Dozens of Mistakes

What if I told you that your Bible has many errors? What if I told you that the translators of your Bible have made dozens of mistakes? You’d want to know what those mistakes are, wouldn’t you? And you’d feel very deceived if you found out that I was right, and there are indeed dozens of mistakes in your Bible.

The bad news is that what I’ve said is true, your Bible indeed has many errors. The good news is that it’s not that the translators have added, removed, or changed any words. It’s that they’ve not used case properly. What is case? Capitalization. The translators of your Bible haven’t used upper-case and lower-case as they ought—specifically they have erred with the word spirit.

Capitalization

In English, as with most modern languages, capitalization adds significant meaning to a word. For example: Jade/jade. The first is a girl’s name, and the second is a green semi-precious stone. Another example is: Cork/cork. The first is a county in Ireland, and the second is a stopper for wine bottles. If you say “I love jade,” the meaning is much different from “I love Jade.” And if you say “There’s nothing like Cork,” you’re speaking geographically while “There’s nothing like cork” would mean you’re bottling wine and have decided not to use a metallic screw cap.

Translating the word ruach from the original Hebrew into English, and pneuma from the original Greek into English will render the word spirit. It is an easy task for a Bible translator to know where to put the word spirit, but deciding on whether to capitalize or make spirit lower-case involves strong hermeneutic and interpretive skills.

Translators must decide every time they see the word spirit in the original language whether it refers to the Holy Spirit or another spirit--like the human spirit or an angel. There’s no way to avoid this duty. They must decide on case in every instance of the word spirit because neither the Hebrew nor the Greek original texts have capital letters.

Here's an example of John 3:16 in the original Greek. Notice how the letters are the same size and also pressed together so that one word is indistinguishable from the other.

The rules of grammar dictate that translators must use a capital S to indicate when the word spirit refers to the Holy Spirit, and a lowercase s to indicate a human spirit, an angelic spirit, or the spirit within an animal, or even within Jesus (who is a life-giving spirit according to 1 Corinthians 15:45), or the Heavenly Father, who too is a spirit (John 4:24).

If you arrange side-by-side different Bible versions of any verse that contains the word spirit, you’ll see that they disagree. Take John 4:24, a passage taken from Jesus' conversation with the Samaritan woman, as an example:

New International Version (NIV):

God is spirit, and his worshipers must worship in the Spirit and in truth.

Lexham English Biblee (LEB):

God is spirit, and the ones who worship him must worship in spirit and truth.

New King James Version (NKJV):

God is Spirit, and those who worship Him must worship in spirit and truth.

Can you tell which of the above translations uses the correct capitalization? It’s the second one, the Lexham English Bible. To discover why, you need to follow two basic principles.

The Two Principles

1. Determine if there is a Contrast (body/spirit or flesh/spirit)

If the passage contrasts body and spirit, then spirit is lower-case. The contrast may also be between the flesh and the spirit, or material things and spiritual things. Take the following verses as an example:

[God sent Jesus so that…] the righteous requirement of the Law might be fully met in us, who do not live according to the flesh but according to the spirit (Romans 8:4).

Those who live according to the flesh have their minds set on what the flesh desires; but those who live in accordance with the spirit have their minds set on what the spirit desires (Romans 8:5).

The mind governed by the flesh is death, but the mind governed by the spirit is life and peace. The mind governed by the flesh is hostile to God; it does not submit to God’s Law, nor can it do so (Romans 8:6-7).

Those who are in the realm of the flesh cannot please God. You, however, are not in the realm of the flesh but are in the realm of the spirit, if indeed the Spirit of God lives in you (Romans 8:8-9).

2. Study the Context

In the case of John 4:24 (above), the Samaritan woman was using the smokescreen of the ethnic conflict between the Jews and the Samaritans to avoid having to deal with her need to repent of sin. Jesus wisely found a way to cancel her discrimination. He focused on what was truly important: her spirit, the essence of her being.

Listen to what he said to her right before his famous statement ‘God is spirit.’

… true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and in truth (John 4:23).

