Robertson on "deponents"

Carl W. Conrad cwconrad at artsci.wustl.edu
Tue Oct 15 09:29:42 EDT 2002


At 11:37 PM -0400 10/14/02, George Somsel <Polycarp66 at aol.com> wrote:
>I'm not sure that we can strictly speek of POREUQHTI as a passive. It is
>a true deponent verb. Robertson, p. 817 notes
>
>"The so-called passive 'deponents,' verbs which had no active, formed the
>aorist with the passive form. But they were not always intransitive.
>Some of them were so, like POREUOMAI (Mt. 8:9), METAMELOMAI (Mt. 27:3),
>DUNAMAI (Mt. 17:16), but most of them are really transitive They
>probably represent a survival of the old active origin of the aorist
>passive forms."

Robertson's comment cited here is correct, of course, But what is
unfortunate is that although he knew and said quite directly that the term
"deponent" was unfortunate, didn't feel he could stem the tide of
perpetuation of bad grammatical phraseology in this instance. Let me cite
his own words about the term from _A Grammar of the Greek New Testament,"
pp. 332-3:

"(d) The So-called "Deponent" Verbs. These call for a word (cf. c h. XVII,
III, (k) at the risk of trespassing on syntax. Moulton  is certainly right
in saying that the term should be applied to all three voices if to any.
The truth is that it should not be used at all. As in the Sanskrit  so in
the Greek some verbs were used in both active and middle in all tenses
(like LUW); some verbs in some tenses in one and some in the other (like
BAINW, [p. 333] BHSOMAI); some on one voice only (like KEIMAI). As concerns
voice these verbs were defective rather than deponent.  Note also the
common use of the second perfect active with middle verbs (GINOMAI,
GEGONA).  A number of verbs sometimes have the future in the active in the
N.T. which usually had it in the middle in the older Greek. These are
AKOUSW (Jo. 5:25, 28, etc., but AKOUSOMAI, Ac. 17:32), hAMAARTHSW (Mt.
18:21), APANTHSW (Mk. 14:13), hARPASW (Jo. 10:28), BLEYW (Ac. 28:26),
GELASW (Lu. 6:21), DIWXW (Mt. 23:34), ZHSW (Jo. 5:25), EPIORKHSW (Mt. 5:33,
LXX), KLAUSW (Lu. 6:25), KRAXW  (Lu. 19:40), PAIXW (Mk. 10:34), hREUSW (Jo.
7:38), SIWPHSW (Lu. 19:40), SPOUDASW  (2 Pet. 1:15, SUNANTHSW (Lu. 22:10).
But still note APOQANOUMAI, ESOMAI, ZHSOMAI, QAYMASOMAI, LHMYOMAI, OYOMAI,
PESOUMAI, PIOMAIi, TEXOMAI, FAGOMAI, FEUXOMAI, etc. Cf. Blass, Gr. of  N.T.
Gk., p. 42 f.; Wiener-Schmiedel, p. 17; Moulton, Prol., p. 1455. See
Helbing, Gr. d. Sept., p. 89f.; Thackeray, pp. 231ff., for illustrations in
the LXX. The term "deponent" arose from the idea that these verbs had
dropped the active voice. Verbs do vary in the use of the voices in
different stages of the language."
-- 

Carl W. Conrad
Department of Classics, Washington University (Emeritus)
Most months: 1989 Grindstaff Road/Burnsville, NC 28714/(828) 675-4243
cwconrad at artsci.wustl.edu OR cwconrad at ioa.com
WWW: http://www.artsci.wustl.edu/~cwconrad/



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