Is "Holy Ghost" a Bad Translation of the Hebrew Ruach haKodesh?

Holy Spirit or Holy Ghost is translated from the Greek πνευματος αγιου (pnuematos agiou) and Hebrew רוח קדשׁ (ruach kadosh).

Many people feel like "Holy Ghost" is a bizarre and even sacrilegious way to translate this term, but this feeling is based more on poor education than on any actual problem with the translation.

The word "ghost" comes from the Old English word gast, which meant breath, wind, spirit, angel, demon, etc.

The word "spirit" comes from the Latin word spiritus, which meant breath, wind, spirit, angel, demon, etc.

At the time that the KJV was translated from Greek and Hebrew into English, if someone wanted to talk about the spirit of God, they were just as likely (maybe even more likely, since the common people were more familiar with Germanic-rooted words) to use the word ghost as the word spirit. They were perfect synonyms. The two words were interchangeable.

In today's English we tend to associate the word ghost only with the spirits of the dead and the word spirit with the spirits of supernatural beings. But that doesn't change the actual meanings of the words. Notice that I said "spirits of..." in both cases. That's because the words mean essentially the same thing, and it is still perfectly acceptable in modern English to refer to the "ghost" of a dead person as a "spirit".

The only two real differences between the words "ghost" and "spirit".

  1. The two words came from different ancestral languages, Proto-German (via Old English) and Latin (via Old French).
  2. We are in the habit of using one word in some contexts and the other word in other contexts.

The definitions of the words haven't really changed. It's only our informal usage of the words that have changed somewhat since the KJV was translated.

Having said all that, a modern English translation of the Scriptures shouldn't use the word "ghost" to refer to the Holy Spirit because it does confuse people who are only used to hearing that word in the context of the spirits of dead people.

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