Summations Only

Phat, the verses containing the very earliest recorded
history are John 1:1-2."In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with
God, and the Word was God.""The same was in the beginning with God."The Word, who later became Jesus (verse 14), has
existed from the beginning.The Word was with God (accompanied by another
person).The Word was God.There is no way around this. There are two persons,
and both of them are God.There are, and always have been, two persons who
make up the God family.Humans have the potential to become members of
the God familyIn Genesis1:26 the Word said "Let us (used by speaker
to refer to Himself and one or more other person)
make man in our image, after our likeness....One God, but two distinct persons.

That's not history. It is philosophy. And it is a poetic metaphor, rather than a description.

There actually is. Phat and I have been through this before. "The Word" is not a person. The Word is the message (love thy neighbor, etc.) that God has been trying to get through to people since the beginning. Go ahead and look up every instance of the word "word" in John - or in the whole Bible, for that matter. It doesn't refer to a person. It refers to actual words. In some places there are references to Jesus AND the word, indicating that they are two different things.

So what happened to the Holy Spirit?

Phat, you ask what happened to the Holy Spirit.Jesus was asked numerous times what must one do to
be saved. Not once did He say that one must believe in
the trinity, or that one must believe that the Holy Spirit is
a person.Spirit is derived from the Greek word Pneuma. It is where
we get terms such as pneumonia or pneumatic tire.Pneuma can have several meanings, but refers to breath,
exhalation, or current of air.Luke calls the Holy Spirit the "power" of the Highest. The
Holy Spirit was the power that impregnated Mary. But,
the Holy Spirit was not the Father of Jesus, which it
would have been if it were a person.Jesus and the Father are oftentimes compared to human
Beings. The Holy Spirit is not. The Holy Spirit has never
been seen in hu.an form.The Holy Spirit is often described as wind, fire, water, oil,
dove,...etc.The Holy Spirit can be quenched or poured out. Humans
can drink of it, partake of it, or be filled with it.Paul states that the Holy Spirit is our "earnest," or down
payment.In all of Paul's letters he mentioned greetings from the
Father and Jesus. Not once did he mention greetings
from the Hy Spirit, which would have been inexcusable
if the Holy Spirit was part of a trinity.I want to say much more about this, but I will have to do
it in several posts throughout the next couple of days.Just hear me out before you dismiss me.

Rather, we derive "spirit" from the Latin, not from the Greek (Merriam-Webster):

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Middle English, from Anglo-French or Latin; Anglo-French, espirit, spirit, from Latin spiritus, literally, breath, from spirare to blow, breathe

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I had falsely remembered "spiro" (Lat. "I breathe") as being the same in Greek, but could not find it in the New Testament (Greek-English dictionary). In Modern Greek (as per my phone app), "I breathe" translates as αναπνεω, which seems to incorporate a root related to your "pneuma".Breath has great religious importance. Hinduism's concept of something like "soul" is Atman which is derived from a Sanskrit word for "essense, breath". A related word is found in German: atmen "to breathe".There is a strong identification of the breath being the animating force:

• In Genesis, "the Gods" ("Elohim", which is plural) performed his/their Golem spell to create Adam by introducing that breath of life into his dust form.
• As I understand the practice, in Judaism a baby is not a person until it has drawn its first breath. Hence the government creating a law which bestows personhood on a fetus, embryo, or even just a zygote is a violation of Jews' First Amendment rights (there's a lawsuit pending in Florida on just those grounds).
• Similarly (again, as I understand the practice), in Catholicism certain last rites that could be performed on a baby who dies after birth (ie, after having drawn its first breath) cannot be performed on a stillborn child, let alone on a fetus. Despite all the empty rhetoric of "life begins at conception", in practice the distinction between a person and non-person remains that first breath.

