Declinazioni ebraiche della rûaḥ

Abstract

First published in Lo Spirito e il potere. Questioni di pneumatologia politica («Politica e Religione», 2010-2011), pp. 25-40.

In the interpretation of the Hebrew and Biblical term rûaḥ, one often encounters the outcome of a misleading hermeneutic effort – “external”, so to speak, to the semantics of the term – aimed at separating the “real” meanings (rûaḥ as “wind” and “breath”) from the “abstract” meanings (“spirit”). Such a hermeneutic process is clearly functional, both in its explicit and in its implicit intentions, to extract and isolate the “pneumatic” value of the rûaḥ, thus emphasizing the political dimension of charismatic legitimation. In fact, however, the overall magnitude of the rûaḥ takes shape rather as a continuum, and the prevalence of one dimension over the other is never granted.