!  Philo AI1 p.29…On Flight and Finding, p.325 “He called that Divine & heavenly Wisdom by many names….Indeed all the virtues bear the names of women.”  It’s not just coincidence.

Oswald Chambers’ Christian devotional, My Utmost For His Highest, is one of the most popular religious books ever written.  In it he wrote, “I am the Almighty God’ – El-Shaddaí, the Father-Mother God. The one thing for which we are all being disciplined is to know that God is real.”  God is both Father and Mother.  El Shaddai (h7706) has been described or defined as the ‘mighty breasted One’.

We may say the Father is the Source, Possessor, Director, Planner.  The Son is the Spokesman, the Executor, Mediator, Ruler.  The HS is Wisdom, the Omnipresence, the Comforter…and the Glory!

Father God is Jesus’ Father, and Jesus referred to Himself as the Child of Wisdom (Lk.7:35), His Mother.  In the NT, Jesus never called Mary, “mother”!  He referred to the surrogate Mary as “woman”.  Jn.2:4 “Jesus said to her, ‘Woman, what have I to do with you?”  Jn.19:26 “When Jesus saw His mother and the disciple He loved nearby, He said to His mother, ‘Woman, behold your son!”

Jesus was fully God in the flesh…both His Father and Mother are God!  The womb of Mary, the “woman” as Jesus lovingly called her, served to form Him in the flesh to become the God-Man.  The 300s AD Apostles Creed reads, “I believe in Jesus Christ, who was conceived by the Holy Spirit, born of the virgin Mary”.  Mary birthed Jesus.  Ga.4:4 “God sent forth His Son, born of a woman.”  Lk.1:35 “The angel said, ‘The Holy Spirit will come, and the power of The Highest will overshadow you [Mary]; therefore the Holy One to be born shall be called Son of God.”  Orthodox Study Bible Lk.1:35 “Note the revelation of the Holy Trinity: The Father (The Highest), the Son, and the Holy Spirit.”  The Father overshadowed the HS upon Mary, and God’s Son Jesus was conceived.

Chinese preacher Witness Lee was part of the Christian work started by Watchman Nee.  Lee’s Living With and In the Divine Trinity”, p.39 “Lk.1:35 shows the Holy Spirit coming upon Mary…the Most High, God the Father, overshadowing Mary…and the birth of the holy thing, the Son of God. Thus the entire Divine Trinity was involved in the conception.”  The Son was conceived into Mary by His divine Parents, who are both God.

Father God didn’t somehow have sexual relations with Mary, who was engaged to the man Joseph (Mt.1:18).  It was adultery to have sex with a woman married or betrothed to another.  De.22:23-27 God’s penalty for such adultery was death.  Surely, Father God wasn’t an (figurative) adulterer!

Furthermore, Mary was of a different kind…she was the human kind, not the Godkind.  God’s principle of biogenesis reflects each creation reproducing only according to its kind (ref Ge.1:11-12, 21, 24-25, 6:19-20, Mt.7:16, 1Co.15:38-39).  Father God is Spirit, not flesh, Jn.4:23-24.  The term incubus pertains to a spirit having sex with a human woman.  Heathen gods, such as Zeus/Jupiter, supposedly had sex with mortal women and produced offspring.

Philo Judaeus (25 BC–50 AD), The Works of Philo, AI2:14:49 “The mother of all things…the wisdom of God.”  Again, Jesus indicated He was the Child of her, Wisdom/Sophia, Mt.11:19 KJV.  Pr.1:20-23 “Wisdom lifts her voice, ‘I will pour out My Spirit upon you.” (cf. Jl.2:28a)  She is the Holy Spirit.

Early church writings in various countries attest to the feminine HS.  The fragmentary Gospel to the Hebrews was written in Greek (probably at Alexandria) in the early 100s AD, for Jewish Christians.  The HS is Jesus’ Divine Mother in its Christology.  In one quotation Jesus declared, “My mother, the Holy Spirit took Me, and conveyed Me to the great mount Tabor”.  (cf. Lk.7:35 regarding Jesus’ mother.)

Áphrahat (280–345 AD) wrote in Syriac in Persia. Demonstrations VI “The Spirit, She opens the heavens and descends, and hovers over the waters; and those who are baptized put Her on.”  From Aphrahat’s Demonstration X, “As long as a man hasn’t taken a wife, he loves and reveres God his Father and the Holy Spirit his Mother.”  (Re.19:7-9 is Jesus’ metaphorical marriage to Christians.)

Éphrem the Syrian (306–373 AD) was perhaps the most significant of all the Syriac language fathers, called ‘the greatest poet of the patristic age’.  His Hymnen de Ecclesia identifies the Spirit as feminine.

Robert Murray Symbols of Church and Kingdom, p.25 “The Syriac Fathers, as is well known, attributed female gender to the Holy Spirit in the first centuries after Christ; seeing the Holy Spirit especially as ‘Mother.”  The early Eastern Church originally believed the HS was She/Her.

