, the Stoics saw pneuma not only as the substance of the soul of individual animals (including humans), but also as a cosmic principle: the World Soul, all-pervading Reason (Logos), or God. Later on, this “Spirit” also resonated with Christians and Gnostics....Intellect through the pneuma resulted from Aristotle’s
reflection on the beginning of life, which does not start with respiration (as
Plato had assumed) but at the moment of conception and so necessitated an
innate pneuma already contained in the seed of plants and animals, including
humans....Galen also
integrates pneuma in his system of physiology and considers its claim to be
the substance or the vehicle of the psyche, but he does not characterize the lat-
ter option as Aristotelian (De placitis Hippocratis et Platonis 7.3.23). In another
work, Quod animi mores corporis temperamenta sequantur (qam 4.774 Kühn),
Galen explains Aristotle’s view of the natural body in hylomorphistic terms,
that is to say, with soul as its form, which according to Galen must refer to the
mixture of the four elementary qualities. Likewise, at qam 4.782–783 Kühn, he
says that Aristotle considers the soul to be “being” (ousia) in the sense of form,
to be understood as the mixture of the four elements. Interestingly, he refers to
the (first-century bce) Aristotelian Andronicus of Rhodes on the meaning of
Aristotle’s definition of the soul as form of the body. Andronicus said it is either
the mixture of elements or the power following on the mixture. Galen sees the
first option as coinciding with his own preference. The pneuma is mentioned,
but only in connection with the Stoic view in what follows (ibid., 784): the Sto-
ics, Galen argues, take the soul to be the pneuma but strictly speaking their
analysis amounts to the same thing—it is the particular mixture of qualities
that makes the pneuma a soul.
John 3.8 is a particularly fine example of the tension between English and its sources. The King James Version has “The wind bloweth where it listeth, and thou hearest the sound thereof, but canst not tell whence it cometh, and whither it goeth: so is every one that is born of the Spirit.” In this passage the original Greek uses a single word, pneuma, for both ‘wind’ and ‘spirit’, which the Vulgate echoes with spiritus.8 We can be sure that the underlying term is the Hebrew ruach. In giving us two terms for the original one, the King James Version fails to articulate the original under- standing that the wind that blows as it will, and the spirit of life that God breathes into his creatures are one and the same thing. The Catholic Douay-Rheims uses only ‘spirit’ where King James has ‘wind’ and ‘spirit’ in this passage, as do earlier English translations: the Anglo-Saxon text (probably late 10c.) has gāst ‘spirit’ (Bright 1904: 12), and Wycliffe (late 14c.) has only ‘spirit’. But Luther’s translation has ‘Wind’ in the first place and ‘Geist’ in the second, and most later translations into English, including Tyndale, distinguish between the two terms. This estrangement between ‘wind’ and ‘spirit’ obscures John’s allusion to one of the most beautiful and enigmatic of the oldest Biblical texts at this point, Genesis 1.2: “And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.” Here again the Spirit of God is a wind and a breath, ruach, pneuma. The English translation has lost the image of the wind on the sea, and has lost the ability in one word to express the spirit of this wind.
Thus ruach is given in 15 pages of Volume VII of Clines’s Dictionary of Classical Hebrew (Clines 2010: 427–440) as having the primary meanings ‘wind, breath, spirit,’
https://www.efnahagsmal.is/index.php/millimala/article/download/1663/908
In Gal. 3.14-16 Paul connects the ‘promised’ σπέρμα of Abraham with the experience of the ‘spirit’ in Galatia. Since ‘spirit’ occurs nowhere in Gen. 12–22, Paul’s equation (i.e., ‘promise’ equals ‘spirit’) is considered to be an interpretive leap. This article is an attempt to explain this gap by demonstrating how Paul’s argument hinges upon a Greco-Roman physiological metaphor.
