The Spirit in the Second Temple Period

Posted on by stufffromthestuff

So far in this series on the evolution of beliefs about the Holy Spirit, we’ve seen how the Old Testament has two streams of thought — the general, in which the Holy Spirit is nothing other than the breath of life that fills all creation, and the particular, in which the Holy Spirit empowers specific people to live out specific callings related to leadership — which are brought together in the later prophetic tradition to look forward to a day when the entire cosmos will be saturated with the Spirit and everyone will receive its empowerment. The interesting thing to me is just how cohesive this story is. If we remember that what we call the Old Testament is actually dozens of separate texts written in different genres by many different authors and editors across centuries and cultures, this fairly simple story is more than a little surprising.

But, of course, history didn’t stop with the return of the exiles and the restoration of Jerusalem. If we assume the first exiles started to return home shortly after 538 BCE (the Persian conquest of Babylon), that leaves roughly six hundred years of history before the time of Jesus and the beginnings of Christianity. While some Protestants have taken to calling this time ‘the period of God’s silence’, since for the most part nothing we have in our Bibles purports to describe events taking place in this time, this is a completely artificial and anachronistic idea. Jews themselves of the time had no sense that their canon of Scripture was closed. There may have been an understanding that the old prophetic ministry had wound down, but they continued to write and circulate texts that many considered to be sacred, and this was a time of incredible religious vitality, creativity, and diversity. The very different forms of Judaism of the period expressed themselves in many different kinds of writings:

And so our task today will be to look at this literature and see how it understands the role(s) of the Spirit of God: Will we see a continuation of the story that emerged in the Hebrew Bible, or will we see something new here?

My original plan was to go through each of the different types of literature one-by-one, but — spoiler alert — that got very repetitive very quickly as, for the most part, the answer is yes, there is an incredible consistency in the understanding of the Holy Spirit, both with what we’ve seen before, and across this diverse body of Second-Temple literature. So, rather than go through each type of writing, I’ll look at this thematically, with some illustrative texts across these genres.

Last week, we looked specifically at the importance of creation theology for the development of a belief in a generalized and pervasive presence of the Holy Spirit in and through the world. If anything, this belief became even more important during the Second Temple Period. This change makes sense when we consider the nation’s changed political circumstances. If you will recall, the major significations of the particular gift of the Spirit were royal and prophetic; since the former kingdoms Israel and Judah were now a small province within a succession of massive empires and therefore had no kings, and since the prophetic ministry was largely understood to have died out, it makes sense that this understanding of the Spirit’s role would take a back seat to a more general, creation-based sensibility. Here are some texts that speak to this belief:

  • “Let all your creatures serve you, for you spoke, and they were made. You sent forth your spirit, and it formed them; there is none that can resist your voice.” (Judith 16.14 (Deuterocanonical))
  • “For your immortal Spirit is in all things.” (Wisdom 12.1 (Deuterocanonical))
  • “for [God’s] spirit is the creator of life” (2 Baruch 23.5 (Apocalyptic))
  • “the eternal life-giving spirit” (Apocalypse of Moses 43.5 (Apocalyptic))
  • “his creation which he had made, he and the Holy Spirit” (4Q422, 7 (Qumran))
  • “For the one he called the breath [ = Spirit] of God, because it is air, which is the most life-giving of things, and of life the causer is God.” (Philo, On Creation VIII (30) (Hellenistic))

This belief also made the Spirit an important aspect of Providence, belief in God’s ongoing presence in and sustaining of creation:

  • “…the Spirit of the Lord has filled the world, and that which holds all things together knows what is said” (Wisdom 1.7)
  • “the creator…has planted his sweet spirit in all” (Sibylline Oracle frag. 1.5 (Apocalyptic))
  • The Spirit “by which the whole universe obtains security … with those things which exist in the air, and in every mixture of plants and animals” (Philo, Questions and Answers on Genesis 2.28).

While God’s Spirit is nothing other than the breath of life for all living things, this is true especially for humanity. This is a particular emphasis in Philo’s writings:

  • “therefore the mind, which was created in accordance with the image and idea of God, may be justly said to partake in his spirit” (Philo, Questions and Answers on Genesis 42).
  • “for humanity was not created out of the earth alone, but also of the divine Spirit” (Philo, Questions and Answers on Genesis 51)
  • “the great Moses has not named the species of the rational soul by a title resembling that of any created being, but has pronounced it an image of the divine and invisible Spirit, making it a coin as it were of sterling metal, stamped and impressed with the seal of God, the impression of which is the eternal word” (Philo, On Planting 18).

We see a similar belief in God’s Spirit being in continuity with the human spirit in several other writers, in their insistence that human life reaches its fullest potential when lived in alignment with God’s Spirit:

  • “The spirit of those who fear the Lord will live, for their hope is in him who saves them.” (Sirach 34.13)
  • “Who has learned your counsel, unless you have given Wisdom and sent your Holy Spirit from on high?” (Wisdom 9:17)
  • “There is in [Wisdom] a Spirit that is intelligent, holy, / unique, manifold, subtle, mobile, clear, unpolluted, / distinct, invulnerable, loving the good, keen, irresistible, beneficent, humane,/ steadfast, sure, free from anxiety, all-powerful, overseeing all, / and penetrating through all spirits that are intelligent, pure, and altogether subtle. “(Wisdom 7.22-23)
  • ”Thou hast upheld me with certain truth / Thou hast delighted me with Thy Holy Spirit” (1QH 9.32 (Qumran))

This kind of creation theology is beautiful, but it was also demanded some challenging and jarring questions for the faithful. After all, if God is present in and through all things, why is the world such an awful place? If God is with God’s chosen people, why are they always oppressed by foreign empires? The ancients were just as concerned with theodicy as we are today. And as we’ve previously seen, for Second Temple Jewish theology, that’s where Apocalyptic came in: Apocalyptic was a popular literary genre that “envisions current events, particularly frightening ones, as immediate expressions of the battle between good and evil, as a means of resistance and hope for oppressed people.” This often involved the Spirit, conceptually if not explicitly, as creation, providence, and re-creation/renewal are closely tied together.