But after some time, the Syriac church lost or suppressed the original OT & apocryphal Jewish concept of the fem HS or shekinah.  By the 500s AD, a masc HS was becoming more the norm.  Possibly this was due to Western influence, and because some heretical groups misused the feminine imagery.

Over the centuries, the Roman Catholic Church (RCC) has made Mary a counterfeit or substitute for the scriptural person of Wisdom/Sophia/Mother.  Yet a counterfeit presumes a prior genuine!  It was Wisdom who sat beside God’s throne as Queen (WSol.9:4).  She was beside YHVH at the beginning (Pr.8:22, 30).  The original Queen of Heaven (cf. Je.7:18) wasn’t a counterfeit Astarte or Isis…or Mary!

The surrogate Mary carried and birthed Jesus the Son of God.  She’s a godly woman.  But not a co-redemptrix or mediatrix; not due near-goddess status!  The RCC believes Mary was always sinless.  However, Mary herself indicated that she too needs a Savior!  Lk.1:46-47 Mary exulted, “My spirit has rejoiced in God my Savior”.  Mary knew she was a sinner needing a Savior, as does all of humanity.

The early Syriac writers didn’t present the HS as a literal woman.  But by the 500s AD she’d become masculine.  It seems the concept of a fem HS became dangerous to the structure of the church.  Even by the time the HS had become a confirmed member of the trinity (Council of Constantinople in 381 AD), the HS was described as masc, despite having nurturing fem qualities!  But Ge.1:2, 26-27 females too embody God’s image!  Male and female both are created in the image (masc) and likeness (fem) of God.  Martin Luther reportedly was ‘not ashamed of speaking of the HS in feminine terms’.

Count Zinzendorf (1700–1760) was leader of the Moravian church in Czechoslovakia and America.  To Zinzendorf, the HS was feminine, the Creator (Ge.1:2, 26 “Us”) and Mother.  He wrote, “She has created the world with the Savior and now is remaking every child until it is a new creation, and becomes one in the spirit with him; She nurses and watches until it is grown.”

Again, in the NT Jesus never referred to Mary as His mother (or to Joseph as His father).  By the early 300s AD, the church was embroiled in the Arian controversies.  Many didn’t want Jesus begotten before time began.  But in the 300s AD, many did want women suppressed.  A quandary existed.  So they hushed scriptures which related to Wisdom/Sophía the HS too having been “brought forth” in past eternity…though Wisdom herself says in Pr.8:25b LXX, “He begets [gennao g1080] Me”.

Over the centuries AD, Mother Wisdom/Sophia became assimilated into the cult of the virgin Mary.  It elevated Mary, the counterfeit or replacement for Wisdom the HS.  Mariolatry ensued in the RCC.

For more details relating to the divine God Family, see my other topics: “Tri-unity of God”, “Godhead in Prehistory”, “Holy Spirit Personification”, “Holy Spirit versus Mariolatry”, “Names/Titles of God in the Old Testament”, “Jesus is God…Jesus Has a God”, “Jesus Was the Old Testament God”, “Jesus Is the Messiah”, “Jesus’ Virgin Birth”, “Savior’s Name in Bible Languages”.

Holy Spirit Personification

The Godhead tri-unity consists of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit (HS)…the Godkind.  Before reading this, you might read “Godhead in Prehistory” and “Tri-unity of God”.  Much of the background material and scriptures referenced in those topics about the Godhead won’t be repeated or re-quoted here.

The Holy Spirit is God!  There are several verses in the Bible which attest to this.  e.g. 1Co.3:16, 2:10-11, Ac.5:3-4, 2Sm.23:2-3. (ref “Tri-unity of God”.)  Lk.3:21-22 reflects three ‘Persons’ or entities!

Male and female characteristics of humans embody the image and likeness of God (Ge.1:26-27).  Male and female are both necessary to represent God.  Humans are given God’s attributes in miniature.  Jesus said in Jn.14:9, “He who has seen Me has seen the Father”.

Jesus was a man, an image of His heavenly Father.  Ezk.1:26-28 “Above the expanse was a figure with the likeness of a man. Such was the appearance of…YHVH.”  The Lord Christ appeared in the likeness of a human to Ezekiel and others.  (also see the topic, “Jesus Was The Old Testament God”.)

Personification is giving something human characteristics, or anthropomórphism.  In divinity, there may not be gender as we know it.  But the three ‘Persons’ do have characteristic functions.  Within the God Family of Father, HS, and Son…exists both masculine and feminine characteristics.

God reflects masculine roles: Ps.103:13 Father.  Ho.2:16 husband.  Ps.98:6 king.  Ex.15:3 warrior.

God reflects feminine roles: Is.66:13 Mother.  Is.42:14 pregnant.  Ps.123:2 mistress.  Ps.22:9 midwife.     

Jesus the Son of God came as a man, and revealed His Father.  Fathers and sons are masculine.  We refer to God/Deity customarily or conveniently as ‘He’, using masculine (masc) pronouns.

