Statistics: Posted by mwh — Sun Jul 07, 2024 12:42 am
Koine and Biblical and Medieval Greek • Re: πρὸς φθόνον ἐπιποθεῖ τὸ πνεῦμα (James 4:5)
I’d take this as meaning something like “As to jealousy he longs for the spirit that he implanted in us.” The subject of επιποθεῖ must surely be God, and το πνεῦμα must surely be its object. I really don’t see much room for doubt about that. The difficulty, of course, is πρὸς φθόνον (“with regard to φθόνος”?). I take it that he’s deploring φθόνος among his addressees. This fits with his inveighing against their internal dissensions (4.1 πόθεν πόλεμοι και πόθεν μάχαι εν ὑμιν; etc., 2 ζηλοῦτε etc., cf. 3.14 ει δε ζῆλον ...) and with the rest of the letter. ζῆλος is very close to φθόνος, and I take him to be saying that φθόνος is alien to the spirit that God housed within them (or among them) and yearns to be realized. I very much doubt that the φθόνος is to be understood as God’s; I think the context precludes that.