In answer to the video "Zakir Naik Declares: "Jesus Is the God of Muhammad!""
In Jn14:26 the paraclete is also called the "holy spirit" although the early Codex Syriacus omits "holy". The scribe that redacted that particular codex wasnt writing from memory but was copying from another manuscript. This shows again the well known evolving nature of the NT text, more particularily as regards the paraclete prophecy, progressively blurred, willingly or not, with mystical and abstract concepts.
In any case, the spirit of truth and the holy spirit refer to the same thing; the spirit of God indwelling those who believe Jesus to be God's envoy. Anyone holding that correct belief, including the paraclete can be termed the spirit of truth 1Jn4:2-3.
The paraclete, filled with the spirit of truth, only acts according to God's orders Jn15,16. This parallels with the prophecy in Deut18:18 where the prophet shall only speak what he hears, a personality guided by revelation. When the group of Israelites heard God speak at Sinai, received the holy spirit and became prophets Numb11:16-30 that was a specific event that would no longer happen in the future, per their own request fearing they would die, and God accepted their request. He decreed that the phenomenon of revelation will be a personal experience.
In the HB, the term "holy spirit" (in which "holy" is an adjective) never appears. But there is ruach hakodesh (lit. the spirit/wind of holiness). It is the pre-condition for prophethood, endowing an individual with divine intuition, wisdom Job32:8, warnings and glad tidings, as well as the ability to communicate God's direct words 2Sam23:2. Such person becomes God's representative on Earth and then either reforms or leads the Israelites to victory.
As a side note, Trinitarians claiming that this ruach is a divine entity seperate from God the Father must explain verses like Judges9:23,1Sam16:14,Isa19:14 speaking of
"an evil spirit from God"and of
"a spirit of perverseness".If, as trinitarians say, God's holy spirit is a divine entity, God's evil spirit should also be a different divine entity. 1Kings19:11 is even more damning to this idea
"And He said: "Go out and stand in the mountain before the Lord, Behold! the Lord passes, and a great and strong wind (b'ruach) splitting mountains and shattering boulders before the Lord, but the Lord was not in the wind (ha-ruach). And after the wind an earthquake-not in the earthquake was the Lord".
This spirit of God first appears in Gen1. It is neither qualified as holy nor evil, it could be any of the 2 since God directly creates both good and evil Deut30:15,Isa45:7,1Sam16:14, and neither is it described as taking part independantly in the act of creation. In fact its mention is preceded by the presence of already created wordly entities, like the waters and the earth.
The spirit/wind of holiness in the talmud is an agent sent by God to allow prophecy and revelation (Midrash Rabbah, Song of Songs 1.1,Sotah 16d). A well known teaching in rabbinic 2nd temple literature is that the end of prophecy was accompanied with the departure of the holyspirit "From the time that the last prophets Haggai, Zechariah, and Malachi, died, the holy spirit was withdrawn from Israel". The RUACH is always at the disposal of God to bestow upon whomever He chooses Num11:17,25,29,Isa42:1,44:3,Joel3:1.
All this parallels in many ways with the Quran's description of the RUH that descends to the prophets to give them inspiration. The spirit of God is certainly an agent of God, seperate from Him and fully encompassed by His will. The spirit being of/from God, does not entail him being a seperate divine entity, anymore than the hand, arm or eyes of God are seperately divine. Even if one turns to the highly esoteric and cryptic Zohar, believed to have originated somewhere in the 1st-2nd century CE when Judaism had been infiltrated by Graeco-Roman concepts, one might find notions of God having different aspects through which He interracts with the world. However none of those aspects are ever manifested in human form and neither are they seperate entities to be individually worshipped.
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