In Search of the Spirit: Selected Works, Volume One: The Spirit and Biblical Literature

By John R. Levison

In his trailblazing studies of the spirit in Jewish and Christian Antiquity, John R. (Jack) Levison shatters theological and exegetical taxonomies. Should the spirit be understood as breath or Spirit--or both? Is the spirit directed to creation or salvation--or both? Is the spirit a force or an angel--or both? Does the spirit inspire ecstasy or wisdom--or both? When Levison transfers the starting point of pneumatology from the New Testament to the Hebrew Bible, from Christianity to Judaism, questions swell, assumptions detonate, and expectations flourish. Consequently, Levison's studies are considered "impressive and provocative" (Review of Biblical Literature), "delightful, engaging" (Catholic Biblical Quarterly), "compelling, eloquent, sensitive" (Word and World), and "a remarkable read" (Themelios), with "profound ramifications for both Jewish and New Testament Studies" (Journal of Jewish Studies). Now, for the first time, selections of his breathtaking array of studies are available in three accessible volumes. This volume, in which you will discover some of the programmatic studies Levison published on the biblical literature of both testaments, reveals why Reading Religion: A Publication of the American Academy of Religion forecasts that "Levison will continue to be at the center of our most fruitful discussions of pneumatology."

• Language: English
• Publisher: Cascade Books
• Release date: Nov 13, 2023
• ISBN: 9781725290549

Book preview

1

Introduction

Late in the morning on an early spring day in Chicago, a phone call woke me up. Normally, I would be awake, but we had just brought our newborn daughter, Chloe, home from the pediatric intensive care unit at Rush North Shore Hospital, where she had spent the first week of her life. The call was from Louis Feldman, renowned classicist and expert on Flavius Josephus at Yeshiva University. I had applied to participate in a National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) Summer Seminar for College Teachers on the Greek Encounter with Judaism in the Hellenistic Era. Louis invited me to participate, but I was reluctant to leave Priscilla and Chloe, so I proposed a somewhat arduous commute, to which Louis agreed. For eight weeks that summer of 1992 , I would leave the Midwest at 6 : 00 a.m. every Tuesday, stay in New York City through our session on Thursday afternoon, and fly home from LaGuardia Airport late Thursday evening. One of my sweetest memories emerged from that summer’s rhythm. Every Wednesday evening, I would walk to Koronet Pizza, at 110 th Street and Broadway, buy two pieces of pizza, wash them down with a carton of fresh-squeezed orange juice, settle myself at a pay phone on the Columbia University campus, and signal with a one-ring call for Priscilla to call me. In those days, it was cheaper that way.

The paper I wrote for that remarkable seminar was titled "Prophetic Inspiration in Pseudo-Philo’s Liber Antiquitatum Biblicarum." I had discovered, to my surprise, deep hues of Greco-Roman ecstasy at the heart of inspiration in this first-century Jewish composition. Equally unexpected, I had identified a vein of interest in the holy spirit in Liber antiquitatum biblicarum I simply had not expected.¹ I sent the manuscript to Louis and, in characteristic fashion, he returned it with detailed comments within twenty-four hours. Soon after, I submitted the revised manuscript to the Jewish Quarterly Review and garnered my first publication on the holy spirit in what I, and many with me no doubt, would consider an unforeseen corner of antiquity.

About the same time, I serendipitously met up with New Testament professor Larry Hurtado at a Society of Biblical Literature meeting. I was acquainted with Larry, who had reviewed my first book, Portraits of Adam in Early Judaism. I told Larry that I wished my German were better, so I might apply for a DAAD scholarship to spend a summer in Germany. Larry asked me why I didn’t apply for an Alexander von Humboldt Fellowship, to which I replied (I remember distinctly), Because I won’t get one. Larry had other ideas. He wrote to Martin Hengel, who wrote a personal letter to Helmut Hanle, head of selection for the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, telling him to expect an application from me. With the help of David Aune, who reviewed my proposal, I applied—and spent a full year in Tübingen under Martin Hengel’s able sponsorship.

During that year, I was able to follow my instincts about Second Temple Judaism, which resulted, a few years later, in the appearance of The Spirit in First Century Judaism. I had not especially noticed before now—as I look back to compose this introductory essay—but that book contains in nuce many of the dimensions of how I would later come to understand the spirit, not only in Second Temple Judaism but in Scripture and scholarship as well. Many of the themes that began to emerge for me in the mid-nineties are evident in the table of contents of that first book on the spirit in antiquity:

•the spirit as life itself—rather than a divine reality that enters human beings subsequent to birth

•the spirit and extraordinary insight, epitomized by inspired exegesis—rather than an experience characterized principally by ecstatic phenomena

•the spirit as an invading angel—rather than an amorphous or impersonal presence

Other themes would surface in years to come, of course, such as the preeminence of the exodus tradition in the emergence of a full-blown ancient pneumatology. But, as I survey thirty years of research, it is clear to me that the mid-nineties proved formative for my writing during the following quarter century.

Yet even more fundamental than these three emphases—the spirit as life itself, the spirit as the source of extraordinary insight, and the spirit as an angel—is the recognition that many Jews of the Second Temple period believed in a divine spirit active in their midst. So we must start there because of the stubborn but mistaken view in scholarship that Jews of that era believed the spirit had withdrawn from Israel.

