In answer to the video "Muslims' Worst anti-Christian Polemics: Corruption of the New Testament"
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of the holyspirit "From the time that the last prophets Haggai, Zechariah, and Malachi, died, the holy spirit was withdrawn from Israel".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.
Joel3:1"I will pour out my Spirit on all people. Your sons and daughters will prophesy, your old men will dream dreams, your young men will see visions".This is the passage which the Christians link as the fulfillement of Jesus' prophecy of the paraclete, based on the faulty future tense in Jn14 as shown earlier. As stated in the following verses and preceding chapters, this will only happen in the end of times, and will be accompanied by obvious cataclysmic signs. This further shows that the holy spirit is always linked to the field of prophethood.
This, as a side note, poses a problem to the peculiar Christian notion of being filled with the holy spirit once they have accepted Christ and yet are unable to prophecy and never will be. Similarly, no Christian today is able to "speak in tongues" as is alleged to have occurred at pentecost. Nothing prevents the miracle from being reproduced as the NT does not say the phenomenon ceased after pentecost. The purpose was to spontaneously evangelize in any audience's language, something missionaries are obviously unable to do today. Further, was the holyspirit limited that day, so that others who were present and heard the phenomenon Acts2:13"made fun of them and said, “They have had too much wine"? The spirit left them out, their tongue was unworthy of being represented. To them, the spectacle was that of drunkards speaking unintelligibly. Where were Paul's interpreters when one desperately needs them 1Cor14? As Celsus, the early pagan intellectual opponent to Christians said
"Having brandished these threats they then go on to add incomprehensible, incoherent, and utterly obscure utterances, the meaning of which no intelligent person could discover: for they are meaningless and nonsensical, and give a chance for any fool or sorcerer to take the words in whatever sense he likes".
Not a single of the well known criteria of the messianic age as outlined in the Hebrew Bible, have occured until now, and neither were those criteria fulfilled at pentecost were God's spirit is said to have poured on several people as described in Joel. Yet we have Paul claiming the opposite throughout his writings, including Peter, based on that very messianic passage of Joel that negates the events of pentecost. The pentecost story cannot have occured as it is believed it did, and what descended on the people could not have been the holy spirit, let alone the paraclete.
There is a reason why the Pharisees in Acts2:13 mockingly alluded to these people on the day of pentecost as a group of drunkards, for their odd, erratic behavior and incomprehensible speech; this type of effect that the indwelling spirit of holiness supposedly had on them was something unheard of in the prophetic history. No prophet who received the holyspirit ever behaved in such a manner, whether the prophets of the HB down to the last Ishmaelite prophet. Christians thus need to "loosen up" the definition of a prophet, despite it being firm and precise, in order to make place for their unscriptural ideas.
The deeper difficulty however for Christians is that this passage from Joel, and other similar eschatological passages, rejects any attempt at identifying the end time king/messiah with Jesus. In addition to being "a" messiah, which requires the fulfillement of specific ritual and genealogical conditions which were never met in Jesus, the end times messiah also has to satisfy some lifetime requirements, including the global ingathering of the Jews, rebuilding of the temple, ushering of the age of unfaltering observance of the Law (which bellies by the way all of St Paul's innovations), universal peace, universal knowledge of God, blissful utopia, end of evil and sin, disease and death. Obviously none of those criteria ever occurred anywhere near Jesus' era, and in fact the least that can be said is that the 1st century, its overall state of upheaval, was the antithesis of what the messianic era is supposed to be.
There isn't a single prophecy saying the Messiah would come, die, be resurrected, and then return thousands of years later to BEGIN his mission. It in facts says he will accomplish these tasks within his own lifetime Isa42:4"He shall not fail or be crushed until he has set the right in the earth". That is why the idea of a suffering king messiah is inexistent in pre-Christian Judaism. The awaited figure is in fact expected to violently enforce the new world order. In view if this, Christians also need to explain why would anyone not see the "second coming" theory as an attempt to explain away Jesus' failure during his "first coming" to usher the messianic era.
The paraclete is the spirit of truth, because of holding the correct belief in Jesus 1Jn4. He acts according to what he is inspired
Jn15:26,16:13-14"When the paraclete comes, whom I will send to you from the Father, the Spirit of truth who goes out from the Father, he will testify about me..he will guide you into all the truth. He will not speak on his own; he will speak only what he hears, and he will tell you what is yet to come. He will glorify me.."
Per Jn14:16 the Father is the only sender of the paraclete and none else. Jesus saying he will send the paraclete in Jn15:26 depends entirely on the will of the Father. As Jesus says, the paraclete comes from the Father and goes out from the Father. Jesus will send him to the world through his prayers Jn14:16 to the Father. The sending of the paraclete depends entirely and exclusively on the Father and Jesus saying he will send him simply means that he will ask God to send him per Jn14:16. It doesnt say the paraclete will come to the people speaking in Jesus' name, but that the Father will send him in Jesus' name meaning at his request as reflected in other translations, because Jesus will pray the Father for this "And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another paraclete"
Muhammad the son of Ishmael is the result of the preceding prophets' prayers like Abraham' prayers to God in the Quran to raise a prophet among his descendants settled in the area that will bring them to the straight path.
Muhammad was given Al-Mizan (The Balance) and Al-Furqan (The Criterion) of truth and falsehood and told to
42:15"go on inviting, and go on steadfastly on the right way as you are commanded, and do not follow their low desires, and say: I believe in what Allah has revealed of the Book, and I am commanded to do justice between you: Allah is our Lord and your Lord; we shall have our deeds and you shall have your deeds; no plea need there be (now) between us and you: Allah will gather us together, and to Him is the return".Through the Criterion and the Balance, Muhammad truly convicted the world of sin for rejecting Jesus, he honored and testified about Jesus' true identity; his humanity, the truthfulness of his prophethood to the Jews ONLY and a precursor of the last prophet. He reminded those claiming to be Jesus' followers of all truth regarding his message
43:59,5:14-16,75"O People of the Book, There has come to you Our messenger to explain to you much of what you have concealed of the book and pardoning much. There has come to you from Allah a light and an obvious book. Allah guides thereby those who follow His pleasure into the ways of peace and brings them out of darkness into the light by His permission and guides them to a straight path....The Messiah son of Marium is not except a messenger, indeed, the messengers before him have passed away".Muhammad stayed with humanity forever, obviously through the Quran. How is the holyspirit with us today and forever? What is the instant effect to an individual, of the indwelling of the holyspirit according to every single time it occurs in the HB? The person becomes a prophet and starts prophesying. Where are those prophets today?
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