SBL:
καὶ ἤνεγκαν αὐτὸν πρὸς αὐτόν. καὶ ἰδὼν αὐτὸν τὸ πνεῦμα εὐθὺς συνεσπάραξεν αὐτόν, καὶ πεσὼν ἐπὶ τῆς γῆς ἐκυλίετο ἀφρίζων.
I can see two ways of reading this – either the boy is the one who ἰδὼν Jesus, or the spirit within him (so masc. part. is CAS).
Looking at the other participles in the verse, they clearly describe physical actions that the boy is doing (πεσὼν … ἀφρίζων), so my initial instinct is to read ἰδὼν as referring to the boy, and not the spirit. Would then account for the mention of τὸ πνεῦμα as giving a separate subject for the action of the verb συνεσπάραξεν.
A third option would be to not think of the two as separate entities, and so it’s not a case of “either/or” but “both”, as they’re rather intertwined at this moment.
I see a similar thing in Mark 9:26 – καὶ κράξας καὶ πολλὰ σπαράξας ἐξῆλθεν – the participles describe the physical actions of the boy, and the verb is the action that the spirit does (‘And after crying out and convulsing violently, it departed’).
Thoughts?
Statistics: Posted by S Walch — February 18th, 2017, 8:30 pm