“Punctuation Points”

Wednesday, September 25, 2013

Throughout the Bible, I've seen the words "god" and "God".  Someone told me that the capital "G" for god is for a reason.  So I assumed that for the small "g" god, the Bible is referring to any god like Molech, Dagon, Marduk, Bel, etc.  The capital "G" for God in the Bible is referring to an all-powerful and almighty God and also the creator of heaven and Earth, and there's only one god that matches that description: Yahweh.  No other god is all-powerful and almighty and also the creator of heaven and Earth, only one.  In other words, no other gods can compete with His authority.  The same thing can be said about the Holy Spirit.  When there's "spirit" with a small "s", it's referring to any spirit, but with a capital "S", it's the Holy Spirit.  Am I correct about everything I've just said?

Sincerely,
Feeling Capital

Dear Feeling Capital,

The capital letters were added into the English translations of the Bible, but they didn’t exist in the original Greek and Hebrew.  The capital ‘G’ is intended to tell you that it is talking about Jehovah… not idols, and the capital ‘S’ was added to tell you that the verse is talking about God’s Spirit, not any other spirit.  These capitals were added for clarity’s sake, but in reality, they are merely commentary from the translators.  The Greek and Hebrew do not provide the capitals, and context is what decides whether a verse is talking about the God or a god.  Most of the times that the translators added this capitalization, they have been right… but to be fair, we must remember that this punctuation isn’t found in the originals.

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