Struggling with John 3:8 phrase

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georgeclooney
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Struggling with John 3:8 phrase

Post by georgeclooney »

Hi everyone, my name is George and I’m new here. I’ve been trying to read through the Gospel of John in Greek, but I got stuck on a line in 3:8 - τὸ πνεῦμα ὅπου θέλει πνεῖ.
I understand the basic words (“the spirit/wind blows where it wants”), but I don’t really get how ὅπου θέλει fits with πνεῖ. The syntax feels odd to me, and I’m not sure if there’s something idiomatic going on.
Could someone explain this in simple terms? I’m still very much a beginner, so any step-by-step help would be great.
Thanks,
George
Jonathan Robie
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Re: Struggling with John 3:8 phrase

Post by Jonathan Robie »

georgeclooney wrote: August 29th, 2025, 9:23 pm Hi everyone, my name is George and I’m new here. I’ve been trying to read through the Gospel of John in Greek, but I got stuck on a line in 3:8 - τὸ πνεῦμα ὅπου θέλει πνεῖ.
I understand the basic words (“the spirit/wind blows where it wants”), but I don’t really get how ὅπου θέλει fits with πνεῖ. The syntax feels odd to me, and I’m not sure if there’s something idiomatic going on.
Could someone explain this in simple terms? I’m still very much a beginner, so any step-by-step help would be great.
Thanks,
George
Welcome, George! This is a good question. Most of us learned about subjects and objects in school, but maybe not adjuncts. Consider this sentence:

S Sarah
V drank
O tea.

That has a subject, a verb, and an object. But I can add all kinds of things to describe when and where and with whom this happened. These are adjuncts.

S Sarah
V drank
O tea
+ with two tablespoons of sugar and a teaspoon of pickle juice
+ every other Thursday
+ with two very odd friends
+ and a penguin.

ὅπου θέλει is an adjunct here.

S τὸ πνεῦμα
+ ὅπου θέλει
V πνεῖ.

When this verb takes an object, it might be, for instance, a musical instrument:

αὐλοὺς πνεῖν ἡδέως ἐν τοῖς συμπόσιοις
to blow the flutes sweetly in the drinking parties

Does that help?
ἐξίσταντο δὲ πάντες καὶ διηποροῦντο, ἄλλος πρὸς ἄλλον λέγοντες, τί θέλει τοῦτο εἶναι;
http://jonathanrobie.biblicalhumanities.org/
Eeli Kaikkonen
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Re: Struggling with John 3:8 phrase

Post by Eeli Kaikkonen »

I believe it's the word order which is confusing here.

In English it's not natural to say "The wind wherever wants blows". Maybe you could stretch English and say "The wind -- wherever it wants to, it blows".

But in Koine Greek we can say

S τὸ πνεῦμα
+ ὅπου θέλει
V πνεῖ.

Semantically it's the same than

S τὸ πνεῦμα
V πνεῖ
+ ὅπου θέλει
(to borrow Jonathan's style.)

But in the discourse it's not identical. τὸ πνεῦμα is the first because it's what we are talking about -- it's the topic or theme. It's the anchor between what we already know or can expect in the discourse and what is said as something new. The rest is the focus or rheme, something new which is being asserted to further the discourse.

Now, we could have "πνεῖ ὅπου θέλει" and that would be a neutral word order or phrase order. But ὅπου θέλει is fronted before the verb. The position is prominent and makes it "emphasized" in the discourse. Maybe one possible natural rendering would be "Wherever the wind wants to, it blows". But don't get stuck to a translation, try to get familiar with the flow of the original.
Jonathan Robie
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Re: Struggling with John 3:8 phrase

Post by Jonathan Robie »

Eeli Kaikkonen wrote: September 5th, 2025, 3:17 pm I believe it's the word order which is confusing here.
Ah, of course. That slipped me by.
ἐξίσταντο δὲ πάντες καὶ διηποροῦντο, ἄλλος πρὸς ἄλλον λέγοντες, τί θέλει τοῦτο εἶναι;
http://jonathanrobie.biblicalhumanities.org/
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