The Spirit texts in the Fourth Gospel fall into two subsets, one that speaks of an unqualified “spirit”, and the other that speaks of the “Spirit of Truth” or the “Holy Spirit”, also identified as the “Paraclete”. I find that the alliance of Spirit and blood at the end of First John is a clue that uncovers a similar Spirit and Atonement connection in the Gospel. I demonstrate that the subset of unqualified “spirit” passages in John are regularly supplemented or framed with Atonement material, while the Paraclete Spirit texts have no such supplements, and that this phenomenon reflects a process of doctrinal modification via textual updating.

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