Pneuma and Ruah Compared

Lee Price: Someone mentioned to me an ongoing discussion in the halls of academe about whether/how much the Hebrew "ruach" overlaps the Greek "pneu." Any thoughts? Any sources you'd suggest?

Lenny Levin: My educated guess is -- a lot. Compare the Greek New Testament with the Delitsch Hebrew translation of it -- that would be a good test. Please direct me to a source of the current discussion!

Lee Price: Well, the person who told me the discussion exists is too crabby to risk emailing at the moment, but I'll see him Tuesday and ask then. The difference is what's commending itself to my attention: "ruach" ultimately translated itself into "action" whereas "pneu" translated itself into "spirit."

Yazmin Lebbe May I suggest another source? Please refer to Itzchak Salkinson's Hebrew version of the Brit HaChadaschah.

Lenny Levin: It is my observation that the attempt to conceptualize something completely "non-material" generally starts with the thing in our experience that (though material) most closely approximates the non-materiality that we are trying to allude t...o. This is most commonly air (or wind, or breath -- all different forms of the same thing). The word "spirit" retains its material sense in usages like "respiration", "spirits of ammonia," etc. The Greek "pneuma" and Hebrew "ruah" both originally meant the material substance that we call "air=breath=wind" and by transfer of meaning through metaphor came to mean that which is completely immaterial. Moreover, the expression "ruah adonai" or "ruah elohim" is used in the Bible in a number of contexts -- creation, prophetic inspiration, influx of supernatural strength (as with Samson) -- all of which became imported into the Greek "pneuma" with the translation of the Hebrew Bible into Greek. The New Testament usage is clearly based on the Old Testament usage, with additional inflections for which parallels can be found in rabbinic literature. Those who want to build an essential dichotomy between the two are afflicted with an "Us Versus Them" competitive mentality that finds little support in the facts. That's my take, for better or worse.

Lee Price: Et tu Lenny. Crabby, crabby. I gather(though am admittedly too under the gun to check it out) that "pneu" has a distinct derivation stemming from its connection with " logos," and the comparative superiority of (pneu-borne) speech over writing. Doesn't seem to jive with the idea of being book- or written-law centered. Sorry if I offend your liberal humanist sensibilities:)

Lenny Levin: Not at all. Derrida was a brilliant philosopher in part because he was so brilliant in arguing on behalf of outrageous ideas. The American Heritage Dictionary has an appendix with lots of ancient word-stems. It lists "pneu": "To breathe...." (imitative root) Germanic: Fniu. Old English Fneosan, to sneeze. Greek: Pnein, to breathe. Derived words include apnea, dyspnea, pneuma, pneumatic, etc. My tires are pneumatic because they have air in them, not speech. If they spoke, I would take them to the service garage to be checked out. Call me crabby. I can take it!

Lee Price: I think it would be instructive to see how Plato uses "pneu." In the Phaedrus or the Phaedo or one of those dialogues starting with "ph" there's some myth purportedly from Egypt in which speech (logos) is held to be better than writing. ...And if "pneu" is associated there with logos, then it's better than writing, because Plato created the logos and saw that it was good. And then wrote it down, but that's another matter. Whereas, "ruach" has no relation to writing that I know of -- I don't think that relationship is on the Biblical or the rabbinic radar screen. They may indeed both mean "breath" or "air" -- the question is, if the connotations are different does that make them mean different things? Well, yes and no, no and yes. That's about as far as I can go, since Mrs. Cheshvan now has to embark upon shabbat grocery shopping.

Lenny Levin: That can be tested. The Greek original of the Platonic dialogues is available online. Can you find the English passages?

Lee Price: These particular ones are in Phaedrus -- 276a-b seems good since it compares "living speech" to written discourse." But I would be interested to do a search on Perseus to see of pneu and logos ever turn up together with "writing" (I forget what it is in Greek) in Plato. I'll try to do this next Thurs when things have eased a bit... Shabbat shalom!

Lenny Levin: I await the results of your Perseus search. In the mean time, the source in Phaedrus 276a-b is a rich one for our purpose (even though the word "pneuma" in its various forms doesn't occur in it). Socrates is arguing that oral speech is more alive and fruitful of true instruction than a dead letter that can give only what was put into it, not any new spontaneous wisdom. Socrates praises “the sort of discourse that goes together with knowledge, and is written in the soul (psyche) of the learner, that can defend itself, and knows to whom it should speak…” Phaedrus elaborates: “You mean no dead discourse (eidotos logon), but the living speech ([logon] zonta kai empsychon), of which the written discourse (dikaios) may fairly be called a kind of image (eidolon).” To be sure, the word “pneuma” (spirit) does not occur in this passage in any of its forms, but we have two occurrences of “psyche” in proximity to “logos.” Maybe somewhere else you will find “pneuma” and “logos” in similar proximity. What would it prove?

First, I find delightful layers of irony in the fact that Plato (whose medium was writing) is making Socrates (whose medium was exclusively oral speech, for he wrote nothing) praise the virtues of the oral word over the written word (which I am guessing was the chief morsel of insight that Derrida gleaned from this passage). The passage uses the term “logos” evenhandedly to refer to the word in both its oral and written form. What is superior to the oral form of the word is that it is living and breathing — it can adapt itself by changing and modulating to the living event in which it participates, whereas the written word is frozen in its current form. The oral word is “pneumatic”—breathing, if you will, just as it is the product of the breath of the person who utters it. If so, the force of “pneumatic” in such an argument would not mean “pneuma = logos” but “pneuma = breathing / oral” —that is to say, the oral word has a pneumatic quality that the written word lacks. This is a delightful piece of insight but hardly justifies equating the meaning of “pneuma” with “logos.”

Second, as the argument that you cite claims to contrast “pneuma” with “ruah” in this respect, the relevant question would be: does the association of “ruah” with “speech” occur anywhere in the Hebrew canon? This is a loaded question, because though the Bible presents itself to us in “written” form, it is decidedly the product of an oral culture. Not surprisingly, as a lookup of the word “ruah” in a Biblical concordance will reveal, there are several associations of “ruah” with orality, especially with the phenomenon of oral prophecy inspired by God’s ruah. (See for instance Numbers 11:24-29, I Kings 22:23-24). Ruah is associated with life itself (as in Genesis 7:15 and Ezekiel 37:10). There is at least one famous association of “ruah” with a spirit of wisdom (Isaiah 11:2) There are two occurrences of “ruah” in conjunction with “mouth” or “lips.” Psalm 33:6 declares: “By the word (davar) of the Lord the heavens were made, and by the breath of His mouth (u-ve-ruah piv) all their host.” Here you have the juxtaposition of “logos” and “pneuma” in the Septuagint translation of the verse. The other occurrence is in Isaiah 11:4, speaking of the Messianic ruler: “He shall judge the poor with equity and decide with justice for the lowly of the land. He shall strike down a land with the rod (Septuagint: “logos”) of his mouth, and slay the wicked with the breath of his lips (be-ruah sefatav — Septuagint has “en pneumati dia cheileon”). The plain sense here is that the oral judgment that he pronounces dooms the wicked; you might want to use it in support of the conjunction of word and action.

Bottom line: Both word and action proceed from spirit, whether you are speaking in Greek or Hebrew. I don't see any difference between "pneuma" and "ruah" in this regard. In fact, "pneuma" is the standard translation of "ruah" in the Greek Bible, as these instances illustrate.