[B-Greek] GINOMAI - Aorist and Aorist Passive
Carl W. Conrad
cwconrad at artsci.wustl.edu
Wed Dec 10 19:36:56 EST 2003
At 4:11 PM -0800 12/10/03, Mitch Larramore wrote:
>> >Is there any translation or meaning difference
>> between GINOMAI
>> >in the aorist and in the aorist passive?
>
>Carl Conrad said...
>
>> In a word: NO!
>
>My understanding is that this question is asking
>whether there is a difference between the aorist
>MIDDLE and aorist PASSIVE of GINOMAI. And since the
>answer is No, would it also be true that there is no
>difference between OTHER aorist middles and passives?
There are in fact very few verbs in Koine Greek, certainly within the NT,
that have both aorist middle and aorist passive forms. Here's a list I
presented in a message to B-Greek dated Nov. 18, 2001 with subject-header,
"MIDDLE & PASSIVE: GINOMAI in the GNT 1":
=======
In the course of our discussions, the proposition has been asserted anew,
especially by Ward Powers, that the "MP" and "Passive" morphoparadigms DO
essentially mark semantic distinctions between "middle" and "passive" sense
in the aorist and future tenses, and that the so-called "deponent" verbs
are to be understood simply as exceptions to this clear grammatical
categorization. In fact, however, as I have endeavored to show, there are
really VERY FEW verbs in the GNT database that are to be found in BOTH the
"MP" and the "Passive" morphoparadigms. Most recently, in a message dated
Sun, 28 Oct 2001 18:12:30 -0500 with subject-header, "[b-greek] Aorist:
middle vs. passive verb forms in GNT" I listed figures for what I said were
the 18 verbs displaying verb-forms in both MP and P morphoparadigms. After
rechecking the data carefully, I now find that there are 30 (THIRTY) such
verbs with forms in both aorist morphoparadigms (I'll discuss the future
"mp" and "p" data later; they are not really so revealing as these
regarding the aorist forms). I'll list them here summarily in paragraph
form showing numbers of MP and P forms for each:
AGALLIAW (4mp,1p); ANAIREW (1mp,3p); ANATREFW (1mp,1p); APODIDWMI (3mp,2p);
APOKRINOMAI (7mp,213p); APOLOGEOMAI (1mp,1p); ASFALIZW (3mp,1p); BAPTIZW
(2mp,32p); GINOMAI (447mp,45p); DIALEGOMAI (2mp,1p); DIAMERIZW (2mp,2p);
DIATASSW (3mp,3p); EKTIQHMI (1mp,1p); EMBRIMAOMAI (2mp,1p); ENDUW
(18mp,1p); EPIKALEW (7mp,4p); QEAOMAI (16mp,3p); IAOMAI (5mp,10p);
KATALAMBANW (3mp,1p); LUTROW (1mp,1p); MERIZW (1mp,6p); METAPEMPW (mp7,p1);
MWMAOMAI (1mp,1p); hORAW (root OP-) (1mp,23p); PROSTIQHMI (3mp,5p); hRUOMAI
(6mp,4p); SULLAMBANW (2mp,2p); SFRAGIZW (2mp,2p); TIQHMI (16mp,9p);
CARIZOMAI (10mp,3p)
==========
There were many threads on this topic in this forum in November of 2001 and
the discussion then was critical for conclusions which I set forth in my
paper of November 2002. Occasionally the -QH- form will bear a passive
meaning, but my contention has been that the -QH- endings gradually
supplanted the middle-passive endings in the future and aorist tenses and
that the -QH- endings themselves ought to be understood as just as
ambivalent as to semantic voice as the MAI/SAI/TAI,MHN/SO/TO endings. One
needs to look at the details for each verb, but here's a couple interesting
points:
AGALLIAW "rejoice" appears 6x in the aorist in the GNT (1x active, 4x
middle, 1x passive); with no difference in meaning whatsoever.
APOKRINOMAI "answer" appears 7x in the aorist middle (APEKRINAMHN), 213x in
the aorist passive (APEKRIQHN), with no difference of meaning whatsoever.
What we should say about this is that APEKRIQHN is standard in NT Koine but
the older form has not yet completely died out; the attempt to discern a
difference between the middle and passive forms is unconvincing.
--
Carl W. Conrad
Department of Classics, Washington University (Emeritus)
1989 Grindstaff Road/Burnsville, NC 28714/(828) 675-4243
cwconrad at artsci.wustl.edu
WWW: http://www.ioa.com/~cwconrad/
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