Future Passives categorized (correction)
Peter Kirk
prkirk at pmbx.net
Sun Dec 15 00:37:06 EST 2002
Thank you, Carl. The corrected version is much more satisfactory. I
agree that careful interpretation of each example is required. I would
certainly not want to argue that "passive" forms of EGEIRW necessarily
imply divine agency as part of the sense (and come to theological
conclusions from that), but I would argue that the possibility that
divine agency is in view, in many cases, makes it unsafe to conclude
that these cannot be passives.
I have been taught that many of the verbs which I have traditionally
understood as passive are a "divine passive", a special Jewish
periphrastic idiom to avoid expressing the divine agent. For example,
that PARAKLHQHSONTAI and CORTASQHSONTAI in Matthew 5:4,6 (the latter on
your list of middle senses, the former an uncontested passive) means
that God will comfort the mourners and satisfy the hungry and thirsty. I
wonder, in view of this discussion, do you consider the "divine passive"
to be a myth?
I also want to make some comments relating to your paper VoiceCorr.pdf
which I downloaded. This is a very helpful article. But I do have some
doubts about your arguments from Indo-European languages. Don't forget
that this group is much wider than Romance, Germanic and Greek. I have
the advantages of a good knowledge of Russian and some of Persian, sadly
not of Indian languages or other smaller groups. From this, I would
agree that use of reflexives as passives is widespread - also found in
Russian, but interestingly only in the imperfective - but these are
clearly recent (post-classical in Romance languages) secondary
formations, and so not evidence that there was a proto-IE morphological
category corresponding to the middle voice. (I don't think we can argue
that Romance use of the reflexive for passive is based on some kind of
folk memory of original IE morphology which had been lost for the
centuries when Latin was spoken.) And the Greek middle also bears the
hallmarks of being secondary, though much more ancient, i.e. LUOMAI,
LUESAI (LUHi) were very likely originally LUW EME, LUEIS SE etc. So, I
wonder, is there real evidence for an Indo-European middle?
Now I am not trying to argue for an Indo-European passive either. I
suspect that IE made do with an active voice only, as in many modern
languages; and I wouldn't rule out use of reflexives for passive and
middle senses though we have no clear evidence for this. But there is
one passive form which is so widespread that it must have a common
Indo-European root: the past participle in -d or -t e.g. English -ed,
German -t, Latin -t(us) (cf. French -é), Persian -de, Russian -t(yy). In
all of these languages this form has a passive sense when used with
transitive verbs, and in most of them (not sure about Latin, obsolescent
in English) an active sense with intransitive verbs, which indicates
split ergativity. And there is a similar participle in Greek, the aorist
passive participle -QEIS - theta representing IE dh or th, and -EIS
being an adjectival ending.
Of the languages I know, it is only Greek which has full paradigms
including this d/t/theta. But the full paradigms look very secondary to
me, as derived from the participle and forms of EIMI. For example, I
would suggest that LUQH = LUQEIS EI, LUQHSOMAI = LUQEIS ESOMAI etc. This
would explain the odd phenomenon that aorist passive endings look
active, but future passive ones look middle/passive. I would suggest
that these forms arose from periphrastic tenses (as for the past passive
in every other IE language I know) which were originally used to
emphasise passivity against the reflexive-derived middle forms. Now I
don't know if there is any real evidence to support or disprove my
hypothesis e.g. from surviving early Greek. I would be interested to
hear of any. And I would accept that semantic shift over the centuries
before the Koine era eroded the original distinction between middle and
passive senses.
The point of my argument here is not to rebut yours about the meaning of
"passive" forms in Koine, but only to show some scepticism about your
attempt to find evidence for your theory from Indo-European. This
evidence is certainly not clear-cut in your favour.
Peter Kirk
peter.r.kirk at ntlworld.com
http://web.onetel.net.uk/~peterkirk/
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Carl W. Conrad [mailto:cwconrad at artsci.wustl.edu]
> Sent: 14 December 2002 00:18
> To: Peter Kirk
> Cc: Biblical Greek
> Subject: [b-greek] Re: Future Passives categorized (correction)
>
> At 10:36 PM +1100 12/13/02, Peter Kirk wrote:
> >Carl, wouldn't it be more accurate to write that you found 112 forms
> >with middle sense and 177 with passive sense, including those you
chose
> >not to dispute?
>
> You're right of course. When I resubmitted the message this morning
after
> deleting yesterday's MIME/HTML-formatted version, I added this note
(which
> I think goes (only) part of the way to answering your reservations):
>
> "Totals from both lists: 289 hits, 112 MP2 forms with middle sense,
177
> MP2
> forms with passive sense; several of these are arguable one way or the
> other; undoubtedly many will deem passive several that I have deemed
> middle, but I don't think that the list of forms deemed middle can be
> reduced to 0."
>
> >Was it in fact you or Accordance which made this initial distinction
> >between the two main categories?