The Alleged Withdrawal of the Holy Spirit from Judaism

The first realization to which I came may seem axiomatic now, but it was not then: Jews of the Second Temple period believed that the spirit continued to be active and accessible in their own era. In other words, the spirit had not withdrawn from Israel, to be replaced by an inferior bat qôl. Or to put it in yet another way, prophecy had not ceased with the death of the final canonical prophet.

I first discovered this in Louis Feldman’s seminar, where I noted a keen interest in the spirit in Liber antiquitatum biblicarum, a composition typically traced to Palestine during the first century CE. In all, four figures experience inspiration in Liber antiquitatum biblicarum: Balaam, Joshua, Kenaz, and Saul. Narratives focusing on these figures evince a deep reflection upon inspiration in Jewish Scripture refracted through the lens of Greco-Roman conceptions of inspiration. For instance, the judge Kenaz would experience a final instance of inspiration, according to Liber antiquitatum biblicarum, in which scriptural elements coalesce with Greco-Roman ones: When they were sitting, the holy spirit came upon Cenaz and dwelled in him and took away his sense, and he began to prophesy, saying . . . (28.6).² The episode concludes, When Cenaz had spoken these words, he awakened, and his sense came back to him. He however did not know what he had spoken or what he had seen (28.10). On the one hand, the context is biblical: Kenaz is modelled on Ezekiel, the biblical Holy Spirit is present, and the choice of the verb insilire resonates with the Vulgate of 1 Sam 10:6, 10; 11:6. On the other hand, certain elements are foreign to Scripture: the advent of ecstasy, the return of senses, and a failure to recall the event. These elements are Greco-Roman in character.³

The portrait of Kenaz in Liber antiquitatum biblicarum, like the portraits of Balaam, Joshua, and Saul, does not provide incontrovertible evidence that Second Temple Jewish authors believed in the ongoing presence of the holy spirit. These are biblical figures of the past, after all, rather than first-century contemporaries of the author. Yet the permutations that scriptural conceptions of inspiration undergo in Liber antiquitatum biblicarum through interaction with Greco-Roman culture suggested to me that this was not a merely literary interest. The level of modifications led me instead to the consideration that, quite possibly, first-century experiences of inspiration led to these modifications. The advent of the spirit, the experience of ecstasy, the loss of memory—was it possible that these elements reflected how some first-century Jews experienced inspiration?

Even if Liber antiquitatum biblicarum did not provide authentic first-century claims to inspiration, I did not need to look far to discover first-century authors, such as Philo of Alexandria, who made bold and explicit claims to inspiration. There is no need to rehearse Philo’s claims in any detailed way, since I did that in the Journal for the Study of Judaism.⁴ (David Aune, who invariably pushed me in the most beneficial of ways, urged me to write that article.) Philo could receive inspiration when he himself, as a writer, was dry. Or, in an escape from civic duties, he could be lofted on the wings of knowledge, where, from the heights, he would interpret Torah allegorically. He could also receive the words of the divine spirit like a customary friend—with the word customary signaling that his inspiration lay on a line with Socrates, who followed a customary daemon. Philo, in short, did not hesitate to claim for himself the inspiration of the divine spirit. Yet his reflection on the nature of inspiration was not exclusively autobiographical. He interpreted the phenomenon of prophecy in general along the lines of Greco-Roman modes of inspiration; prophetic ecstasy, Philo believed, transpired when the divine spirit displaced the human mind, when the spirit blew through the prophet like a musician blowing through a trumpet or flute.

Nor did Philo’s perspective end there. He attributed to Moses a two-fold form of inspiration, in which Moses’ mind was both raised in ecstasy and heightened with insight. This form of inspiration Philo would famously call sober intoxication. Philo fancied himself an inspired philosopher, vulnerable to ecstatic inspiration and liable to philosophical rapture, both of which belonged to the effects of the holy spirit. Not just Moses, but Philo, too, would experience the elixir of the spirit: sober intoxication.

Josephus, toward the end of the first century CE, also laid claim to inspiration, particularly in his defense of the decision to trade loyalties from the Jews to the Romans, to which he was led, he declared, by an ability to interpret his own dreams and by his knowledge of sacred prophecies (J.W. 3.351–353). The claim is more muted than Philo’s, but it is no less trenchant, no less self-aggrandizing, than Philo’s more numerous and detailed claims.

By the mid-nineties, then, I had identified a triangle of inspiration during the first century: Liber antiquitatum biblicarum, Philo of Alexandria, and Flavius Josephus. All of these—especially Philo—suggested how Jews of that era believed the holy spirit was still active in their midst, that inspiration continued to occur, and that the interpretation of Scripture (as we shall see) could be traced to such inspiration.

During the 1990s, I did not publish extensively on the documents from the Judean Desert.⁵ Nonetheless, it became apparent to me how many references exist in the Dead Sea Scrolls to inspiration by the holy spirit. In a volume Jörg Frey and I edited in 2015, based upon a research project funded by the Shohet Scholars Program of the International Catacomb Society and the TransCoop program of the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, Eibert Tigchelaar amply documents key references to the spirit in the Dead Sea Scrolls.⁶ The point to be made here is that, even without considering myriad references to the spirit in the Dead Sea Scrolls, the alleged withdrawal of the spirit cannot bear the weight of literary sources, which attest to a lively belief in the activity of the spirit during the Second Temple period.