Yet the Godhead has feminine traits too!  Ro.8:20-23, 26 “The whole creation groans and suffers pains of childbirth. We having the Spirit groan, waiting for the redemption of our body.”  The Jewish apostle Paul portrayed the HS as a midwife, helping creation and humanity towards re-creation.

Pastor Mahesh Chavda wrote in The Hidden Power of a Woman, “In Judaism, unlike Christianity, God has never been viewed as exclusively male or masculine”.  Many Jewish scholars think Adam was created with dual gender. (see “Godhead in Prehistory”.)

Our use of non-personal imagery for God doesn’t carry the risk of falling into polytheism as much as Father-Mother language does.  Non-personal imagery for the HS: wind, cloud, fire, living water, dove.

Yet personal imagery for the HS/Wisdom is seen too…in Proverbs, Ecclesiásticus or Wisdom of Sirach (WSir), Wisdom of Solomon (WSol).  Pr.1:20 “Wisdom lifts her voice.”  “Her” is a feminine pronoun.

Wisdom’s quotes in 1^st Person, where Wisdom speaks, are found in: Pr.1:22-33 “I will pour out My Spirit on you [v.23].”  Pr.8:4-36 “When there was no depths I was brought forth [v.24].”  “I was at His [YHVH’s] side forming all things; daily His delight [v.30].”  Also ref Pr.9:4-6, 16-17.  WSir.24:3-22 “I [Wisdom] came forth from the mouth of the Most High and covered the earth like a mist. My throne was in the pillar of cloud [v.3-4].”  cf. the HS in Ge.1:2b, 2:6, and Ex.13:21 the shekínah glory cloud.

Wisdom is the Holy Spirit.  WSol.1:4-5 “Wisdom won’t enter the soul that plots evil. For a holy spirit of discipline flees from deceit.”  WSol.9:4 “Give me the wisdom that sits by Your throne.”  v.10 “Send Her forth from Your holy heavens, from Your glorious throne.”  v.17 “Unless You have given him wisdom and sent Your Holy Spirit from on high.”  Nu.27:18 “Joshua the son of Nun, a man in whom is the Spirit.”  De.34:9 “Joshua the son of Nun was filled with the Spirit of wisdom.”  Omnipresent at God’s throne in heaven, and within Joshua, is the HS Wisdom…“Her”.

Jesus was conceived in the virgin Mary by the HS (Lk.1:35 the HS came upon Mary).  And John the Baptizer was filled with the HS in his mother’s womb (Lk.1:15).  Speaking of Himself and John, Jesus said in Lk.7:33-35, “Wisdom is justified by her children”.  Jesus, the Child conceived by Wisdom the HS, speaks of Wisdom as “her”!  (As did Proverbs, etc.)  Jesus’ words are authoritative and truth!

Wisdom is a personified entity or hypostásis (a Greek term used in early Christian writings) of God’s divine essence.

The Hebrew grammatical gender of Bible nouns has significance.  But this doesn’t mean God the HS is literally a woman!  Yet the HS grammatically and figuratively is a ‘she/her’.

In Old Testament (OT) scripture, the ancient Hebrew (Heb) language attached gender to Spirit essence.  The Heb term for spirit (rúach Strongs h7307, and Aramaic rúach h7308) is feminine (fem).  The Heb term for wisdom (chokmáh h2451) is fem.  In the OT Septúagint/LXX and New Testament (NT), the Greek (Gr) term for wisdom is sophía g4678.  Pr.7:4 “Call wisdom your sister.”  Sisters are of course feminine, not masculine.  In Pr.9:1-3, wisdom is “she/her”.  WSir.4:11 “Wisdom exalts her children.”  WSir.24:18 of Wisdom, “I AM the mother of love that is beautiful. I therefore, being eternal, am given to all My children who are picked by Him”.  (Father God picks His elect; Ep.1:3-5, 17, Jn.6:44.)  And Jesus knew Himself to be a Child of Wisdom/Sophia/”her” in Lk.7:35.

The dove is the most frequent symbol for the HS in early Christian art.  The Heb term for dove (yonáw h3123) is fem (e.g. Ge.8:11, SS.6:9).  The Heb term for breath (neshamáh h5397) is fem.  (e.g. Ge.2:7; Jb.32:8 “The breath of the Almighty gives man understanding.”)  Ex.25:31-37 the seven–branched holy lampstand with its oil was a symbol of the HS and tree of life.  Wisdom is symbolically the central branch.  Pr.4:7 “Wisdom is supreme.”  The Heb term for lampstand (menoráh h4501) is also fem.  Pr.3:18 “She [Wisdom] is a tree of life.”  Pulpit Commentary “Wisdom becomes equally life giving.”