Similarly, the use of "spirits" for alcohol stems from the idea that distillation extracts the "spirit" of the water such that it was known in Latin as "aqua vitae" ("Water of Life") -- everyone is amazed at the wisdom of the Scots and Irish that "whisky" comes for the Gaelic term, "water of life" ("uisce beatha"), but they got it from Latin.In German, the word for spirit is Geist, to which our word "ghost" is related. Yes, "Holy Spirit" does translate as "Heiliger Geist." Though when a co-worker brought in some Obstwasser (a form of Schnapps made by distilling fermented fruit or berry must -- not to be confused with that American abomination which is nothing more than flavored syrup mixed with grain alcohol), he emphasized the importance of resealing the bottle, "Sonst fliegt der Geist ab!" ("Otherwise the spirit/ghost will fly away."; ie, the alcohol will evaporate).I even once looked up "Holy Spirit" in a Russian bible. In the word for "Spirit" I recognized the Russian word for "smoke" (my Russian was much better half a century ago), so I personally read that as "Holy Smoke." I freely admit to having taken some liberties with that at the time. Also check my own reply to Phat to be posted in a few minutes.

indeed, though not in the sense of your question.As I've mentioned elsewhere on this forum, I started my college career as a foreign language major (BA German) before moving on into non-human languages (BS Computer Science, BA Applied Math).Just as I am curious what the non-scientific think of how the sun burns (Kent Hovind seems to think it's by combustion on the surface instead of by hydrogen fusion in the core), I am curious what monoglots think is involved in translating from one language to another.I'm certain that they are aware that other languages have different words for English words, but I don't know whether they're aware that languages are also structured differently from each other, often requiring strikingly different ways of thinking about things. I suspect that they think that translation is just substituting their words for things for ours (in which case machine translation would be a breeze), but reality is far more complicated.Rather, in order to translate from one language to another, one must first understand what's being said in the source language and then compose something in the target language which contains the same information and expresses the same ideas. Sometimes it's simple and straightforward almost to the point of just substituting words ("Was ist das?" ("What is that?") "Das ist ein Bleistift." ("What is a pencil.")). Sometimes it's different but not overly so: ("Do you like it?" -> "Gefällt es dir?" ("Does it please you?")).Another example would be when the source language has features which the target does not. For example, there was a French rom-com where a confirmed bachelor in a female-dominated family tries to escape constant haranguing to get married by letting a woman needing a place to live stay with him but posing as his fiancée (no fringe benefits even implied) just to keep his family off his back. In front of his family, they use the familiar (tu) while alone they revert back to the polite (vous). OK, it's a rom-com, so they do end up falling in love, but there was a scene along that rocky path. They have become more comfortable with each other and he prepares dinner for them. In their conversation they slip into the familiar and then as they start to disagree he reverts back to the familiar to which she reacts ("Oh, so now it's vous again, is it?") -- (as I was taught, there's a specific ceremony, le tutoiment (similar to the German Bruderschaft depicted in Die Fledermaus with the song "Brüderlein, Brüderlein und Schwesterlein"), which they had not performed so that part of their relationship was hazy). I forget how the subtitles handled it since I was following the French more at that point, but try to explain an entire aspect of language-driven French culture to an American audience and do it in subtitles.Actually on that last, it has been done. In München 1973 I watched Cabaret again. The dialogue was dubbed as is common in Germany (though it was odd how Sally answered the door in very halting German and then is suddenly completely fluent when she asks for a cigarette), but the songs were the original audio with subtitles (though the line "that's what comes from too much pills and liquor" became "zu viele Pillen und Ficken"). On the student charter flight back home, a guy who had done the backpacking through Europe thing (I had a summer job in W. Germany, so more limited traveling) had been in East Berlin. While there, he watched the movie, "West Side Story" (1961). Again, the dialogue was dubbed into German and the songs were the original audio. But this time instead of translating the lyrics, it was a commentary: "She is decrying the oppression of the minorities by the capitalists!"And other times it's very different, even to the point where source contains more information or the target requires the translator to fabricate information (examples are more difficult. In a German TV movie about the von Stauffenberg plot to assassinate Hitler (eg, Tom Cruise's movie, Valkyrie) -- English does not have a simple way to answer a negative question or statement ) there's a family conversation at the dinner table. Questions and answers in one or two words which any German speaker could follow easily, but requiring whole sentences in English (my condolences to the subscript writers having to deal with that).One example of how a different language can structure thought differently comes from my own personal experience. In spatial reasoning, I tend to be visual, basically picturing in my mind where things are in relation to each other (mainly in map reading and how machinery works), all on a pre-verbal level. One day in the carpentry shop, my father presented me with a construction problem to solve. I thought it through and tried to give him my answer, but my tongue started tripping over itself. I had to stop and, realizing that I was thinking in German by trying to explain it in English, gathered my thoughts and presented my solution in English. We foreign language students had a conceit that language structures thought, but that was my first personal evidence of it.In a similar vein, here is a YouTube video by an American ex-pat in Germany, NALF, "If English Was Spoken Like German": Anyone with a background in German can appreciate that. For others, it shows that going from one language to another (even German to English considering that English is a West Germanic language just as German is so that transition shouldn't be abrupt) involves so much more than simple word substitution. Yoda has nothing on us!A joke based on the German tendency to place infinitives and past participles at the end of sentences, including placing the conjugated verb at the end of a subordinate clause:

