Unclean Essence

 

Mark 1:14-28

 

²³ In their synagogue just then was a man with an unclean spirit in him, who shouted, ²⁴ “What do you want with us, Yeshua from Natzeret? Have you come to destroy us? I know who you are — the Holy One of God!” ²⁵ But Yeshua rebuked the unclean spirit, “Be quiet and come out of him!” ²⁶ Throwing the man into a convulsion, it gave a loud shriek and came out of him. (CJB)

 

“Unclean spirit” — “akathartos pneuma”

akathartos— unclean (intrinsically unclean in a Levitical sense; impossible to cleanse) impure.

koinós— unclean, (Levitically defiled by circumstances, able to be cleansed) common, profane.

pneuma— moving air, breath, wind.

phantasma— ghost, phantom, apparition.

 

Here’s an example of the translation of “phantasma” as “spirit” in the King James Bible: (which also seems to have led to the unfortunate term, “Holy Ghost.”)

Mark 6:49 N-NNS (Strong’s Concordance)

¾    GRK: ἔδοξαν ὅτι φάντασμά (phantasma) ἐστιν καὶ

¾    NAS: they supposed that it was a ghost, and cried

¾    KJV: it had been a spirit, and

¾    INT: they thought that a ghost [it] is and

 

I keep on being struck, over and over again, by the associations implicit in the word “spirit” in current times, in particular regarding the extremely fashionable word “spiritual.” I dislike the word “spiritual” and avoid using it whenever possible. My reasons are complicated, but in reading the passage for today, I was able to trace a few of the source reasons for my aversion.

 

“Pneuma” was the Greek word used to translate the Hebrew “ruach” — “wind.” That word also forms the core of the term “Ruach HaKodesh”— “Wind (or Breath) of God,” which is usually translated as “Holy Spirit.”

 

The problem that I see is that, in English, the word “spirit” is synonymous in some instances with the word “ghost.” We still use it in that way when we use terms like “the spirits of the departed” for instance. If we were to attend a séance, we would expect the medium to “contact the spirits” or to tell us about the presence of “spirits.”

 

The ancient Greeks, especially in the realm of medicine, associated the term pneuma with a person’s life force, the moving essence within a person which animated the body and gave it life.

This concept goes all the way back to the Creation stories in which God literally “breathed life” into the world. The ancient Greeks would never have associated the word ‘pneuma’ with an incorporeal spirit which had a separate existence and will of its own, nor would Hebrew speakers use the word “ruach” to mean that.

 

Returning to the text of the reading for today, I got hung up on the translation “unclean spirit,” realizing that the way a modern reader will interpret that phrase bears little resemblance to the way a person living at the time would have understood its meaning.

 

I don’t think that’s the essence of the point I want to make though. I want to move on to the typical assumption that modern readers make: that the concept of “an unclean spirit” is an archaic and mistaken view. We complacently assume that what they were describing was a mentally ill person, possibly with symptoms of paranoid schizophrenia; or a person with seizures caused by epilepsy, and we also condescendingly assume that these ancient people were ignorant, and incapable of describing what happened in an accurate and factual way that makes sense to modern people.

But, let’s see what happens if we dispense with that assumption. I want to throw out some terms that might have a closer relation to the meaning of the phrase “akathartos pneuma.”

 

o   Nasty attitude

o   Filthy mind

o   Toxic personality

o   Foul mood

o   Bad temper

o   Crappy disposition

 

So, if we take the whole verse and plug in one of these terms, it’ll get us right out of the weird supernatural interpretation and into an understanding that doesn’t clash at all with our modern way of seeing things.

 

“…there was a man with a nasty attitude who shouted, “What are you up to, Jesus Nazarene? Did you come here to make nothing of us? I know who you are, holy of God! But Jesus scolded him, saying, “Shut up and get out of yourself!” Then the nasty attitude threw him for a loop, and with a loud exclamation (imagine him saying something like, “What the Hell?!”) the nasty attitude left him.  

 

Most of the above is a pretty literal rendition from the Greek Interlinear. My alternative word choices came from looking up individual words. Here’s another delightful alternative that fits the Greek pretty well too:

 

“Then, all torn up about his nasty attitude, with a loud shout, (imagine him saying “Fine! Have it your way!) his bad attitude went away.