πνεῦμα ὁ θεός ”God is (a) spirit”
θεός τὸ πνεῦμα ”(the) spirit is (a) God.
While in English word order determines which word is subject and which one is predicate (the subject comes first), in a sentence like this in Greek we recognize the predicate because it’s the word with the article (ὁ/τὸ).
To interpret it the way you do would like to read it would require us to connect the Greek words in a way that’s impossible. While very occasionally things like that might happen (ambiguities concerning which words belong to which sentence), it’s certainly not the case here. Generally speaking the Greek New Testament is a text that has been studied by countless people, so if there was something so obviously wrong with our interpration of the text as you suggest, someone would have noticed it a long time ago.
Statistics: Posted by Paul Derouda — Tue Sep 05, 2023 4:30 am