>
> No, Accordance gave me the 289 hits; I subdivided them initially into
two
> lists, the first of which included MP2 forms that I think are
indisputably
> passive, a second list of 120 forms that I thought might be middle; my
own
> analysis of those led me to the conclusion that one or two of these
were
> more likely passive and also that in the case of a couple verbs there
were
> both middle and passive usages.
>
> >I would also suggest some methodological caution here. In several of
the
> >cases where you chose a middle sense, a passive sense is also very
> >possible, but you have chosen what seems to you to fit the context
best.
> >But it is very dangerous to argue for the meaning of a word from its
> >context. The most one can safely do is to argue that one possible
> >meaning is ruled out by the context. In how many of your middle sense
> >examples can you say that the passive sense is actually impossible,
> >especially in view of the authors' theological understanding of God
as
> >the sovereign causer of everything? For example, the future passives
of
> >EGEIRW which do not refer to the resurrection of Christ refer to
> >eschatological events which are clearly seen as under divine control.
As
> >for KOLLAW, the next verse (Mt 19:6) makes it explicit that God is
the
> >agent, so I think this one should be listed as passive - at least as
> >understood in the context in Matthew.
>
> I agree that methodological caution is called for; I have also readily
> conceded that quite a few instances are "judgment-calls." On the
matter of
> theological perspectives of the authors I think some caution is also
> called
> for, as at least some of that is a matter of interpretation. Of course
you
> must realize that one important aspect of my thesis is that the use of
the
> same morphoparadigm by Greek speakers/writers to express both middle
and
> passive senses indicates that the distinction was not so important to
them
> as it may seem to us; it may well be that HGERQH hO IHSOUS THi TRITHi
> hHMERAi (obviously I'm not citing that directly from any text, but
similar
> wording is to be found in the GNT, I think) clearly implies the power
and
> sovereignty of God either in the initiative of the raising of Jesus or
> else
> in the empowering of Jesus to rise. On the other hand, in view of the
fact
> that HGERQH is the aorist of EGEIROMAI in the (intransitive) sense
> "awaken," and clearly enough the metaphor of sleep and waking is
central
> to
> representation of the resurrection, I ask whether HGERQH isn't simply
> synonymous with ANESTH, the aorist of hISTAMAI which is also used of
> awakening from sleep and of the resurrection of Jesus (as in the
Easter
> greeting, ANESTH hO CRISTOS--ANESTH ALHQWS!). So I'd say that, even if
the
> power and sovereignty of God always figure implicitly in the (credal)
> formula (e.g., 1 Cor 15:4 EGHGERTAI THi hHMERAi THi TRITHi KATA TAS
> GRAFAS), still an AGENT is not named explicitly unless the
speaker/writer
> feels it imperative to make this explicit. English is not the key
here, of
> course, but nevertheless, do we really mean something different when
we
> say
> "he ROSE on the third day" from what we mean when we say "he WAS
RAISED on
> the third day?" And I would apply the same logic to the usage of
KOLLAW in
> Mt 19:5-6. Yes, verse 6 says "hO OUN hO QEOS SUNEZEUXEN ANQRWPOS MH
> CWRIZETW"--and this certainly does make explicit the ordinance of God
> underlying the marital union, but that does not obviate, in my
opinion,
> the
> self-interested and deliberate initiative of the individual referrred
to
> in
> verse 5: KATALEIYEI ANQRWPOS TON PATERA KAI THN MHTERA KAI
KOLLHQHSETAI
> THi
> GUNAIKI AUTOU, KAI ESONTAI hOI DUO EIS SARKA MIAN. I've always thought
> this
> referred to sexual union as something divinely sanctioned, but that
> doesn't
> mean that the initiative in sexual union does not reside in the sexual
> partners.
>
> >Now I am not suggesting that such arguments could reduce the number
of
> >definite middle examples to zero. But I think it could reduce them to
> >rather a small proportion. I suspect we might be nearer the mark to
> >report 169 definite passives, 56 definite middles and 56 uncertain
> >cases, or maybe some of the definite passives could be moved to
> >uncertain as well.
>
> I think this makes good enough sense; it is in fact one of the chief
> objectives of my hypothesis and research: that interpretation of the
> "middle-passive" voice morphoparadigms is just as obligatory for MP2
forms
> as it always was for MP1 forms; it is not enough to do the knee-jerk
thing
> and say, "Oh, this -QH- form doesn't have a passive sense, so it must
be a
> DEPONENT VERB"--as if calling it a "deponent verb" somehow diminishes
the
> truth that the -QH- morphoparadigm does NOT necessarily indicate
passive
> meaning.
> --
>
> Carl W. Conrad
> Department of Classics, Washington University (Emeritus)
> 1989 Grindstaff Road/Burnsville, NC 28714/(828) 675-4243
> cwconrad at artsci.wustl.edu OR cwconrad at ioa.com
> WWW: http://www.ioa.com/~cwconrad/
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