Guest Post: On the Wings of a Dove?

J. Watkins is a long-time commenter on the site and someone off whom I often bounce ideas in the Ancient Studies room of the BYU Library. He defines himself in the following terms: “I’m Justin Watkins. I’m from Cardston, Alberta and I’m an undergraduate senior at BYU studying ancient near eastern studies. My focus is in the NT but I’d like to study

the LXX for my graduate work. I also love studying Church history as a hobby. I’ve been married nearly 4 years to my Aussie sweetheart, Sarah, who is my 4th grade teaching sugar momma. We have no kids. I fear that I am a true nerd in every sense of the word. On the LDS scale I’d say I fall just right of the middle as far as my views on doctrine and ethics go.”

I’ve been intrigued since my mission about the phrase from Matt. 3:16: “and
he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove and lighting upon him.”
(KJV) My current study of Matthew in Greek 311 has reraised the question
about exactly what this phrase means. For instance, Mark 1:10 uses similar
language: “and the Spirit like a dove descending upon him.” John 1:32 says:
“I saw the Spirit descending from heaven like a dove, and it abode upon
him.” But Luke says something different. Luke 3:22 says: “and the Holy
Ghost descended in a bodily shape like a dove upon him.” Our modern day
scriptures universally use the phrase “in the form of a dove.” (see 1 Ne.
11:27; 2 Ne. 31:8; D&C 93:15; Abr. Fac. 2, fig. 7)

From the English this could go one of two ways: either the HG came in the
form/shape/figure of a dove or it in someway acted like a dove in its
descending. The Bible Dictionary under the topic “Dove, Sign of” quotes
Joseph Smith at length saying, “the devil cannot come in the sign of a dove…
The sign of a dove was given to John to signify the truth of the deed, as
the dove is an emblem or token of truth and innocence.” (HC 5:261) In my
mind this tended towards the idea of a shape or “bodily form” as Luke had
it, especially because “the devil cannot come in the sign of the dove” but
apparently he can come in other shapes and sizes.

Until recently this was all I knew and so the matter was closed. But in
Greek class it was raised again when we translated Matt. 3:16 and I noticed
that the word used there is hôsei, or literally “like a dove.” So which is
it? Of course, then I found another quote from Joseph on this and he said
“The Holy Ghost is a personage, and is in the form of a personage. It does
not confine itself to the form of the dove, but in sign of the dove. The
Holy Ghost cannot be transformed into a dove; but the sign of a dove was
given to John to signify the truth of the deed, as the dove is an emblem or
token of truth and innocence.” (HC 5:275-6)

So here we have a weird thing, the Holy Ghost giving the sign of the dove,
whatever that means. And there is still Matthew, Mark, and John to think
about. The Holy Ghost descended like a dove. And then I remembered
something from my Hebrew class. Don Parry, when we first began to translate
Genesis back in Heb. 101 (or 102, I forget), noted that in the second verse
of the Bible that we have a hapax legomenon, a word that occurs only once,
that is translated in the KJV as “moved” but had more of a sense of
hovering. He told us that the root of this word (merahepeth, root rhp) was
found only in one other place in the OT, in Deut. 32:11 in reference to an
eagle (vulture?) “fluttering over her young.” In Hebrew the word is yerahep.
In the big BDB Hebrew lexicon, the entry for this verb states that the
root meaning for this verb is to hover. However, it has cognates in other
Semitic languages. In Ugaritic, the meaning is the same as in Hebrew, but in
Syriac the same root means to move gently, to cherish or to brood. Here we
(meaning Latter-day Saints) have a great connection. In Moses 2:2 we still
have “moved” but in Abraham 4:2 we have “and the Spirit of the Gods was
brooding upon the face of the waters.” Dictionary.com defines “brood” as a
verb in this way: to sit on or hatch (eggs), to protect (young) by or as if
by covering with the wings, (intrans.) to hover envelopingly; loom.

For me this has two exciting implications. The first concerns the
authenticity of the Book of Abraham. It can, of course, be argues away but I
still think it’s pretty neat. The second is why I wrote this blog: In two
distinct ways the Spirit is said to behave like a bird. It can brood like a
bird or descend like a bird. (how a dove descends any differently than any
other bird I can’t say) Usually the Spirit is likened to wind, especially
since in Greek and Hebrew the word for spirit and wind are the same. The
comparison of the Spirit to the wind is the primary one made to the Spirit
but the sense of moving like a bird is also found in the scriptures in
several places and is often overlooked. Comparing the Spirit to the wind
taught us several of its attributes such as it “bloweth where it listeth”
(John 3:8) and it fills our mouths with breath, causing us to testify and
prophesy. Comparing the Spirit to a bird teaches us something else, like
the protective and nurturing nature of the Spirit; its inherent desire for
closeness to us.