Encountering an undeniable belief in the spirit in a triangle of primary sources—Liber antiquitatum biblicarum, Philo, and Josephus—led me to examine what for so long had been a scholarly assumption: Jews of the Second Temple period believed that the spirit had withdrawn from Israel with the cessation of prophecy and that the spirit would return only in the eschatological future. Clearly, a disparity characterized actual primary sources written by first-century Jewish authors, who laid claim to inspiration, and the scholarly contention that Jews of the first century believed the spirit had withdrawn. It could not be both ways. I was not alone in noting this. Max Turner wrote, There is an all-too-apparent tension between the assertions of the cessation of the Spirit/prophecy and continuing claims to prophecy.⁷ Still, this view continued to hold sway especially in the annals of Pauline scholarship. J. D. G. Dunn claimed that with the rabbis the belief becomes very strong that Haggai, Zechariah and Malachi were the last of the prophets and that thereafter the Spirit had been withdrawn.⁸ F. W. Horn detected evidence des allgemeinen Bewußtseins der Prophetenlosigkeit oder Geistlosigkeit.⁹ G. Fee claimed, Noticeably missing in the intertestamental literature . . . is the sense that the Spirit speaks through any contemporary ‘prophet.’ This is almost certainly the result of the growth of a tradition called ‘the quenched Spirit,’ which begins in the later books of the Old Testament and is found variously during the Second Temple period.¹⁰ N. T. Wright, whose appreciation for Judaism should be contrasted with Fee’s dismissal of Judaism, nonetheless notes that when Paul speaks of the individual Christian, or the whole church, as the ‘temple’ in which the spirit ‘dwells’, such language from a second-Temple Jew can only mean (a) that YHWH has returned to his Temple as he had promised and (b) that the mode of this long-awaited, glorious, tabernacling presence is the spirit.¹¹

The alleged withdrawal of the spirit, which serves so well as a backdrop for Pauline theology, is based, I noticed, upon the misreading of a smattering of texts: Ps 74:9; 1 Macc 4:46; 9:27; 14:41; Josephus’ Ag. Ap. 1.37–41; 2 Bar. 85:3; Pr Azar 15; and t. Soṭah 13:2–4. In three ways, I contended, scholarship had collected these texts to produce a chimera that needed to be slain. First, I thought it important to demonstrate that the assemblage of texts of various provenance and date, when they were clearly speaking in different terms of different realities, simply could not support a singular perspective on the holy spirit. The collection of these texts was, in short, artificial. Second, I agreed with some of my predecessors that too many primary sources undercut this dogma, certainly the ones I had studied in The Spirit in First Century Judaism, as well as the Dead Sea Scrolls. The third aspect of my study was certainly the most original and perhaps the most essential. I undertook a granular study of each of the texts thought to comprise this perspective. The most important of these was t. Soṭah 13:2–4. Upon close scrutiny and in context, I contended, this text demonstrates, not the cessation of prophecy, but its opposite: as long as a righteous person was in the world, the holy spirit remained. And righteous people lived in each generation. Consequently, the spirit could remain in successive generations, as long as a righteous person existed in a generation.

Much of what I attempted to do, then, rested on a recalibration of scholarly—both Jewish and Christian—interpretations of a handful of wide-ranging texts purported to promote the view that Jews of the Second Temple period believed the spirit had withdrawn and prophecy had ceased with the death of the last canonical prophets. The substance of my work on the alleged dogma of the withdrawn spirit can be illustrated by a comparison of editions of the Interpreter’s Dictionary of the Bible. In the original, G. W. H. Lampe wrote of Judaism, In the main, the Spirit continues to be thought of as being, pre-eminently, the Spirit of prophecy, manifested in the distant past in such great figures as Elijah (Ecclus. 48.12) or Isaiah (vs. 24), but which was now no longer present in Israel.¹² When, decades later, I wrote the comparable entry for the New Interpreter’s Dictionary of the Bible, the editors agreed to add five thousand words to a fifteen-thousand-word entry so that I could incorporate the literature of Early Judaism. It was vital, I deemed, for the next generation of readers to acknowledge that Judaism at the time of Jesus did not see itself as bereft of the spirit, void of inspiration, empty of prophecy.

While I think that the article I wrote on this topic in New Testament Studies proved essential to my ongoing research, I would be arrogant to claim that my work had been without precedent. Scholars such as R. Meyer, R. Leivestad, D. E. Aune, and F. Greenspahn had already chipped away at this assumption.¹³ Further, Paul Volz had anticipated my assessment of Second Temple Judaism nearly a century earlier. Volz, whose work, in my opinion, should be the starting point for all studies of the spirit in antiquity, had already written that the habit of comparing a form of Judaism that is coming to an end with a youthful form of Christianity has led regularly to a misunderstanding of the former. This is historically unsuitable and, moreover, it is far more probable that the new religion arose out of a period of religious stirring and deep feeling rather than out of a torpid and dying one.¹⁴ Volz’s work is robust, and its uniqueness is magnified by the realization that he wrote so forcefully about the spirit in ancient Judaism decades before the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls. Nonetheless, Volz did not win the day; a portrayal of Judaism as arid and legalistic, void of the spirit and empty of prophecy, dominated scholarship during the twentieth century—though I hope such an assessment of Second Temple Judaism will hold sway no longer in the twenty-first.

