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Acts 2:38 — Holy
"Ghost" or Holy "Spirit"?
Editor's Note: This
response answers a reader's question concerning the ISV's rendering of Acts
2:38.
What is the difference
between the terms "Holy Spirit" and "Holy Ghost" in the New Testament? I use
the KJV.
Oh. That explains the question...
And I wonder why other Bibles
do not use the title "Holy Ghost" in many instances in the New Testament.
For instance...In Acts 2:38 KJV says "ye shall receive the gift of the Holy
Ghost" and in other translations it reads "you shall receive the gift of the
Holy Spirit" Aren't the two "one and the same?"
Yes. They are one and the same. Sort of...
The difference between the two is that the words "Holy Ghost" as used in
the KJV (1611 vintage...) used the 17th century word "ghost", which back
then meant "spirit". Over the centuries, the term "ghost" came to connote
mainly the soul of a dead person, a disembodied spirit imagined usually as
a vague, shadowy or evanescent form, and wandering among or haunting
living persons.
To sum up, in modern English the word "ghost" means the spirit of a dead
person. That's why virtually all modern English translations use the term
"Holy Spirit" to render the biblical language phrases that the KJV
translates as "Holy Ghost". The two English terms mean the same thing.
It's just that "Holy Ghost" is so 17th century, and "Holy Spirit" is so
21st century. The ISV uses "Holy Spirit" instead of "Holy Ghost".
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