Paraclete


Paraclete is a Christian biblical term occurring five times in the Johannine texts of the New Testament. In Christian theology, the word commonly refers to the Holy Spirit and is translated as 'advocate', 'counsellor', or 'helper'.

Etymology

The English term Paraclete comes from the Koine Greek word παράκλητος. A combination of para and kalein, the word first appears in the Bible in John 14:16. René Kieffer further explains the development of the meaning of this term:
The word parakletos is a verbal adjective, often used of one called to help in a lawcourt. In the Jewish tradition the word was transcribed with Hebrew letters and used for angels, prophets, and the just as advocates before God's court. The word also acquired the meaning of 'one who consoles'. It is probably wrong to explain the Johannine parakletos on the basis of only one religious background. The word is filled with a complex meaning: the Spirit replaces Jesus, is an advocate and a witness, but also consoles the disciples.

Latin etymological precedent

Lochlan Shelfer suggests that the Greek term paraclete is a translation of the preceding Latin term advocatus:
"παράκλητος any independent meaning of its own, it is in fact a calque for the Latin term advocatus meaning a person of high social standing who speaks on behalf of a defendant in a court of law before a judge. When Greeks came into contact with the Roman Empire the word παράκλητος was developed as a precise equivalent to the Latin legal term advocatus. Thus, its significance must be found not only in its very few extant appearances, but also in the specific use of the Latin legal term."

This legalistic interpretation of the etymology contradicts the word found in the Septuagint translation of the Book of Job , the meaning of which is specifically "comforter".

In Classical Greek

The term is not common in non-Jewish texts. The best-known use is by Demosthenes:
A Greek–English Lexicon cites the example of a court of justice.

In Judaism

speaks several times of "paraclete" advocates primarily in the sense of human intercessors.
The word later went from Hellenistic Jewish writing into rabbinic literature.
Other words are used to translate the Hebrew word מְנַחֵם mənaḥḥēm 'comforter' and מליץ יושר mliṣ yosher.

In Christianity

In the New Testament, paraclete appears only in the Johannine texts, and it is used only on five occasions: Gospel of John 14:16, 14:26, 15:26, 16:7, and First Epistle of John chapter 2, verse 1.
In John 14:16-17, 'paraclete' is Παράκλητον and 'spirit' is Πνεῦμα, meaning 'breath'. Pneuma appears over 250 times in the Christian New Testament, and is the word used to refer to the Holy Spirit, i.e., the Spirit of God. As a result of the immediate explanation in John 14:17, the Paraclete in John 14:16 is considered to be the Holy Spirit.
File:Rom, Vatikan, Basilika St. Peter, Die Taube des Heiligen Geistes.jpg|thumb|Depiction of the Holy Spirit as a Dove, from the Throne of Saint Peter, Saint Peter's Basilica
M. E. Boring, writing in the Cambridge University Press journal New Testament Studies, describes a "striking similarity" between the defined attributes of what the Paraclete is, and is to do, and what the outcome of Christian prophecy has spoken to, explaining the Paraclete as the post-Passover gift of the Holy Spirit. "The Paraclete represents the Spirit as manifested in a particular way, as a pneumatic Christian speech charisma. Every verb describing the ministry of the Paraclete is directly related to his speech function."
The early church identified the Paraclete as the Holy Spirit. In first-century Jewish and Christian understanding, the presence of the Holy Spirit is to claim the rebirth of prophecy.
During his period as a hermit in the mid-12th century, Peter Abelard dedicated his chapel to the Paraclete because "I had come there as a fugitive and, in the depths of my despair, was granted some comfort by the grace of God."
Today, the Holy Spirit continues to be referred to as the Paraclete in a prayer known as the Divine Praises, recited during Benediction of the Blessed Sacrament.

Scholarly interpretations

quotes Jesus as saying "another Paraclete" will come to help his disciples, implying, according to Lawrence Lutkemeyer, that Jesus is the first and primary Paraclete. In Jesus himself is called "paraclete".
Raymond Brown, supported by George Johnston, also says that the "another Paraclete" of John 14:16 is in many ways another Jesus, the presence of Jesus after Jesus ascends to his Father.
The Gospel of Matthew twice uses the passive form of the corresponding verb παρακαλῶ, in and . In both instances, the context is of mourning, and the meaning of the verb is 'to be comforted'.

Paraclete first appearing in gospel

Here is the context of the passage in John 14:15-27 with the translation of Paraclete as Advocate shown in bold:

In Islam

Many Muslim writers have argued that "another Paraclete" —the first being Jesus—refers to Muhammad. This claim is based on Quran 61:6.
A few Muslim commentators, such as David Benjamin Keldani, have argued the theory that the original Koine Greek used was Periklutos, meaning 'famed, illustrious, or praiseworthy', rendered in Arabic as Aḥmad, and that this was substituted by Christians with parakletos. There are currently no known Greek manuscripts with this reading, although the earliest manuscript evidence available is from the 3rd century.
Regarding what the original Greek term was, according to A. Guthrie and E. F. F. Bishop:
Sean Anthony agrees that the connection of Ahmad to the Paraclete in the Gospel of John may have been a later tradition that is not found in the work of Ibn Ishaq and that the earliest extant attempts by Muslims to connect these two figures that inspire later discussion on the subject goes back to Ibn Hisham and Ibn Qutaybah.
A later interpolation of this passage to the Quran has been rejected in modern Islamic studies. This has been supported by the fact that the earliest as well as the later manuscripts of the Quran contain the same passage and wording in chapter 61.

Historical development

In Łewond's version of the correspondence between the Byzantine emperor Leo III and the Umayyad caliph Umar II, a letter is attributed to Leo:
By the 8th-century, the identification of the Paraclete with Muhammad was already a known concept. Evidence shows that the Abbasid caliph al-Mahdi debated the concept with the influential Christian patriarch Timothy I. The Persian theologian Ali al-Tabari believed that only Muhammad could have been the Paraclete since he taught people what they previously didn't know. The Syrian scholar Ibn Abi Talib al-Dimashqi asserts that the verses were generally believed to be about the coming of a prophet, until the reign of Constantine I when the Christian priests altered the verses to refer to the Holy Spirit, fearing that Constantine would recognize the true faith.