The Spirit Within as Life Itself

During the mid-nineties, I came to the realization that the divine spirit could—and often should—be identified with the holy spirit within human beings. To put it in more colloquial terms, I noted a frequent identification of the holy spirit with the human spirit. I analyzed this aspect of ancient conceptions of the spirit in a chapter titled The Spirit as Life Itself in The Spirit in First Century Judaism. I reprised this perspective on rûaḥ in Judaism in Filled with the Spirit in a chapter titled, A Wise and Holy Spirit Within, and I extended this exploration to include Jewish Scripture in chapters called Spirit in the Shadow of Death and Wisdom and Spirit Within.

The Spirit Within in Second Temple Judaism

The dawning of this perspective took place during Louis Feldman’s NEH Summer Seminar in 1992. Pivotal to this realization was LAB 18:3, the first reference to the spirit in Liber antiquitatum biblicarum, in which the author merges Num 22:7–8 and 22:18, the first and second visits of Balak’s messengers, who are sent to persuade the Babylonian seer Balaam to curse Israel. The author of Liber antiquitatum biblicarum places into Balaam’s mouth an extrabiblical reference to the spirit. Balak, claims Balaam, does not realize that the spirit that is given to us is given for a time. But our ways are not made secure unless God wishes it. The second reference to the spirit, in LAB 18:10, clarifies the significance of the first reference. Num 24:2–3 reads, Balaam looked up and saw Israel camping tribe by tribe. Then the spirit of God came upon him, and he uttered his oracle, saying . . .¹⁵ Liber antiquitatum biblicarum 18:10 revises Num 24:2 to read instead, And he came into the land of Moab and built an altar and offered sacrifices. And when he saw part of the people, the spirit of God did not abide in him. And he took up his discourse and said . . .¹⁶ In several respects, this is a profound alteration of the biblical text. In this version of the story, Balaam claims, the spirit that is given to us is given for a time. This is an understanding of spirit influenced by Gen 6:3, in which God says, My spirit shall not abide [or dispute] in mortals forever, for they are flesh; their days shall be one hundred twenty years. In light of this allusion to Gen 6:3 in LAB 18:10, Num 24:2 is no longer the irruption of the spirit but the presence of the spirit for a lifetime.

This modification is substantial, but the alteration of Num 24:2 is more radical still: Et cum vidisset partem populi, non permansit in eo spiritus Dei. Rather than receiving the spirit, Balaam forfeits the spirit: the spirit of God did not abide in him.¹⁷ The verb in this instance, permaneo, is reminiscent of Gen 6:3 rather than Num 24:2, which LAB 18:10 paraphrases. Yet the use to which the language of Gen 6:3 is put functions to contradict the biblical text. Not only did the spirit not come to Balaam, but also the spirit did not remain in him.

The metamorphosis of Num 24:2 is complete when Balaam laments, I am restrained in my speech and cannot say what I see with my eyes, because there is little left of the holy spirit that abides in me. For I know that I have been persuaded by Balak and have lost time from my life. Behold, here is my remaining time (LAB 18:11–12). Particularly salient in this metamorphosis is the identification of the spirit of Num 24:2, refracted through the lens of Gen 6:3, as the holy spirit. This is God’s spirit, as in Gen 6:3—the spirit of God of Num 24:2—but the author of Liber antiquitatum biblicarum chooses to identify this spirit as the holy spirit that no longer abides in Balaam. The holy spirit in him is the lifelong spirit that, according to Gen 6:3, lasts only 120 years and that, according to LAB 18:11–12, leads by its absence to Balaam’s final hour.

What I noticed, then, in Liber antiquitatum biblicarum, was a thoroughgoing transformation of Num 24:2 through its association with Gen 6:3. The holy spirit is no longer, as it is in Num 24:2, a power that comes upon the seer but the life-giving presence of God in human beings for a limited time. I noticed, too, that this spirit is identified as the holy spirit rather than the spirit of God (Num 24:2) or, as God says in Gen 6:3, my spirit. To put it bluntly, the human spirit is the holy spirit.

I have dwelt on this first realization because it proved programmatic for my research in years to come. In that same chapter of The Spirit in First Century Judaism, I observed as well how a similar understanding of spirit as life-breath characterizes Job 27:2–4; 32:6–9, 15–20.¹⁸ This led me to ask whether references to the holy spirit in Ps 51 might be to that same life-breath. Take not your holy spirit from me (Ps 51:11, my trans.) may have nothing to do with piety or purity but with the desire simply to stay alive: like Balaam, the psalmist recognizes that the holy spirit within is the source of life, without which one faces death. My suspicion was confirmed, at least provisionally, by the Stoic character of the Old Greek translation of Ps 51 (LXX Ps 50), in which the particular vocabulary adopted to translate the Hebrew psalm suggests strongly an understanding of spirit as the ruling element of a human being. Understood in Stoic terms, as in Wis 1:5, this vocabulary refers to the holy spirit, to describe the spirit that is constitutive of human life.¹⁹ This, I would go on to propose, is borne out by LXX Dan 5:12 and 6:4, along with Sus 45.

What sealed this realization that the human spirit is the holy spirit—it was an epiphany to me—were two texts from the Dead Sea Scrolls: CD 7.3–4 and 5.11–13. CD 7.4 reads לא ישׁקץ אישׁ את רוח קדשׁיו. A human being in this line can defile his (or her) holy spirit. This interpretation is borne out by a comparison with similar language in CD 12.11, which reads, אל ישׁקץ אישׁ את נפשׁו; in CD 12.11, the language is nearly the same as in CD 7.3–4—but with נפשׁ rather than רוח. Further, CD 7.3–4 incorporates the language of Lev 11:43 and 20:25, but in CD 7.4, נפשׁ of Lev 11:43 is represented by רוח קדשׁיו. The similarities between CD 7.3–4 and these texts from Leviticus are striking:

CD

7

.