Elóah h433 is a Heb term for God, occurring 55 times in the OT (mostly in Job and poetic passages).  Jb.27:3 “The spirit of God [Eloah h433] is in my nostrils.”  The -ah ending is indicative of fem singular.  The most common OT Heb term for God is Elohím h430.  Elohim is a masc plural ending -im (Father and Son), combined with the fem singular root Eloah (HS/Wisdom) or possibly El.  Also the modern Heb fem term ‘shekinah’ represents the Divine Presence, the fire-cloud of glory in the OT.

Heb grammar too uses masc pronouns for God.  Heb & Aramaic has no neuter (no ‘it’); all nouns are masc or fem.  Again, the Heb term for spirit (ruach) is fem.  But unlike Heb, the Greek term for spirit (pneúma) is neuter.  The Latin term for spirit (spirítus) is masc.  Noun gender varies in languages.  In translated languages, gender doesn’t have the significance as in the earlier inspired Hebrew scripture.

In English, translators render pronouns with the Gr pneuma/spirit (neuter) as he masc, e.g. Jn.14:26. (or it neuter, Ro.8:26 KJV.)  Some of this is revisionism.  This practice subconsciously makes men seem more like God than do women.  Yet in 2Co.6:18, Paul wrote that God said, “You shall be sons and daughters to Me”.  In Jn.14:26, the Gr masc term páraclete is translated Comforter/Helper, and refers to the Gr neuter term Spirit.  Here translators chose to use the pronoun He.  But since God has both masc and fem characteristics (Is.42:13-14, Ps.123:2), Heb personal noun gender is more meaningful.  Later languages such as Greek, Latin, English didn’t maintain the earlier Heb gender in translations.

The most ancient of the rare Old Syriac copies, the Siniatic Pálimpsest (300s–400s AD), was found in the Covenant of St. Catherine and transcribed by Syriac Professor R.L. Bensly of Cambridge University in 1892.  Jesus’ words in Jn.14:26 read: “But She—the Spirit-the Paraclete whom He will send to you-my Father in my name—She will teach you everything; She will remind you of that which I told you.”  The Spirit is feminine to the Syriac church (as the ancient Aramaic ruach/spirit was fem), unlike Greek and Latin grammar.

J.J. Hurtak: “The Spirit is not called ‘it’ despite the fact that pneuma in Greek is a neuter noun. Church doctrine regards the Holy Spirit as a person, not a force like magnetism. In the Eastern Church, Spirit was always considered to have a feminine nature. She was the life-bearer of the faith.”

The Westminster Leningrad Codex (1008 AD) is the oldest complete Heb manuscript.  In its ultra-literal interlinear English translation online: Is.11:2 “And she rests on him, spirit of YHVH.”  Ps.143:10 “Good spirit of you Elohim, she shall guide me.”  Nu.11:26 “The spirit, she is resting on them.”  Ezk.37:1 “She becomes hand of YHVH on me in spirit of YHVH.”  Jb.33:4 “Spirit of El, she made me; breath of Who-Suffices, she is keeping me alive.”  (Ec.12:1 “Remember Ones creating you.”…“Us” in Ge.1:26.)

Pronouns in this ultra-literal translation do grammatically reflect the ancient Heb language gender.  The “she” pronoun agrees with our translations of Prov, WSol, WSir…where Wisdom is “she”.  Also, in this online Codex Jb.28:12-ff, Wisdom is “she”.  However, most of our translations attach the pronoun “it” to wisdom in Job 28.  This inconsistency may be a translational bias in Job 28…especially when we consider that wisdom is fem to Jesus in Lk.7:35 & Mt.11:19 (as well as “she” in Provs, WSol, WSir)!

From our Is.11:2, “The Spirit of the Lord shall rest on Him [Messiah], the spirit of wisdom and understanding, the spirit of counsel and strength, the spirit of knowledge and the fear of the Lord”.  The LXX adds “godliness”.  Seven attributes!  And they’re all fem nouns!  Wisdom is primary (Pr.4:7).

In Pr.8:12-14, Wisdom speaks in 1^st Person. “I, wisdom, dwell with prudence, I find knowledge and discretion. The fear of the Lord. Counsel is Mine. I AM understanding, strength is mine.”  These attributes are all fem!  Philo AI1 p.29…On Flight and Finding, p.325 “He called that Divine and heavenly Wisdom by many names….Indeed all the virtues bear the names of women.”  It’s not just coincidence.

Pr.9:1-2 “Wisdom has built her house. She has hewn her seven pillars.”  As wisdom was the principal branch of the seven-branched menorah (fem) in God’s tabernacle Holy Place.  cf. Re.5:6 “The seven Spirits/sevenfold Spirit of God, sent into all the earth.”  Barnes Notes “The seven Spirits of God, the manifold operations of the one Divine Spirit.”  Pulpit Commentary Re.5:6 “The Holy Ghost, proceeding from the Father and the Son.”  The HS is sent, Jn.14:26 & 15:26.  Zec.4:10 “These seven are the eyes of the Lord which range throughout the earth.” (also the Zec.3:9 prophecy.)  Ps.139:7-10 rhetorically, “Where can I go from Your Spirit [ruach fem]”.  God’s (sevenfold) HS is omnipresent.