Just as we saw with Joel, an early Apocalyptic work including in the Hebrew Bible, Apocalyptic looked to a future day when the veil would be pulled back and all would be able to see and experience the world in its God-saturated reality:

  • “On that day shall raise one voice, and bless and glorify and exalt in the spirit of faith, and in the spirit of wisdom, and in the spirit of patience, and in the spirit of mercy, and in the spirit of judgement and of peace, and in the spirit of goodness, and shall all say with one voice: “Blessed is He, and may the name of the Lord of Spirits be blessed for ever and ever.”” (1 Enoch 61.11)
  • “For God has sorted them into equal parts until the appointed end and the new creation” (1QS 4:25)
  • “But as for you, if you prepare your hearts, so as to sow in them the fruits of the law, it shall protect you in that time in which the Mighty One is to shake the whole creation. Because after a little time the building of Zion will be shaken in order that it may be built again. But that building will not remain, but will again after a time be rooted out, and will remain desolate until the time. And afterwards it must be renewed in glory, and perfected for evermore.” (2 Baruch 32.1-4)

Apocalypticism also saw a return in a big way to the particular understanding of the Holy Spirit. Again, this makes sense: If this understanding became less relevant in a time when there were no prophets or kings upon whom to pour out the Spirit, looking forward to a day when God’s people would be vindicated, restored to independence, and usher in a new world order of peace and justice by means of a great king (or prophet or priest, or combination of all them) would make it relevant once again.

The particular understanding of the Spirit was not totally absent outside of Apocalypticism. There are a handful of references in the Deuterocanonical Books where it could be playing a role (e.g., Susanna 1.45 (or Daniel 13.45, depending on one’s canon) and 2 Maccabees 7.21), but these diverge from the older pattern as both texts involve God stirring up the spirit already present in the person involved — neither of whom is royal or identified as a prophet. But that older royal and prophetic piece comes back in a big way with the coupling of Apocalypticicm and Messianism, the belief, stemming from texts such as Isaiah, of a future king (or prophet or priest, or even angelic figure) who would be the one through whom God’s people would be restored. Again, many of these texts don’t explicitly talk about the Holy Spirit, but many do use the term Messiah, or ‘Anointed One’, and the whole purpose of anointing a king, priest, or temple, was to set them apart as an agent of the Holy Spirit, so it’s safe to assume the Spirit is envisioned here:

  • “… until the Messiah of Righteousness comes, the Branch of David. For to him and his seed is granted the Covenant of kingship over his people for everlasting generations…” (4Q252 (Qumran))
  • “Behold, O Lord, and raise up unto them their king, / a descendant of David, At the time which you have chosen, O God, / That he might reign over Israel, your servant. Gird him with strength to shatter the unrighteous rules, /To purge Jerusalem from nations that trample her in destruction.” (Psalm of Solomon 17.21-22 (Apocalyptic))
  • “They will win not only a permanent and bloodless victory in the war, but also a sovereignty which none can contest bringing to its subjects the benefit which will accrue from the affection or fear or respect which they feel.” (Philo, On Rewards and Punishments)

Such Messiah figures would usher in a time of unparalleled justice and righteousness in the world, which would impact the whole creation.

So across these diverse texts and traditions, we see a fairly consistent understanding of the Holy Spirit in Second Temple Judaism. The socio-political circumstances of to the time promoted a creation-centric model in which God was present in and through all things through the Spirit, which was nothing other than the very breath of life. At the same time, these same circumstances provided a context in which the seed of messianic expectation planted by Isaiah could grow, and people began hoping for a day when the Spirit of God would be once again present in an Anointed One who would restore God’s people once and for all, and through him a new age of the Spirit would begin.

This is roughly where things stood at the time of Jesus and the beginnings of Christianity. As we’ll see in the next few posts, the first Christians took these ideas and ran with them as they tried to understand their experience of Jesus and the Holy Spirit.

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Bibliography for this Post:

2 Enoch. In The Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha of the Old Testament, ed. R.H. Charles. Vol. II. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1985.

Borgen, P. “There Shall Come Forth A Man: Reflections on Messianic Ideas in Philo.” In The Messiah: Developments in Earliest Judaism and Christianity, ed. J.H. Charlesworth, 341-361. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1992.

Borsch, F.H. “Further Reflections on ‘The Son of Man:’ The Origins and Development of the Title.” In The Messiah: Developments in Earliest Judaism and Christianity, ed. J.H. Charlesworth, 130-144. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1992.

Nickelsburg, George W.E., and John J. Collins. Ideal Figures in Ancient Judaism. Chico, Cal.: Scholars Press, 1980.

Pitts, Andrew W., and Seth Pollinger. “The Spirit in Second Temple Jewish Monotheism and the Origins of Early Christology,” in Christian Origins and Hellenistic Judaism, ed. Stanley E. Porter and Andrew W. Pitts. Leiden: Brill, 2013.

Vermes, Geza, ed. and trans. The Complete Dead Sea Scrolls, Revised edition. London: Penguin Books, 2004.