The breath over the waters — Breath, word and silence from Genesis 1:2 to the physiology of prayer

Genesis 1:2 speaks of God’s audible breath brooding over the waters. Starting from the miniature on fol. 19v of the Octateuch Vat. gr. 746, this paper follows that breath out of the Word in three steps: linguistically, through the Septuagint, Jerome and Luther down to the breathless German Geist; theologically, as a movement over water became power over creation; conceptually, through Augustine’s word without sound. The Greek fathers, and in Islam Ibn ‘Arabī, modelled the divine Word explicitly on human phonation. Breath receded as a category of the theological word while its bodily effect remained: in silence as authority (Ignatius), in the breathing techniques of hesychasm, the Naqshbandi path and Buddhist meditation, and in the rosary, whose effect on breathing and circulation was first measured in 2001. The findings are brought together with current research on breathing, inner speech and interoception.