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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