Tool Beta
Hebrew and Greek Without Learning Either
A walk through Genesis, the Psalms, and John, plus the key Hebrew and Greek words worth knowing. Each card is a place the English Bibles part company, and what in the Hebrew or Greek made them.
pneuma
Spirit. The same noun means wind and breath, exactly like Hebrew ruach.
John 3:8, in every translation this tool compares.
Imagine one word for a breeze, a sigh and a person's inner life. To a speaker of that language those are obviously the same thing. To you they are three drawers.
Because a whole conversation in John 3 depends on one word covering wind and Spirit, and because the Greek and Hebrew words carry the identical triple range, which is unusual and not accidental.
Versions read spirit, Spirit, wind or breath according to context. One Greek word behind all of them.
πνεῦμα pneuma · G4151
Pneuma covers wind, breath and spirit, human and divine. The Septuagint uses it for Hebrew ruach, and the ranges match closely enough that New Testament writers can build arguments across both languages.
English split the three and capitalises one of them, which is a decision no Greek manuscript ever made.
Capitalisation of Spirit in an English New Testament is an interpretive choice. The manuscripts have no capitals at all.
Spirit is the majority rendering; wind and breath appear where the context forces them.
- John 3:8 uses one word for both halves of the sentence
- Hebrews 1:7 quoting Psalm 104:4
- pneuma for ruach throughout the Septuagint
