GHOST KJV uses “ghost” in two senses, for the human life force and
for God’s Holy Spirit. KJV never uses “ghost” for the disembodied spirits of
the dead. All 11 OT references involve the phrase “give up the ghost” (for
example, Gen. 25:8; 35:29), which means to cease breathing or simply to die.
This phrase occurs eight times in the NT (Matt. 27:50; Acts 5:5; 12:23). The
predominant NT use is for the Holy Spirit.
Modern translations use “ghost”
(rather than “spirit” as the KJV) for the disembodied spirits of the dead. Jesus’
disciples mistook Him for a ghost when He walked on water (Matt. 14:26; Mark
6:49) and when He appeared after the resurrection (Luke 24:37, 39). (“Ghost,”
in Holman Illustrated Bible Dictionary, ed. Chad Brad et al. [Nashville,
Tenn.: Holman Bible Publishers, 2003], 645)
Spirit, or, ‘ghost’, in the sense of that portion of the
personality which leaves the body at death and is believed to appear to the
living in bodily likeness; cp. also TH-Mk
on 6:49. (J. Reiling and J. L. Swellengrebel, A Handbook on the Gospel of Luke [UBS Handbook Series; New York:
United Bible Societies, 1993], 760)
they were seeing a ghost. Lit. “seemed to gaze at a spirit.”
Instead of pneuma, “spirit,” read by
most of the Greek mss., ms. D has phantasma,
“apparition, ghost,” a term probably derived from Matt 14:26. This sense of pneuma, as the bodiless independent
being of a person after death is not used elsewhere by Luke, but it does occur
in 1 Pet 3:19; Heb 12:23.
. . .
no ghost has flesh and bones such as you see I have. This cl.
begins with an ambiguous conj. hoti,
which could mean “… and see that no ghost …”; or “… and see, because no ghost
…”; or it could be taken as hoti
recitativum, introducing dir. discourse, as I have taken it. Either the
second or third possibility is preferable.
Luke is not concerned with the
type of question that Paul discusses in 1 Cor 15:44; and his explanation of a sōma pneumatikon should not be invoked
to explain this Lucan verse. By way of contrast, see Lucian’s description of
the existence of “heroes,” Vera historia
2.12 Cf. Homer, Od. 11. 218–219.
(Joseph A. Fitzmyer, The Gospel According to Luke X-XXIV:
Introduction, Translation, and Notes [AYB 28A; New Haven: Yale University
Press, 2008], 1575-76)
Further Reading:
Lynn
Wilder vs. Latter-day Saint (and Biblical) Theology on Divine Embodiment