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Two friends are touring Germany. One of them speaks German, the other not, so the German speaker translates everything for his friend. They are on a but tour and the guide keeps talking and talking. The non-German speaker is getting impatient and asks his friend what the guide is saying. "I don't know yet.
He hasn't reached the end of the sentence yet."

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Oh yeah, German tends to pack a lot more information into a single sentence that English does. Which may help explain my writing style. At this point I will spare you of the German "extended adjective" in which an entire relative clause is just stuck in front of the noun it modifies (eg, "the by so many viewers watched and loved sitcom") -- yes, that does happen in German.  The ultimate point to be made here is that my foreign language training makes it impossible for me to ever be a biblical literalist. I simply know too much.It seems that most biblical literalists are monoglots or at most merely dabbled in the meanings of individual Greek or Hebrew words while never having actually tried to learn those languages themselves. Over the decades, I have seen so many of them making very stupid interpretive mistakes because they are mired in English instead of being able to work with any of the original languages. They tend to base everything on how it works out in English.For example:

• Circa 1970, my initial time with the Jesus Freaks, one of them expounded on how atonement (as in Yom Kippur, "Day of Atonement") actually meant "at-one-ment" with God! But you can only make that one work in English and, to my knowledge or imagination, in no other language.
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• Local YEC praised a young girl for such brilliant insight. A Christian college professor offered an ad-hoc way to explain away the Resurrection by positing that Jesus had a twin. (See FOOTNOTE for a discussion of why Christians think they have to explain away miracles, articles of faith, etc) This 9-year-old girl stated "The Bible says that Mary was with child, not with children. That YEC thought she was so much wiser than a college professor, but:
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  1. First, the English expression "with child" does not specify how many embryos/feti there are in that uterus, but rather refers solely to the general condition of pregnancy. To insist on an expression "with children" would be a gross violation of the English language.
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  2. Second, THAT IS NOT EVEN WHAT THE BIBLE SAYS! I looked it up in my Greek New Testament and the text says (please allow for simplifying the verb tense) "εχε εν γαστρι" ("has in belly"). No kind of number being specified, nor even any explicit mention what just what she's supposed to have in her belly.
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     IOW, what the English is talking about has absolutely nothing to do with what the Bible is talking about.

The lesson is that if you want to know what Scripture actually says, then you must read it in the original language and with the ability to think in that original language..If you cannot do any of that, then you are doomed to always fuck it all up.  

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FOOTNOTE:

This whole idea of Christian scholars and some apologists and some laity think they have to explain away miracles, articles of faith, etc. Why? They should be trying to figure out how to make those stories more believable rather than to try to explain that they aren't really miraculous after all. It's almost as if they're taking on the role of the detractors. It doesn't make any sense to me for them to be doing that.