3

–

4

: לא ישׁקץ אישׁ את רוח קדשׁיו

Lev

11

:

43

: אל־תשׁקצו את־נפשׁתיכם

Lev

20

:

25

: ולא־תשׁקצו את־נפשׁתיכם

Once again, נפשׁ is represented in CD 7.3–4 by רוח. Defiling oneself in Leviticus is represented in the Damascus Document by defiling one’s holy spirit.

Something similar happens in CD 5.11–13, in which the author contends that wicked priests have defiled their holy spirits. The plural pronominal suffix in the construct chain, רוח קדשׁיהם, makes it clear that it is their holy spirit, not God’s, which they defile.

I regarded these texts to be of a piece with LAB 18:10–11, since they understand the human spirit, the self, to be a holy spirit. In both instances, the holy spirit is not what comes upon a person at a given time but the life-breath or self that is within for one’s entire life.

The Spirit Within in Jewish Scripture

From this perspective, I began to argue that what in English is subdivided into wind, breath, and spirit should not in Hebrew be so readily divvied up. Wind, spirit, and breath, I would write in many places, have much more in common with one another, rooted as they are in one Hebrew word, rûaḥ. This is nowhere more evident than in Ezekiel’s vision of the valley of very many, very dry bones, in which the Hebrew word rûaḥ, which occurs ten times, must be translated into English variously as breath, wind(s), and Spirit (Ezek 37:1–14). I came to the conclusion that the frequent slicing and dicing of rûaḥ in contemporary studies of rûaḥ in the Bible is unwarranted. I would, therefore, write in A Boundless God that

it is impossible to capture in English translation the drama of the original Hebrew, where all three English words—breath, wind, and spirit—are one: rûaḥ. Ezekiel repeats this word in order to emphasize that the one and only rûaḥ of God inspires the resurrection of Israel—a resurrection that is at once a creation like adam’s (rûaḥ as breath), a rush of vitality (rûaḥ as winds), and a promise of fidelity in their homeland (rûaḥ as life-giving spirit). The beating of the drum of rûaḥ is simultaneously personal, cosmic, and national; to subdivide this word, as translators are compelled to do, is to lose the power of ambiguity, by which Ezekiel piles up the connotations of rûaḥ to pound resurrection into Israel’s deadened psyche.²⁰

In this light, as well as in the light of my study of Second Temple Judaism, I began to propose that the divine spirit—the holy spirit or spirit of God—in many instances of Jewish Scripture should be understood as the lifelong spirit-breath existing as a gift within human beings. Once I realized this, the rest of my research fell like dominoes, as I began to explore texts that typically were understood to reflect a belief in rûaḥ coming to a human being through outpouring, filling, or resting upon. I suggested instead that rûaḥ, in these texts, represents the lifelong presence of God within human beings from birth to death. Texts featuring Joseph (Gen 41:38), artisans (Exod 28:3; 31:1–6; 35:30—36:5), Joshua (Num 27:18–23; Deut 34:9), Job (Job 12:7–10; 27:3–4; 32:16–20), Daniel (Dan 4–6), the prophet Micah (Mic 3:5–8), and a scribe (Sir 39:1–6), as well as some psalms (e.g., Ps 51; 104:29–30), upon close scrutiny, became exemplars of the belief that the spirit within was a lifelong presence rather than a power given at a time for a time.

This was not, at that time, an easy position to hold. As I was developing this perspective, I participated in a conference at Marquette University, hosted in 1998 by Brad Hinze and Lyle Dabney. In response to a paper I delivered, in which I argued this point, Jürgen Moltmann lifted a pitcher of water, poured it into a glass, and said something to this effect: I do not think the difference between pouring and filling is a very big one. He was clearly unconvinced and unwilling to accept the distinction I attempted to draw between outpouring and infilling.

Was Moltmann right? Is filling tantamount to receiving what is outpoured? Had I created a (outpoured) tempest in a (infilled) teapot? Even more than a decade later, as I was on the verge of publishing Filled with the Spirit, I still had some doubts. Then Allen Myers, my quiet but intrepid editor at Eerdmans, asked me to add a discussion of the verb filled, and the pin dropped. I documented how the Hebrew verb מלא often refers less to initial filling than to completeness or topping up or fulfilling. A skin is filled to the brim with water (Gen 21:19), a bag with grain (42:25), a horn with oil (1 Sam 16:1).²¹ A pregnancy comes to term—is filled (Gen 25:24). A period of purification is completed—filled (Lev 12:4, 6).²² Spaces, too, are filled. When Egyptian houses are filled with swarms of flies, more than a few flies can be expected (Exod 8:17 [Heb.]). When the hem of God’s robe fills the temple, the image is not of God’s entering the temple but of God’s presence already there and God’s robe filling the sanctuary to the full (Isa 6:1). When Jeremiah protests that the land is filled with idols, he means to say that it is rife with idolatry (Jer 16:18). When the Jordan fills its banks, the river floods those banks (Josh 3:15).²³ From this perspective, the simple phrase, whom I have filled with spirit of wisdom (my trans.), as in Exod 28:3, suggests bringing to fruition or completing or filling to the brim—fulfilling—rather than initially endowing someone with the spirit.

