Middle Ages

• When Christian translators transcribed the English Bible in the Middle Ages, they used two different words for the same Greek word to reflect what they felt were two distinctions. They decided that the Holy Ghost and the Holy Spirit were two different ideas. "Holy Ghost" was used to describe the third person in the Trinity and "Holy Spirit" was used to describe the Spirit of God, or the Spirit of the Lord, that visited the Hebrews in the Old Testament.
  
  

16th Century

• The distinction of the Holy Spirit and Holy Ghost is most visible in the King James Version. In the 16th century, Bible printers added to this by using capital letters. In the Old Testament, they printed "spirit" in lowercase. In the New Testament, it was printed "Spirit." These translation differences aren't in the original Hebrew or Greek. The Greek word for "ghost" or "spirit" in the original Bible text is "pneuma," and the Greek word for "holy" is "hagion." These words in the Greek are written as "hagion pneuma" in every instance while in English they have been translated to "Ghost" or "Spirit" depending on the translator's interpretation of the context.
  
  

In the Bible

• "Holy Ghost" occurs 90 times in the King James Bible, but only in the New Testament, while "Holy Spirit" occurs four times in the New Testament, where the context is from a prophetic viewpoint, and three times in the Old Testament. Many other forms of "spirit" are also used in the Old Testament, such as "Spirit of God" and "Spirit of the Lord." The translators were consistent in keeping the distinction between the two.
  
  

Meanings Changed

• The word "ghost" in the 17th century meant the same as "spirit." The translators used "ghost" and "spirit" to differentiate between the ideas of the third part of the trinity and the spirit of God in the Old Testament, respectively. Eventually, "ghost" came to mean the soul of a dead person, an eery and scary being that haunted people. Today, all biblical translations except for the KJV Bible use "Holy Spirit" for every instance, including those the King James Version rendered as "Holy Ghost."