Inheritance

Carl W. Conrad cwconrad at artsci.wustl.edu
Wed Jul 28 12:30:58 EDT 1999


At 10:18 AM -0500 7/28/99, Alan Cassady wrote:
>I am new to the list and am a novice at Greek. I have run across a problem
>for which I need your expert opinions.
>
>(Eph 1:11 NRSV)  In Christ we have also obtained an inheritance, ...
>(Eph 1:11 NIV)  In him we were also chosen, ...
>
>The word translated obtained an inheritance / were chosen is eklhrwQhmen
>[h=eta, Q=theta] it occurs no where else in the NT. It sems to be Aorist
>Passive, but the KJV, NRSV, NAS translate it as middle for passive. It seems
>that the Aorist middle should be  eklhrwsametha.
>Thanks
>Alan Cassady

Although the lexica don't offer this, I believe that this is acting like a
so-called passive deponent, KLHROOMAI, here equivalent to KLHRONOMEW, and
that EKLHRWQHMEN is not really passive but the default aorist for
KLHROOMAI. You are quite right to observe that if this were an ordinary
"transitive" verb, there ought to be a middle aorist form EKLHRWSAMEQA to
convey the sense that everybody understands it to have--a middle sense. But
I rather suspect that it is misidentified in the older lexica. I don't have
BAGD or LSJG ready to hand; I'd be curious to know what they offer.


Carl W. Conrad
Department of Classics, Washington University
Summer: 1647 Grindstaff Road/Burnsville, NC 28714/(828) 675-4243
cwconrad at artsci.wustl.edu
WWW: http://www.artsci.wustl.edu/~cwconrad/



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