Jesus countered the woman’s argument about places (such as Samaria and Jerusalem) and ethnic groups (Samaritans and Jews) and focused on what is really important: the heart of man, his spirit. Then he showed why the human spirit is important. It’s because God Himself is a spirit-being. In other words, Jesus is saying that like God, we humans must act spiritually. We are spiritual beings like he is, so if we’re going to worship God—who is a spirit—we have to worship in spirit.

Quiz

Examine the following three versions of John 6:63 and check to see if you’ve got the idea. Which version is using capitalization correctly?

New International Version (NIV)

The Spirit gives life; the flesh counts for nothing. The words I have spoken to you—they are full of the Spirit and life.

Lexam English Bible (LEB)

The Spirit is the one who gives life; the flesh profits nothing. The words that I have spoken to you are spirit and are life.

American Standard Version (ASV, 1901)

It is the spirit that giveth life; the flesh profiteth nothing: the words that I have spoken unto you are spirit, and are life.

Which one is right?

Answer: The third, the ASV.

Why? The meaning is best expressed with this orthography: ‘the spirit gives life' because there is no dramatic switch from one sentence to the next of a different meaning for the same word.

Therefore, the meaning of the word spirit remains the same. Jesus was talking about one topic: that our spirit is our source of life. The human spirit is the life of a man. Jesus makes that clear by contrasting our spirit with our flesh. The flesh, Jesus says, has no eternal value. It profits nothing.

The Context: Spiritual Bread

As always, we must consider the context. If you have read John 5:32 to John 6:62, you'll recall that Jesus is teaching that he is the Bread from Heaven. Bread is a staple food. Staple foods are our source of life. Jesus is talking about how he gives life and he sums up his argument with these words:

I am the Living Bread that came down from Heaven. Whoever eats this bread will live forever. This bread is my flesh, which I will give for the life of the World (John 6:51).

To get his Living Bread message across, Jesus contrasts the spiritual eating of his body with the literal eating of his body. Spiritually, we eat the Lord’s body through the Lord’s Supper. To eat his body literally is unimaginable as it would be cannibalism. And that’s precisely what Jesus is getting at when he says ‘The words that I have spoken to you are spirit and are life.’

Jesus wanted his hearers to understand that he was speaking spiritual words. By spiritual, Jesus didn’t mean “metaphorical” or “symbolic.” He meant true. The spiritual dimension of things is the essential truth of things. The spiritual reality of things is their fundamental reality. The spiritual dimension is the dimension in which we find Truth.

The spirit within you is not a metaphor for what you are. It really is what you are! It’s your essence, your source of life. Take the Samaritan woman as an example. Her genetics as a descendant of Jacob, her location in Samaria, and her Samaritan ethnicity—they were all superficial aspects of who she was. Jesus didn’t waste his time with superficial matters like gender, ethnicity, and religion. He hit at the heart of each person’s existence—their spirit. That’s what matters.

The Spirit Gives Life

Back to John 6:63. Here it is in the most accurate version:

It is the spirit that giveth life; the flesh profiteth nothing: the words that I have spoken unto you are spirit and are life (ASV).

It’s true that the Holy Spirt is the Life-Giver, and if you isolate the phrase ‘the spirit gives life’ then spirit certainly could be capitalized based on that principle—a good principle. However, we are not allowed to simply isolate a Bible verse on a whim. That's not the right way to interpret the Bible.

The context of this passage begins in John 6:27 where Jesus started talking about ‘…food that endures to Eternal Life.’ From that point onward, our Lord was speaking spiritual words, which is why he said ‘the words that I have spoken to you are spirit and life.’

If you understand the context, which is that Jesus considered his words to be spiritual, and so he called them spirit and life, then it becomes easy to see what he meant in John 6:63 when he stated 'the spirit gives life.' Jesus meant the same thing he said earlier: that his words, if heard by faith, produce life in us. They become our spiritual bread.

Conclusion

So, we've learned to interpret the word spirit both (a) when it's being compared to the flesh, and (b) from its context. We've learned how to identify some of the errors in our Bibles. Great job!

Now, let's help others to use these Bible interpretation tools to overcome their confusion--a confusion Bible translation teams have produced. Is it our fault they don't know how to use capitalization?