Following are the various Names/Titles of the HS in the OT.  The Spirit of: Wisdom/Understanding etc. (the seven in Is.11:2 & Pr.8:12-14), Life, Truth, YHVH, Elohim, Eloah, El.  (But not the Spirit of: adonaí/lord h136 or adówn/master h113.)  Also in the OT God calls the HS, “My Spirit”.  In the NT the HS is called the Spirit of God (Théos g2316), the Spirit of the Lord (Kúrios g2962), “The Spirit”, and the Comforter/Helper.

The Father is Lord, e.g. Mt.11:25.  Jesus is Lord, e.g. Jn.13:13.  But I don’t know of any Bible verse which specifically says the HS herself is Lord/master/ruler.  Jesus didn’t refer to the HS as “Father”.

In the NT the HS is submissive, subservient, faceless, humble…not worshiped or prayed to directly.  She’s identified by titles (e.g. “God”) from the Father, not of herself.  The HS testifies of and glorifies Jesus, not herself (Jn.15:26, 16:13-14).  HS Presence may arrive noticeably, but silently departs.

The dove is a symbol of the HS.  The dove is said to be a very affectionate bird, harmless, very gentle.  A dove doesn’t retaliate against enemies, but will retreat.  Solomon wrote of his beloved in SS.5:2, “My love, my dove, my undefiled”.  Ro.15:30 speaks of “the love of the Spirit”.  WSol.1:6-7 “Wisdom is a Spirit that loves mankind. The Spirit of the Lord fills the world.”  Philo Who is the Heir of Divine Things, 25:127 “Divine wisdom, God’s possession she is, symbolically called a turtledove.”

More verses together showing the HS Wisdom is God:  Jesus says in Jn.14:21, “He who loves Me shall be loved by My Father, and I will love him”.  Likewise the HS Wisdom says in Pr.8:17a, “I love those who love Me”.  Jesus and Wisdom (and the Father) love those who love Jesus and Wisdom.  Analogous.

The Lord says in Je.29:13, “You will seek Me and find Me when you seek Me with all your heart”.  Likewise the HS Wisdom says in Pr.8:17b, “Those who diligently seek Me will find Me”.  We humans will find the Lord and Wisdom when we wholeheartedly seek the Lord and Wisdom…again analogous.

Jesus says in Jn.15:16, “You should bear fruit and your fruit should remain”.  The HS Wisdom says in Pr.8:19, “My fruit is better than gold”.  And in Ga.5:22 Paul wrote of “the fruit of the Spirit”.  The fruit & attributes of the HS (within humans) are better than gold!

The Word Jesus says in Jn.14:6, “I AM the life [zoáy g2222]”.  1Jn.1:1-2 “Concerning the Word of Life [g2222]. The eternal life [g2222] that was with the Father.”  Likewise the HS Wisdom says in Pr.8:35 LXX, “Those who find Me find life [g2222]”.  The HS too is eternal life/zoay!  In Ga.6:8, Paul wrote of those who “from the Spirit reap eternal life [g2222]”.  Re.2:7 the Paradise “tree of life” (g2222).

In Ex.34, Moses’ face shined from being in the presence of God on the mountain.  Ex.34:30 “So when the Israelites saw Moses’ face, they were afraid to come near him.”  1Ki.3:28 “Israel feared the king [Solomon], for they saw the wisdom of God was in him to do justice.”  Solomon wrote in Ec.8:1, “A man’s wisdom makes his face to shine”.  The HS Wisdom enlightens the countenance of man.

Oswald Chambers’ Christian devotional, My Utmost For His Highest, is one of the most popular religious books ever written.  In it he wrote, “I am the Almighty God’ – El-Shaddái, the Father-Mother God. The one thing for which we are all being disciplined is to know that God is real.”  God is both Father and Mother.  El Shaddai (h7706) has been described or defined as the ‘mighty breasted One’.

Again, Jesus indicated His Mother is Wisdom, the HS.  Connecting in order the following seven verses will identify the feminine HS: Jl.2:28a, Pr.1:20, 23, De.34:9a, Nu.27:18, Mt.1:18b, Lk.7:35.

Yet the church in general for much of its history has wrongly suppressed females or considered them inferior.  (Having gone beyond the apostle Paul’s instructions regarding women in church assembly.)

Jewish physicist Albert Einstein said that “Israel wouldn’t experience salvation until it returned to feminine divinity”. (quoted in Patricia Taylor’s The Holy Spirit: The Feminine Nature of God.)  In Jewish thought, the fem Shekinah is the Divine Presence which can be sensed within human souls.  Jewish wisdom theology/sophiálogy in BC times (also in Philo) saw God’s Presence dwelling with Israel via the Shekinah.  ref Ex.40:34-35 the Shekinah glory cloud!