Barrier, J. W.. (2014). Jesus' Breath: A Physiological Analysis of {upsilon with perispomeni} within Paul's Letter to the Galatians. Journal for the Study of the New Testament, 37(2), 115–138. doi:10.1177/0142064X14554364
vital pneuma then leaves the heart, travelling to the brain, and
a process of more intricate refinement known as ‘coction’ commences. Coction
is a process that takes place over a long period of time, where pneuma trans-
verses through a web-like labyrinth (known to Galen as the retiform plexus)
moving to the brain while slowly transforming into psychic pneuma (pneuma)
This pneuma is best understood as an enriched physical substance emanating from a divine source, as represented by Jesus (e.g., 1 Cor. 15.45) (T. Martin 2006: 125). The clearest instance of this is Gal. 4.6-7, a passage with echoes from Gen. 2.7 and Isa. 42.1-
9, 40 which states: ‘And because you are children, God has sent the Spirit [pneuma]
of his Son into our hearts, crying, “Abba! Father!” So you are no longer a slave
but a child, and if a child then also an heir, through God.’ 4
Rather, pneuma plays a prominent role in Paul’s argument concerning the ‘promise to Abraham’ (3.14-29). The implications of this covenantal ‘promise’ are that pneuma was being passed down through Jesus from one generation to the next, at least as far back as
Abraham (3.14) (Han 2006), perhaps even going back as far as the pneuma
breathed out on the first humans as recorded in Gen. 2.7. 45
pneuma-enriched spe/rm or by other openings in the body, as indicated earlier, such as
through the eyes or the ears. In this case, Paul suggests that it is being passed on
by means of the sexual union of Abraham with the ‘free woman’ (e3n e0k t=
e0leqe/r, Gal. 4.22, 29; i.e., Sarah).
From this, I am connecting the pneuma
discussed in Gal. 4.29 to the pneuma-embedded sperm that is described in medi-
cal treatises, such as in On Semen. Further, I am arguing that Paul is suggesting
that pneuma is being passed from Abraham down to Christ through the oro-nasal
passages (i.e., Abraham and Sarah’s sexual procreation in Gal. 4.22) for the pur-
pose of supporting ‘life’, either as a sequential, generation-to-generation transfer
down to Christ, as a person-to-person transfer, or even possibly as an eschatologi-
cal ‘outpouring’ of pneuma as was the case with Abraham, and even the claim of
the early Christian prophets (such as Paul).
. In particular, what Paul is describing is the energizing of the human
body by means of a faculty to bring about a desired result (effect/work), where only a very
particular type of pneuma can actually bring about the desired results. This is very similar to the way that only psychic as opposed to vital pneuma may be used for the governance of the brain, vision, hearing or generation
PAUL’S PNEUMATOLOGICAL STATEMENTS AND
ANCIENT MEDICAL TEXTS
Troy W. Martin in
Considering the ancient physiology of pneuma, Paul’s pneumato-
logical statements describe the Spirit’s traveling to the heart where
it is dispensed to all parts of the body. Physiologically consonant
with the ancient medical texts are Pauline statements such as “For
the Spirit searches all things even the deep things of God. For who
of humans knows the things of a human except the spirit of the
human in the human” (1 Cor 2:10–11). According to the ancient
medical texts, pneuma provides movement by exerting pneumatic pres-
sure in the hollow parts of the body. Consistent with this under-
standing is Paul’s exhortation to the Thessalonians not to quench
(sb°nnute) the Spirit (1 Thess 5:19) and thereby hamper the Spirit’s
ability to move those in the community. The Spirit provides ration-
ality by bringing the mind of Christ to the human heart, the cen-
ter of human volition and cognition (1 Cor 2:16). Paul’s presentation
of the Spirit as the provider of movement and rationality is thus
consonant with the ancient physiology of pneuma, but so is Paul’s
presentation of the Spirit as the provider of health and life.
replenish the Spirit through
the digestive system and the Spirit cannot nourish a person whose
constitution or condition prohibits the assimilation of these spiritual
foods. Lacking the Spirit, such a person becomes weak or sick and will
ultimately die if the lack of nourishment continues.
Once the Spirit enters the body, several Pauline statements affirm that the Spirit causes
movement, effects rationality, provides health, and imparts life.
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