The Spirit Within: Implications

With the publication of Filled with the Spirit in 2009, the implications of this perspective became immediately apparent to readers. Several Pentecostal and charismatic scholars, in particular, engaged that book in roundtable discussions in both Pneuma: The Journal of the Society for Pentecostal Studies and Journal of Pentecostal Studies. These trenchant discussions led to the decision to spell out in detail the exegetical and theological implications of my perspective in a lengthy conclusion to Inspired, which is included in the third volume of these selected works, so I will only offer a sketch here.

The first implication is that those outside of Christianity receive the spirit from birth. Pentecostal theologian Frank Macchia, in his response to Filled with the Spirit in Pneuma, drew attention to the inevitability of this conclusion:

This is indeed the subsequence issue on which we Pentecostals should be expending scholarly energy. As revivalists, we bathe in the glow of born-again Christianity and accent even more than other evangelicals the supernatural character of the Spirit’s presence as a gift given to those who embrace Christ by faith. This accent on the supernatural and eschatological nature of the filling of the Spirit is not problematic in itself, except that we tend to think that we can only highlight this by neglecting the Spirit that inspires human wisdom and virtue from below, so to speak. We thus tend to see life outside of (or prior to) Christ as dark, lost, and devoid of the Holy Spirit.²⁴

If Israelites in Jewish Scripture are portrayed as possessing the spirit as a lifelong presence, then the presence of the spirit cannot be sequestered within the confines of the Christian community.

The second implication of The Spirit in First Century Judaism, Filled with the Spirit, and Inspired is that the theological distinction between the spirit of creation and the spirit of salvation, or, in other terms, spiritus vivificans and spiritus sanctificans, does not characterize, on the whole, Jewish Scripture. The obliteration of this distinction is compatible with the theology of Jürgen Moltmann, who wrote in Christian terms that the experience of the eschatological reality of the Spirit leads to the conclusion that this is the same Spirit in whose power the Father, through the Son, has created the world, and preserves it against annihilating Nothingness.²⁵ Wolfhart Pannenberg concurred: according to the biblical testimony, the Spirit of God is the life-giving principle, to which all creatures owe life, movement, and activity.²⁶

The third implication is the realization that the distinction between holy spirit and human spirit is overdrawn. For this reason, I often do not capitalize the phrase holy spirit. This practice has not always been amenable to readers, but I am certain that distinguishing the human and divine spirits by way of capitalization violates a key biblical conception of rûaḥ. There are, of course, many occasions in Jewish Scripture on which rûaḥ refers clearly only to physical breath, but there are many others on which divine rûaḥ and human rûaḥ overlap and, in so doing, fuse the physical and spiritual dimensions of life.²⁷

The Spirit and Inspired Wisdom

The mitigation of the distinction between human and divine spirits, between the spirit of creation and the spirit of salvation, between spiritus vivificans and spiritus sanctificans, is not the whole story of the spirit within. There is another dimension to the reality that the human spirit is a divine spirit; I garnered an appreciation for this dimension, too, in Tübingen during the mid-nineties. I first wrote about this aspect of inspiration in The Spirit in First Century Judaism (1997), though I worked it out fully during the following decade, as I penned Filled with the Spirit (2009). Four years later, I probed more copiously the implications of this research trajectory in Inspired: The Holy Spirit and the Mind of Faith (2013). My thoughts continued to develop as I explored this vein more deeply and with respect to more and more literary texts.

The Spirit and Wisdom in Second Temple Judaism

During my year in Tübingen, in 1993–94, I became aware that authors of the Second Temple period frequently attributed a correct interpretation of Scripture (e.g., Philo’s allegorical interpretation) to inspiration by the spirit. At the same time, I took note of David Aune’s article on charismatic exegesis,²⁸ as well as an impressive list of writings culled by Martin Hengel—my Alexander von Humboldt mentor in Tübingen—about this phenomenon, which led him to the conclusion that the Spirit was less effective at that time through direct inspiration. The influence of the Spirit was more frequently felt via the charismatic interpretation of Scripture. Hengel continued, The formation of the canon did not necessarily have to result in a cessation of prophecy. On the contrary, only someone who was filled with the Spirit could really adequately interpret the words of Holy Scripture which were inspired by God, but were often very obscure.²⁹ While I might have been prone to identify more instances of direct inspiration than Hengel did, such studies as his and Aune’s, combined with others I have documented in The Spirit in First Century Judaism, led me to a thoroughgoing analysis of Second Temple references to what we might loosely call charismatic or inspired exegesis.

Many of those texts, such as Ezra 9:20, Josephus’ J.W. 3.351–353, and various passages from the Dead Sea Scrolls, such as 1QH 20.14–16 (1QH 12.11–13 in Sukenik’s edition cited in earlier publications), connect inspiration and interpretation without describing the mechanics of charismatic exegesis. 1QH 20.14–16, for instance, offers a classic statement of inspiration without a clear indication of the mode of inspiration:

And I, the Instructor, I know you, my God, by the spirit that you have placed in me. Faithfully have I heeded your wondrous secret counsel. By your holy spirit you have [o]pened up knowledge within me through the mystery of your wisdom and the fountainhead of [your] pow[er . . . ]³⁰

In Jerusalem, Ben Sira claimed inspiration as well. According to Ben Sira, inspiration arises when a scribe ponders the mysteries of Scripture. He then pours out his own wisdom. It is not clear whether the spirit within Ben Sira is thought to be the lifelong spirit or a fresh infilling with the spirit of wisdom.³¹ In either case, Ben Sira traces scribal interpretation to inspiration.