Wisdom/Sophía/Chokmáh wasn’t a fertility goddess, like Inánna in Mesopotamia or Deméter in Greece.  Mariólatry is a later Roman Catholic Church counterfeit as a substitute for Wisdom or Shekinah…the RCC’s Mary is near to goddess status, such as Ísis. (see “Holy Spirit versus Mariolatry”.)

The Jewish concept of Shekinah, along with Philo’s writings (re the Lógos/Word and Wisdom), pose continuing problems for strict Jewish monotheism!  There are three ‘Persons’ within the one Godkind.

We may say the Father is the Source, Possessor, Director or Planner.  The Son is the Spokesman, the Executor, Mediator, Ruler.  The HS is Wisdom, the Omnipresence, the Comforter…and the Glory!

Savior’s Name in Bible Languages

God’s Divine Name is spelled YHVH or YHWH (Strongs h3068, Hebrew).  This four-letter théonym is known as the Tetragrámmaton.  In Wars of the Jews 5:5:7, the 1^st century Jewish historian Josephus said of the Divine Name, “it consists of four vowels”.  The letters are yod–hey–vav–hey (read from right to left).  These ancient Hebrew letters have also been called semi-vowels.

Today the exact pronunciation of God’s Divine Name is uncertain.  The most common transliteration is Yáhweh, also Yáhuah and Yehuah.  Phonetically, perhaps the Name sounded something like…ee-áh-oo-aye (pronounced rapidly).  also see the topic, “God’s Name & Titles in Scripture”.

My topic here is specifically the Name of the Savior.  What’s in a name?  The meaning of the Savior’s Name in Hebrew also provides etymológical evidence that Jesus of Nazaréth is the Savior.

Mt.1:20-21 in our English Bibles, an angel of the Lord told Joseph in a dream that he & Mary/Miriám were to call the name of the Child she was carrying…Jesus.  And in v.25, “He called His name Jesus”.

Throughout the New Testament (NT), the spelling J-e-s-u-s is used in modern English for the koine Greek name Iesóus (g2424 masc noun), pronounced Yay-sóos.

Why didn’t Father God want His Son to be named Aaron or Abe or Sam or…?  After all, Abraham and Samuel were good Hebrews!  Why call the Son Jesus?  This study of names should provide the answer.

According to the Greek Dictionary of the New Testament, the Greek Iesous g2424 represents the Old Testament (OT) Hebrew name Yehoshúa (h3091 masc noun).  The name Yehoshua is rendered Joshua in most English Bibles.  For example Ex.17:9, “Moses said to Joshua [Yehoshua h3091]”.

This Joshua/Yehoshua was the son of Nun.  But we read in Nu.13:8, “From the tribe of Ephráim, Hoshéa [h1954 masc ‘salvation’] the son of Nῡn”.  (A later Hosea h1954 wrote the first of the 12 so-called ‘minor’ prophet books.)  Yet in Nu.13:16, “Moses called Hoshea [h1954] the son of Nun, Joshua [Yehoshua h3091]”.  Hebrew names in the Bible have meaning.  Moses altered the son of Nun’s name from Hoshea or ‘he saves’ to Joshua/Yehoshua or ‘YHVH saves’ (or ‘YHVH is salvation’).

And later in the Greek Septúagint/LXX: Ex.17:9, Nu.13:16, throughout the Pentateuch, in the books of Joshua & Judges, Haggai & Zechariah, etc…the Greek name for Joshua/Yehoshua is Iesous (g2424)!  In ancient Bible language, Joshua the son of Nun was given the same name as Jesus of Nazareth!

Moses prophesied to Israel in De.18:15. “The Lord your God will raise up for you a prophet like me from among you.”  Moses’ successor was Joshua (Iesous in Greek) the son of Nun.  But the ultimate fulfillment of Moses’ prophecy is Jesus of Nazareth.  Jews were saying in the 1^st century AD, “This is the prophet Jesus, from Nazareth in Galilee” (Mt.21:11).  In Ac.3:20-23, Peter identified this Jesus as that prophet Moses had said would be like Moses himself.  One similarity…while Moses and Jesus were infants, their respective rulers (Pharaoh and Herod) wanted them put to death (Ex.1:22 and Mt.2:16).  Another similarity, Moses and Jesus both fasted for 40 days (Ex.34:28 and Mt.4:2).

Again, the transliterated Greek name of Moses’ OT successor Joshua and the Savior Jesus of Nazareth is…Iesous (g2424).

In Ac.7:44-45 of the NT, Stephen the Greek-speaking Jew recounted that God had directed Moses to make the ancient tabernacle, and then “our fathers brought it in with Iesous” (in NT Greek).  In v.45, many English Bibles rightly identify this Iesous as “Joshua” who followed Moses.  But a few Bibles (including the KJV) have translated the NT Greek Iesous as “Jesus” in this verse.  Although they both had the same name in Greek, the Bibles which read “Jesus” here give the wrong impression of who Stephen had in mind.  Stephen was referring to the OT Joshua.

