Many Winds

 

Matthew 12:43-50 “Unclean spirits”

 

It’s been a ‘thing’ for me, for a while now, to get stuck on the mistranslation in the Bible of “spirit,” from the Greek word “pneuma,” which means “wind, breath, air in motion,” and not “bodiless spirit.”

The word for ghost, or bodiless spirit, in Greek, is “phantasma.”

Greek was the first language the Bible was translated into, from the Hebrew and Aramaic, and the word they were translating as “pneuma” was the Hebrew word “ruach,” which means, “wind” or “moving air” or “breath.” So far so good. When the Greek was translated into the Latin word, “spiritus,” its meaning continued to be “wind” or “breath.”

The word for ghost, or bodiless spirit, in Latin is “larva.”

I’m not even going to get into a discussion of ‘soul vs. spirit’ and the Latin and Greek words anima and psykhe, but I will note that the English word “spirit” was not used to mean a supernatural immaterial being like a ghost or demon until the 14^th century.

So, here’s my problem:

I can’t read this passage without getting hung up on the image of a ghostly spirit getting driven out of a person to go wandering through the wastelands, and then getting lonely and coming back to find that the person is empty and clean, with plenty of room for other immaterial beings to move in and settle down.

The thing is, I don’t think that’s what it means!!

I’m going to try a literal translation and see what happens:

⁴³ “When a foul wind comes out of a person, it wanders through waterless regions searching for a resting place but finds none. ⁴⁴ Then it says, ‘I will return to the house I left.’ When it arrives, it finds the house unoccupied, swept clean, and put in order. ⁴⁵ Then it goes and brings along seven other winds more malignant than itself, and they come in and live there — so that the last state of that person turns out to be worse than the first. This is how it will be for this wicked generation.” (My adaptation, from the Mounce Reverse Interlinear and the Complete Jewish Bible)

 

 

I’ve been out in the desert before.

Many winds inhabit this dry silence.

 

Not all are kind.

 

Little breezes that can barely lift a leaf

under the relentless weight of the sun.

 

Big gusts daring me to walk right up to the cliff-edge

where the welkin tilts in and roars.

 

Unreliable dust-devils scurrying over the streaked bluffs,

whirling up the sand-grains and letting them fall again.

 

Breathing airs, seven times seven of them,

drumming on my tent at night.

 

Ominous hands, leaning on the thin skin,

wanting to come in and lie down.