In another corner of the Mediterranean, Philo of Alexandria attributed his allegorical interpretation to divine inspiration. Yet his models of inspired interpretation are hardly monolithic. In his autobiographical reflections, Philo offers three distinctive experiences of inspiration: (1) ecstatic inspiration (Migr. 34–35); (2) the ascent of the rational mind (Spec. 3.1–6); and (3) divine prompting of the rational mind (Cher. 27–28; Somn. 2.252).

In Migr. 34–35, Philo recounts what has happened to him a thousand times. He comes prepared to write but finds himself empty. Yet he has contrasting experiences as well:

On other occasions, I have approached my work empty and suddenly become full, the ideas falling in a shower from above and being sown invisibly, so that under the influence of the Divine possession I have been filled with corybantic frenzy and been unconscious of anything, place, persons present, myself, words spoken, lines written. For I obtained language, ideas, an enjoyment of light, keenest vision, pellucid distinctiveness of objects, such as might be received through the eyes as the result of clearest shewing.³²

There is ecstasy here—possession, corybantic frenzy, and unconsciousness—each with the aim of interpreting Scripture.

Philo delineates another mode of inspiration that yields exegetical insight in Spec. 3.1–6. As a philosopher given temporary respite from civic duties, he is wafted on the winds of knowledge through the ascent of his mind; during these episodes, he peers into the deepest meaning of Moses’ writings.³³

A third mode of inspiration, in which his keen mind is sharpened further with an exegetical insight, Philo depicts in Cher. 27–29 and Somn. 2.252. In Cher. 27–29, Philo hears a word in his own soul, which is customarily (εἰωθυίας) possessed. On these occasions, Philo’s immediate task is to solve an exegetical dilemma, such as why the biblical text refers to two, rather than to one, cherubim. The conundrum is solved when the spirit teaches him with instruction that is directed toward his alert mind. In Somn. 2.252, Philo receives instruction from the divine spirit, his customary friend. The word customary in these autobiographical reflections evokes Socrates’ daemon, which Plato had referred to as the customary prophetic inspiration of the daemon (Apol. 40A), the daemonic and customary sign (Phaedr. 242B), and my customary daemonic sign (Euthyd. 272E; see further Gen. Socr. 589D). The association between Socrates and Philo preserves in this model of inspiration the ascendance of the alert mind—Philo’s mind.

I encountered other clear associations of inspiration and interpretation in the writings of Second Temple Judaism, including Josephus’ claim to be inspired so as to understand baffling written oracles (J.W. 3.351–353). More illuminating still was the late first- or early second-century text, 4 Ezra 14, in which Ezra’s mind is inspired in a wakeful state to write ninety-four books. Promised that the lamp of understanding (lucernam intellectus), will remain lit throughout his experience, he drinks a cup, and his heart pours forth understanding (intellectum), while wisdom (sapientia) increases within him. These ninety-four books contain "the spring of understanding [intellectus], the fountain of wisdom [sapientiae], and the river of knowledge [scientiae]" (14:47). The impression that Ezra is inspired without the onset of ecstasy is confirmed by the significant detail that Ezra’s understanding and wisdom overflowed because (nam) his own spirit retained its memory (nam spiritus meus conservabat memoriam). Loss of memory, I noted in my study of Liber antiquitatum biblicarum, is a clear sign of ecstasy, and this is precisely what does not happen to Ezra. Ezra is not an ecstatic when he produces these books. The assertion that Ezra retained his memory distinguishes his experience from the ecstatic ones that Kenaz and Saul experienced, according to LAB 28:10 and 62:2.³⁴

Placing an emphasis upon the inspired interpretation of Scripture meant confronting opposing perspectives. First was the scholarship of Johannes Lindblom, who, as I put it, unearthed a few questionable hints of ecstasy in Israelite literature.³⁵ Second was the outsize, even programmatic, role King Saul and bands of roving ecstatic prophets played in scholarship; I challenged this perspective, at least in part, in Prophecy in Ancient Israel: The Case of the Ecstatic Elders.³⁶ Saul’s experience should not be the paradigm of prophetic inspiration in Israelite literature. The third headwind I encountered, in those instances when I attributed charismatic exegesis to the lifelong spirit within, was the burgeoning of Pentecostal scholarship, with scholars such as Roger Stronstad, who devoted considerable attention to the topic of the Charismatic Spirit in Old Testament Times.³⁷ My findings contrasted with all of these trajectories. In my opinion, the drama of the spirit eclipsed in scholarship a more subtle presence; an accent upon the irruption of the spirit obscured the steady reality of the spirit, the source of inspired insight. That steady spirit is often understood in Second Temple Jewish literature, as we saw earlier, as the life-breath of God—not just the physical life-breath, but the life-breath that, when cultivated in a variety of ways, becomes the font of insight.

The Spirit and Wisdom in Jewish Scripture

I did not have to probe far into Jewish Scripture to find the spirit as the lifelong presence—the spirit as life itself—within human beings that becomes, in the lives of the virtuous, the source of insight. This phenomenon would later—in the Persian, Greek, and Roman eras—become the inspired interpretation of Scripture, but it was not that yet; to refer to the inspired interpretation of Scripture prior to the Persian period (or later) would be anachronistic. Still, the seedbed of charismatic exegesis existed deep within Israelite literature.