A similar situation occurs in He.4:8, where the Greek name again is Iesous and Moses’ immediate successor Joshua is meant.  Although many English Bibles here render the Greek Iesous as “Joshua”, a few Bibles (e.g. KJV) render Iesous as “Jesus” (giving the wrong impression of who the writer of Hebrews had in mind).  Since they both had the same name, the context reveals which one is meant.

The Jewish translators of the Old Greek version (which became the LXX) used this same name Iesous for the title of the book of Joshua!  And interestingly, Moses’ successor Joshua and our Savior Jesus of Nazareth were the son of Nun or none (when we pronounce ‘Nun’ and ‘none’ similarly in modern English)!  Mary’s husband Joseph was Jesus’ legal father, but not His biological father.  The Savior Jesus of Nazareth had no human father in a biological sense.  (see the topic, “Jesus’ Virgin Birth”.)

Again, the counterpart of the Greek Iesous in ancient Paleo-Hebrew was Yehoshua, ‘YHVH saves’.  Mary’s husband Joseph was commanded to name the baby “Iesous”/Jesus because…her baby Jesus was the Word of God who is also very God/YHVH (Jn.1:1, 14).  And prior to Jesus’ human birth, Joseph was told in Mt.1:21, “It is He who will save His people from their sins”.  So we see that Jesus’ given Name even meant ‘Savior’!  God delivered ancient Israel from their enemies through Joshua the son of Nun, and God delivers us from the ultimate consequences of sin through Jesus of Nazareth’s sacrifice.

In the 1^st century AD, by what name did Jesus’ disciples and others call this Son of Joseph and Mary?  According to most Bible historians, (Western) Aramaic had become the common tongue in the Holy Land.  But many people would have spoken Greek in “Galilee of the Gentiles” (Mt.4:15), where the family and His disciples lived.  In that area, Joseph and Jesus perhaps had business clients who were Greek-speakers.  Stephen was a Hellenist Jew even living in Jerusalem (Ac.6:1-8).  Of note, when the NT writers quoted the OT, their quotes most often were from the Old Greek version which became the LXX (not from the more recent Hebrew Masorétic text)!

But prior to Aramaic becoming the language of the common people, the ancient Paleo-Hebrew of the Toráh had undergone changes.  Languages and dialects change over the centuries.  The Hebrew name Yehoshua h3091 had become obsolete as such.  The Divine Name was embedded in the name Yehoshua.  (A theophóric embeds or contains the name of God.)  The Jews had begun to consider it blasphemy to pronounce the name of God, even within a personal name!

By the time the books of Ezra and Nehemiah were written, the Hebrew name Yehoshua had been shortened to Yeshúa (h3442 masc noun).  The theophoric was removed.  The Divine Name isn’t embedded in the form “Yeshua”, although the names Yehoshua and Yeshua both mean to save/deliver.  Ne.8:17 “From the days of Joshua [Yeshua h3442] the son of Nun.”  In Nehemiah, the name of Moses’ successor is Yeshua, shortened from Yehoshua h3091 (cf. Ex.17:9).  Ne.12:26 and Ezr.3:2 are two other examples where the abbreviated Hebrew form Yeshua was used, instead of Yehoshua.  In the OT, this name Yeshua h3442 occurs 29 times; only in Ezra, Nehemiah and Chronicles!  Conversely, the name Yehoshua h3091 never appears in the books of Ezra or Nehemiah (it does appear in 1Ch.7:27).

After the Babylonian captivity, Aramaic (not Hebrew) became spoken by the Jewish common people.  This occurred prior to the emergence of the Grecian Empire.  Correspondingly, there are a few chapters of the OT which were originally written in Aramaic, not Hebrew.  (see “Aramaic in the Bible”.)

Ezra 4:8–6:18 was written in Aramaic.  Ezr.5:2 “Then Zerubbabél the son of Shealtiél and Yeshúa [h3443 masc noun] the son of Jozadák arose and began to rebuild the house of God in Jerusalem.”  In this verse, the name Yeshua is in Aramaic (its only OT occurrence in Aramaic).  The Aramaic equivalent Yeshua h3443 was pronounced almost identical to the Hebrew Yeshua h3442.

Again, when Jesus of Nazareth walked the earth, a dialect of Aramaic remained the language most often spoken in the Holy Land.  Yeshua was a popular Aramaic name for babies.  It’s been quipped…‘the Aramaic name on Jesus’ drivers license would have been Yeshua bar Yosef’ (Yeshua the son of Joseph)!  The Savior’s spoken name was Yeshua or Iesous (Greek), in the languages of His day.

In the OT there are 245 total occurrences of the: Hebrew names Yehoshua h3091 & Yeshua h3442, Aramaic Yeshua h3443.  In the Greek LXX, all these 245 occurrences are rendered Iesous g2424!