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Of course, my own take on the entire question is: "Dude! It's all a story! You cannot explain away a story!".

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For example, we have a burning continuity question about Mjölnir in the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU), one which I have yet to see address (but then I deign to frequent those nether regions myself). Chronologically (in MCU-time):

1. In Thor: Ragnarok, Mjönir is destroyed by Hela, shattered into bits.
2. In Avengers: Infinity War, which very obviously follows Ragnarok (it starts with Thanos raiding the Asgardian ship fleeing the destruction of Asgard) there is no Mjönir so Thor must forge a new hammer.
3. In the next chronological progression, Avengers: Endgame, Mjönir suddenly shows up again in the final battle just to show that Captain America is worthy after all. Wherefrom? How? No explanation.
4. Following that is Thor: Love and Thunder, with a plot point of Mjönir still being reduced to shards and on display at New Asgard, but Jane Foster who has a mystical connection with Mjönir is able to have it reassemble itself and to wield it as another Thor.

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The simple solution to that entire MCU discontinuity dilemma over Mjönir is simply:

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It's all a story, dude! Don't take it so fucking seriously!

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A simple lesson that you idiots have never learned!

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Now a bit closer to home. Entschudigungen.What exactly is the proposed purpose of this "Holy Spirit" supposed to be?We have already worked through some of the myriad problems with translation. I have repeatedly been assured that the Holy Spirit guided all such translations and interpretation (knowing now that every act of translation is also an act of interpretation).So what has been the result of that? Matthew 7:20 yet again, what have been the fruits of the Holy Spirit's efforts?Well, to start with, there are about 45,000 denominations and sects of Christianity. If there's just One True Message, having about 45,000 different versions of it would be a bit much, wouldn't you think?So why couldn't the Holy Spirit have been able to keep straight one single story? Why is it instead that each and every single different denomination and sect each got a different story of the same "single and eternal truth"?45,000 of them?

[ Good point. A Theist might try and find an answer that prevents cognitive dissonance. A critically thinking scholar may throw God away (or at least the Holy Spook and conclude that it is all simply mythos.

Theist views require cognitive dissonance.

Or you could continue to push claims about your religion that are blatantly and obviously not true, thus discrediting yourself at every turn. Oh, and then have the unmitigated gall to act surprised when others reject your obviously false religion.In the meantime, fire the Holy Spirit and replace it with something that can actually do the job.

I chose not to throw God away. (As if such a thing could even be done! One may as well throw away Alpha Centauri

Easily done. Alpha Centauri has no effect on my life (just like your God). I can totally disregard Alpha Centauri with no problem at all.

I didn't say to chuck the whole thing, though many have found that to be the right choice.There's "If it ain't broke, don't fix it." But the other side of that coin is: "If it don't work, don't use it."If you have something that doesn't work, you could still keep it, but you would be very foolish to rely on it. Keep it if you want to, but keep in mind that it's useless.Remember, relying on the Holy Spirit to lead Christians into the proper interpretation of Scripture led to there being about 45,000 different Christian denominations and sects because of differences in interpretation. Differences that shouldn't exist if the Holy Spirit had done its job, which it obviously didn't!The Holy Spirit is broke, so you cannot depend on it! 45,000 denominations and sects can't be wrong!Which one? A, B, or C?ABE: Comment -- Why didn't Phat declare Alpha Centauri to be a Trinity?

Edited by dwise1, : ABE

The Holy Spirit doesn't work through individuals ... he works through the Church - the one, true Church - ie, the Catholic Church. Therefore there is only one "proper interpretation of Scripture" - the Catholic interpretation.That explains why outside the Holy Spirit-guided Catholic Church there exists - unsurprisingly - a chaotic and confusing mess of interpretations. ​Incorrect. The Holy Spirit has certainly "done its job" ... infallibly, in fact, through the Catholic Church.When Christians who operate outside the Catholic Church interpret Scripture, they do so without the infallible guidance of the Holy Spirit, which is why they come up with endless errors and conflicting opinions ... resulting in 45,000 different denominations.