FW: Re: SFRAGIZW: middle or passive?

Iver Larsen iver_larsen at sil.org
Mon Oct 21 01:48:49 EDT 2002


Good morning, Carl. I'd like to comment further on some of your points as we
continue to grapple with this issue.

You said:
> ... The question is whether I can
> "make myself understood." And that very phrasing of the verbal expression,
> "make myself understood," goes right to the heart of the problem I am
> pondering, inasmuch as I think the Greek expression ESFRAGISQHTE in Eph
> 1:13, that was the starting-point for this new round of discussion of
> voice, in its context is very similar in its formulation: I'm still
> inclined to English this as "you had yourself sealed"

Well, I don't think the Greek middle corresponds to these examples from
English. It is complicated because we are dealing both with grammar and
semantics and with the mismatch between Greek and English. Your examples are
short, almost idiomatic, expressions that correspond to complex semantic
units which I believe have two underlying semantic propositions with an
implied purpose/result relationship. (Try to translate them into another
language).
If I say "How can I make myself understood", I see this as a grammatical
surface derivation based on two underlying semantic propositions: 1) What
can I do/say/write? and 2) so that (people) understand me.
The first is active, the second becomes passive in the surface form - so
that I be understood - when the agent is suppressed.
If I say "I had myself sealed" it corresponds to: 1) I did something,
followed by: 2) so that (somebody) sealed me. The first is active, the
second can be made passive in the surface form - so that I was sealed.

> The text: ... EN hWi PISTEUSANTES ESFRAGISQHTE TWi PNEUMATI THS AGGELIAS
> TWi hAGIWi, (14) hO ESTIN ARRABWN THS KLHRONOMIAS hHMWN ...
>
> I won't dispute that the agent of the action indicated in ESFRAGISQHTE is
> clearly god in this context. What I would question is whether the intent
> and involvement of the subject--those addressed here--is altogether
> irrelevant in our determination of the semantic voice of the verb. Is it
> enough to say, as you appear to believe, that the subject of ESFRAGISQHTE
> is simply the patient or experiencer and that the agent is clearly
> another--God--and therefore this is passive? I'm willing to say that it's
> more passive than middle but that the subject here is a willing,
> consenting, participant, engaging deliberately in an action which is
> eagerly desired.
>
> Now I can envision more than one way to understand this construction: (1)
> one may decide that the semantic voice must be EITHER passive OR
> middle but
> that it CANNOT be BOTH; (2) one may decide, on theological grounds, that
> this sealing with the Holy Spirit is wholly God's act and is wholly
> independent of the will or intent of the believer; (3) one may decide, on
> theological grounds, that this sealing with the Holy Spirit is very much a
> matter of the believer's will and intent, and therefore that the semantic
> voice of this verb is middle; (4) one may surmise, also on theological
> grounds, that this sealing of the believer with the Holy Spirit is
> genuinely paradoxical and that the semantic voice cannot be stipulated
> unambiguously in this instance. Please note that I am not trying to
> introduce a theological thesis into the discussion, as the same
> alternatives could be made just as well to apply to a man who goes to the
> dentist to have a painful tooth extracted; we say, "he is having his tooth
> extracted"--is that verbal phrase semantically middle or passive
> or both? I
> think it's both, but perhaps this is a matter of judgment rather than
> something that can be resolved on the basis of linguistic theory. At any
> rate, I would want to affirm that historically Greek has only the two
> voices inherited from Indo-European: the middle and the passive,
No active??
> and that it not infrequently uses the middle to express a semantically
passive notion.

How would you say "He is having his tooth extracted" in Greek? Would you use
a middle form of "extract"? Or would you need two verbs to express the two
underlying semantic propositions? If you use a middle, are you not saying
that he extracted his own tooth?

Of your 4 options, I would accept #(1) in the case of Eph 1:13. I would
disagree with (2) and (4), and I don't accept your last statement of (3). If
I agree that this tooth extraction is dependent on and at least in part a
result of the person's willingness to undergo tooth extraction, that does
not make it equivalent to a Greek middle, in my view. It is still a passive
expression of an action resulting from or based on an active volition or
action on the part of the undergoer.

Upon further reflection I would like to retract the terms I used "semantic
middle" and "semantic passive". They are theoretically dubious and probably
more confusing than helpful. Sorry if I have caused unnecessary confusion.
In semantic theory there is no such thing as an active-passive dichotomy.
This belongs to the surface realization, the grammar. A grammatical passive
is the realization of a semantic proposition where the agent is not
expressed in the surface structure for one reason or another.

What we are struggling with is the mismatch between English grammar which
has an active-passive dichotomy, and (Hellenistic) Greek grammar which has a
three-way distinction between active, middle and passive. There is
considerable overlap between the Greek middle and passive, and in certain
instances there is ambiguity whether it is middle or passive, but we do need
theoretically to maintain a three-way distinction as traditional Greek
grammar does. In our present discussion we have mentioned ENDUW, SFRAGIZW,
and Mark introduced KATARTIZW, all occurring in all three forms: active,
middle and passive. (ENDUW: 3A, 24M, no P in the GNT, but could have been;
SFRAGIZW: 7A, 2M, 6P;  KATARTIZW: 6A, 2M, 5P).
As far as I understand, the Greek active and middle correspond grammatically
to an English active form. A few Greek (aorist) passive verb forms are in
fact to be taken as middle in sense and therefore correspond to an English
active. The Greek middle does not have anything equivalent in the surface
grammar of English. That is why I resorted to semantics to try to explain
what I think is going on.

This is my current thinking,
Iver Larsen




More information about the B-Greek mailing list