Approximately 200 years before Messiah Jesus’ human birth, how did the translators of the Jewish Old Greek version get from Ye–sh–u–a in the Hebrew/Aramaic scriptures to Ie–s–ou–s in the Greek scriptures?  Greek was the commercial language of the empire at the time.  (Again, in the LXX this same Greek name Iesous was used by the Jewish translators for the title of the book of Joshua.)

Translating the OT Hebrew into Greek enabled the Greek-speaking Jews in the diáspora (dispersion) who no longer knew Hebrew to understand the scriptures.  But the koine Greek language didn’t contain the same sounds as the ancient Hebrew language, so the transliteration of names wasn’t easy.  Following is the step-by-step transliteration of the name Yeshua into Greek:

The yod or ‘Ye’ of Ye-sh-u-a was transliterated iota-eta or ‘Ie’ in the koine Greek dialect.  The shin or ‘sh’ in Ye-sh-u-a couldn’t be sounded in Greek, because there was no ‘sh’ sound in the middle of Greek words.  So the Jewish translators just used a sigma ‘s’ to represent the Hebrew ‘sh’.  For the vav or ‘u’ in Ye-sh-u-a, they used omicron-upsilon or ‘ou’ in Greek.  Concerning the áyin or ‘a’ in Ye-sh-u-a, Greek grammar rules required this sound be dropped.  Then to distinguish a name in Greek as masculine, it was necessary to place a final sigma ‘s’ at the end of the name.  (For example Mt.27:21, Barabbá(s) was an Aramaic name transliterated into Greek with an ‘s’ added at the end to indicate masculine.)  Thus Ye-sh-u-a in Hebrew/Aramaic became Ie-s-ou-s in koine Greek.

Then how did the Greek “Iesous” become “Jesus” in modern English?  (It’s also “Jesus” in today’s Spanish, pronounced Hay–sóus.)

The Greek Iesous was rendered “Iesus” in Latin, yet still retaining the Yay-sóos pronunciation as the Greek.  The Old English then used the Latin form Iesus, pronouncing it Ye-sus.  Later the English form came to be spelled with a beginning ‘J’, but that ‘J’ was still sounded like a ‘Y’.  After that, the ‘J’ began to take on a harder sound…and His Name became pronounced “Jesus” (Jée-zus), as today.

So we see that the ancient Hebrew name has gone through a reasonable and common-sense transliteration process over the centuries, as languages developed and changed.

There are a relatively few who erroneously think the name “Jesus” derives from heathendom.  Although names and syllables may have phonetic similarities across dialects, the modern form “Jesus” wasn’t derived from the name of a pagan god such as Zeus!

Regardless of the exact spelling or pronunciation of Savior Jesus’ name throughout the languages and cultures of the world, His is the only Name by which we’re saved!  As Peter said in Ac.4:10-12, “Jesus Christ [Iesous Christós] the Nazarene….there is salvation in no one else; for there is no other name by which we must be saved.”  Praise the God who saves!

Furthermore, the name of King Messiah (in the order of Melchisedek) was prophesied in the book of Zechariah to be…Iesous/Yeshua (the shortened form of Yehoshua).

Returning once more to Mt.1:20-ff (Matthew quoted much from the Old Greek), Mary’s husband Joseph was told the given name of Isaiah’s prophesied Emmanuél was to be Iesous (Jesus)/Yeshua.  In Zec.3:8, circa 500 BC a Jewish high priest named Iesous (LXX)/Yehoshua h3091 is identified as a symbol for the Messiah or “Branch” (ref Je.23:5-6).  Zec.6:11-13 that high priest’s name Iesous (or Jesus)/Yehoshua will also be the name of the Branch/Messiah!  v.12 “Behold, a man whose name is the Branch.”  And He will occupy the two offices of priest and king in the order of Melchisedek (cf. Ge.14:18).  This is amazing…500 years before Iesous (NT Greek)/Jesus/Yeshua was born in Bethlehem, Zechariah prophesied the given name of the Branch/Messiah would specifically be Iesous (Jesus)/Yehoshua (Yeshua)!  His name wouldn’t be Aaron, Abe or Sam!  Zechariah’s prophecy came to pass…God knew the end from the beginning!  (also see “Jesus Is the Messiah”.)

Lastly, God/YHVH identified Himself to Moses as the eternal I Am/He Is.  The Lord said in Ex.3:14-15, “I AM who I AM”…or “I will become what I will become.”  The Septuagint/LXX reads, “I AM The Being”.  God/YHVH the Self-Existent, Ever-Living Being!  He Is the Name above all names!  Jesus said in Jn.8:56-59, “Before Abraham was, I AM”.  And in Jn.18:4-8, even Jesus’ antagonists understood His divine I AM implication, and they fell to the ground (v.6)!

Our Savior’s name Yeshua/Iesous/Jesus, given by God, links back to the Divine Name theonym of Father God.  (Again, cf. Ex.17:9, Ne.8:17, Ezr.5:2 Aramaic, LXX & NT Iesous.)  Jesus said in Jn.5:43, “I have come in My Father’s name”.  A Son bears His Father’s family Name.