Future Passives categorized (LONG)

Clwinbery at aol.com Clwinbery at aol.com
Fri Dec 13 17:25:30 EST 2002


I've tried twice now to send in the numbers of tagged aorist and future 
"passives." I upgraded my accordance in Toronto to 5.6 and the GNT is the 
N-A27 corrected. I show 296 verb forms tagged as future passive indicative 
and 866 forms tagged Aorist passive indicative. These include those that have 
no theta (so-called 2nd Aor. & fut.).

One form tagged as aor. pass. ind. is Mt. 2:30 IDONTES DE TON ASTERA ECARHSAN 
CARAN MEGALHN.

ECARHSAN is tagged aor. pass. ind. but cannot be translated as passave. The 
verb is transitive with CARAN as the direct object (for some cognate 
accusative). The best translation would be "They, having seen the star, 
rejoiced greatly (lit. rejoiced a great joy exceedingly). I agree with Carl 
that the morpho/syntactic form must also be evaluated in light of certain 
verbs and by context. G.B. Caird in Oxford used to use the distinction of 
these by calling them non-true passives. I prefer Carl's phrase, "subject 
intensive." This does not leave the impression that these verbs are in some w
ay defective. The major problem is the fact that we often have to translate 
these forms before we can really understand them. Just reading it in Greek 
sounds right to me, conveying the idea that the observers of the events were 
excited and appalled.

Carlton Winbery


Matt. 2:10 i˙do/nteß de« to\n aÓste÷ra e˙ca¿rhsan cara»n mega¿lhn sfo/dra.



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