John 14:16 “And I will pray the Father, and he shall
give you another Comforter, that he may abide with you for ever.” (American
Standard Version)
In this verse, Jesus promises that another “Comforter” will
appear, and thus, we must discuss some issues concerning this “Comforter.”
The Greek word paravklhtoß, ho parakletos, has been
translated as ‘Comforter.’ Parakletos more precisely means ‘one who pleads
another’s cause, an intercessor.’[1]
The ho parakletos is a person in the Greek language, not an
incorporeal entity. In the Greek language, every noun possesses gender;
that is, it is masculine, feminine or neutral. In the Gospel of John,
Chapters 14, 15 and 16 the ho parakletos is actually a person.
All pronouns in Greek must agree in gender with the word to which they refer
and the pronoun “he” is used when referring to the parakletos. The
NT uses the word pneuma, which means “breath” or “spirit,” the Greek
equivalent of ruah, the Hebrew word for “spirit” used in the OT. Pneuma is
a grammatically neutral word and is always represented by the pronoun “it.”
All present day Bibles are compiled from “ancient
manuscripts,” the oldest dating back the fourth century C.E. No two
ancient manuscripts are identical.[2]
All Bibles today are produced by combining manuscripts with no single
definitive reference. The Bible translators attempt to “choose” the
correct version. In other words, since they do not know which “ancient
manuscript” is the correct one, they decide for us which “version” for a given
verse to accept. Take John 14:26 as an example. John 14:26 is the
only verse of the Bible which associates theParakletos with the Holy
Spirit. But the “ancient manuscripts” are not in agreement that the “Parakletos”
is the ‘Holy Spirit.’ For instance, the famous Codex Syriacus, written
around the fifth century C.E., and discovered in 1812 on Mount Sinai, the text
of 14:26 reads; “Paraclete, the Spirit”; and not “Paraclete, the Holy
Spirit.”
Why is it important? It is significant because in
biblical language a “spirit,” simply means “a prophet.”
“Beloved, believe not every spirit, but try the spirits
whether they are of God: because many false prophets are gone out into the
world.”[3]
It is instructive to know that several biblical scholars
considered parakletos to be an ‘independent salvific (having the
power to save) figure,’ not the Holy Ghost.[4]
The question, then, is: was Jesus’ parakletos,
Comforter, a ‘Holy Ghost’ or a person - a prophet - to come after him? To
answer the question, we must understand the description of ho parakletos and
see if it fits a ghost or a human being.
When we continue reading beyond chapter 14:16 and chapter
16:7, we find that Jesus predicts the specific details of the arrival and
identity of theparakletos. Therefore, according to the context of John 14
& 16 we discover the following facts.
1. Jesus said the parakletos
is a human being:
John 16:13 “He will speak.”
John 16:7 “…for if I go not away, the Comforter will not
come unto you.”
It is impossible that the Comforter be the “Holy Ghost”
because the Holy Ghost was present long before Jesus and during his ministry.[5]
John 16:13 Jesus referred to the paraclete as ‘he’ and not
‘it’ seven times, no other verse in the Bible contains seven masculine
pronouns. Therefore, paracleteis a person, not a ghost.
2. Jesus is called a
parakletos:
“And if any man sin, we have an advocate (parakletos) with
the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous.” (1 John 2:1)
Here we see that parakletos is a physical and human
intercessor.
3. The Divinity of Jesus a
later innovation
Jesus was not accepted as divine until the Council of Nicea,
325 CE, but everyone, except Jews, agree he was a prophet of God, as indicated
by the Bible:
Matthew 21:11 “...This is Jesus the prophet of Nazareth of
Galilee.”
Luke 24:19 “...Jesus of Nazareth, which was a prophet mighty
in deed and word before God and all the people.”
4. Jesus prayed to God for
another parakletos:
John 14:16 “And I will pray the Father, and he shall give
you another parakletos.”
Footnotes:
[1] Vine’s Expository Dictionary of New
Testament Words.
[2] “Besides the larger discrepancies,
such as these, there is scarcely a verse in which there is not some variation
of phrase in some copies [of the ancient manuscripts from which the Bible has
been collected]. No one can say that these additions or omissions or
alterations are matters of mere indifference.” ‘Our Bible and the Ancient
Manuscripts,’ by Dr. Frederic Kenyon, Eyre and Spottiswoode, p. 3.
[3] 1 John 4: 1-3
[4] ‘...Christian tradition has
identified this figure (Paraclete) as the Holy Spirit, but scholars like
Spitta, Delafosse, Windisch, Sasse, Bultmann, and Betz have doubted whether
this identification is true to the original picture and have suggested that the
Paraclete was once an independent salvific figure, later confused with the Holy
Spirit.” ‘the Anchor Bible, Doubleday & Company, Inc, Garden City,
N.Y. 1970, Volume 29A, p. 1135.
[5] Genesis 1: 2, 1 Samuel 10: 10, 1
Samuel 11: 6, Isaiah 63: 11, Luke 1: 15, Luke 1: 35, Luke 1: 41, Luke 1: 67,
Luke 2: 25, Luke 2: 26, Luke 3:22, John 20: 21-22.
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