DESCRIPTION

In writing Filled with the Spirit, John R. Levison, has produced a ground breaking and definitive study on the Holy Spirit. Encompassing the literature of Ancient Israel, Early Judaism, the Greco-Roman world, and the New Testament, Levinson provides a historical picture of how people have encountered and documented the Holy Spirit, and how they have interpreted those encounters theologically. What he reveals is that each era is related to the others, but that each era also expresses those realities in unique ways. 

More specifically, Levinson examines the use of the phrase "filled the Spirit" in each context and how this concept fundamentally changed the ancient world. Finally, Levison engages with Herman Gunkel's short studies The Spirit and the Impoverishment of Judaism and The Spirit and Diversity in Early Christian Literature providing summary and critique for each, while building upon these early, but highly, formative studies.