[B-Greek] Questions about "divine passive" (Rev 13)
Juan Stam
juanstam at racsa.co.cr
Mon Dec 6 18:04:45 EST 2004
I'm currently reading Grant Osborne's commentary on Revelation (very good!),
and in chapter 13, as in many other passages, Osborne consistently takes
EDOThH as a "divine passive" and, via this interpretation, makes divine
sovereignty the central thought of several texts, even where God is not
mentioned at all: "God allows blasphemy and slander" (13:5s), "God allows
the Beast to Conquer the Saints" (13:7a) and "God allows the Beast to
Receive Universal Worship" (13:7b-8; pp.498-502, 507). Even though 13:2
says explicitly, "the dragon gave the beast his power" etc (same verb,
active voice), Osborne infers from the divine passive that "the beast's
authority merely appeared to come from Satan; in reality, God was the true
source"; the beast & his followers only believed their authority came from
Satan. To me, this seems to put inference (a possible but not necessary
interpretation of the passive as divine) above exegesis (clear, direct
statement that the dragon gave the beast his authority and throne).
My questions:
1) What respected texts on Greek grammar or exegesis explain most
convincingly the "divine passive"?
2) Since the author of Revelation shows no hesitation in using the divine
name very freely, if here he wanted to tell us God was allowing all this,
why wouldn't he (or she) just say so, rather than resort to the subtlety of
divine passives?
3) Why can't many of these passages just mean, "Somebody (unspecified)
granted him this..." ? If the author did not bother to specify the implied
subject, why do we need to? (In Spanish we have an expressión, "se dio"
[also the verb "to give"] which amounts to "it just so happened...").
4) No doubt this passive form (as also some third person plurals) can
sometimes suggest divine agency, but must that always be so? How can we
tell when it really does imply divine agency (even permissive)?
Juan Stam (Costa Rica)
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