The book of the eighth-century BCE Judean prophet Micah supplies the earliest prophetic oracle that portrays the spirit as a permanent presence within, which is the source of power, justice, and might. After excoriating his prophetic opponents, paid professional seers and diviners who depend upon transitory visions and ephemeral revelations, Micah stakes his claim. But as for me, asserts Micah:

I am filled with power,

with the spirit of the

Lord

,

and with justice and might,

to declare to Jacob his transgression

and to Israel his sin. (Mic

3

:

8

)

The rûaḥ that fills Micah is not an impermanent endowment but a permanent one within him that inspires him to live justly and to speak powerfully. The fulcrum of this interpretation is that Micah is filled with three permanent qualities: strength, justice, and might. Justice, for example, is so essential that Micah begins his cross-examination of the leaders with the rhetorical question, Should you not know justice? (Mic 3:1; see 6:8). The justice with which Micah is filled, like the spirit with which he is filled, is a permanent part of his character, not an impermanent endowment that comes and goes. Micah’s experience is the polar opposite of paid seers, who have short-lived visions.

In another corner of Scripture, the story of Joseph, an Egyptian Pharaoh asks, Can we find anyone else like this—one in whom is the spirit of God? (Gen 41:38). He answers his own question: Since God is making known all of this to you, there is no one discerning and wise like you (41:39, my trans.). The connection between rûaḥ and wisdom is patent in this question and answer. Yet how should that connection be understood? A backward glance at the story of Joseph suggests that his inspired insight was not the product of a latter-day filling with the spirit. Joseph had honed his skills at dream interpretation in his youth (37:5–11) and in an Egyptian prison, where he interpreted the dreams of a cupbearer and butler (40:1–23). Joseph had honed his administrative skills as well over both Potiphar’s house and in prison (39:6, 23). Now, Joseph’s acuity at interpreting dreams and administrating the contiguous realities of feast and famine, Pharaoh attributes to the spirit of God, which, readers know, has been at work long before this moment.

This association between inspired insight and rûaḥ, understood as a permanent presence, emerges again in the book of Exodus (Exod 25:1—31:11; 35:4—36:3). In the context of tabernacle-building, rûaḥ plays a vital role. God tells Moses, And you shall speak to all the wise of heart whom I have filled with a spirit of wisdom, and they will make Aaron’s vestments (Exod 28:3, my trans.). The association of the spirit with wisdom—God fills artisans with a spirit of wisdom—is incontestable in this bit of instruction, even if translations tend to obscure the connection by translating rûaḥ in terms of skill rather than spirit (e.g., NRSV, NIV).

In light of the connection between spirit and wisdom, I began to ask this question of the artisans’ inspiration: Is this the sort of filling that has taken place through a lifelong cultivation of wisdom or through an influx of rûaḥ? Has God filled the artisans incrementally, as their skills developed, or recently, in preparation for this moment?

I noticed that, in Exod 28:3, God selects these skilled laborers, not so that they may receive a charismatic endowment of the spirit, but because they had already demonstrated their skill.³⁸ The skilled whom God chooses to build the tabernacle and spin, sow, and weave Aaron’s garments are all the wise of heart whom I have filled with a spirit of wisdom. The artisans are already wise. The artisans are already filled with rûaḥ. The artisans are already artisans!

I noticed as well that the description of the artisans as the wise of heart whom I filled with spirit of wisdom generates a correspondence between wise-of-heart and spirit-of-wisdom, suggesting that rûaḥ is a lifelong presence, since heart, with which it lies in a close parallel—perhaps synonymous—relationship, is indeed a lifelong presence.

Add to this the realization that the Hebrew verb מלא suggests filling full. In this light, artisans, who have spent their lives devoted to cultivating their skills, are now full to the brim with spirit and wisdom, equipped finally and fully to create a tent for God’s presence in the wilderness and resplendent clothing for Aaron, the high priest.³⁹

This conception of inspiration comes to the fore in descriptions of the artisans’ leaders. God says to Moses:

Then Moses said to the Israelites: See, the LORD has called by name Bezalel son of Uri son of Hur, of the tribe of Judah; he has filled him with divine spirit, with wisdom, intelligence, and knowledge in every kind of craft, to devise artistic designs, to work in gold, silver, and bronze, in cutting stones for setting, and in carving wood, in every kind of craft. And he has inspired him to teach, both him and Oholiab son of Ahisamach, of the tribe of Dan. He has filled them with wisdom of heart to do every kind of work done by an artisan or by a designer or by an embroiderer in blue, purple, and crimson yarns, and in fine linen, or by a weaver—by any sort of artisan or skilled designer. (Exod

35

:

30

–

35

, my trans.; see

31

:

1

–

6

;

36

:

1

–

3

)

In this depiction, the correspondence between spirit and heart, which characterized the artisans in Exod 28:3, occurs with utter precision:

35

:

31

: [God] has filled him [Bezalel] with spirit of God, with wisdom . . . for every craft (my trans.)

35

:

35

: [God] filled them [Bezalel and Oholiab] with wisdom of heart . . . to do every craft (my trans.)

Alongside the presence of wisdom-of-heart, God’s filling with spirit of God, wisdom, solidifies the relationship between the spirit and wisdom; these skilled artisans are selected because of their skill, because of their wisdom, because of the rûaḥ within them. The mirror images of heart and spirit also suggest that filling with rûaḥ ought to be understood as the filling full of a lifelong spirit that is