[B-Greek] 1 Peter 1:15
Carl W. Conrad
cwconrad at artsci.wustl.edu
Mon Dec 27 16:26:06 EST 2004
At 2:01 PM -0500 12/27/04, Norman Goos wrote:
>There is an aorist imperative in this verse, GENHQHTW, translated with an
>active sense - "become". There are 8 other aorist uses of imperatives of
>this verb in the NT (all obviously deponent) but they seem to hold mostly a
>middle or passive sense (Matt. 6:10; 8:13; 9:29; 15:28; 26:42; Acts 1:20;
>Rom. 11:9; 1 Co. 3:18) other than the last one. Would one be justified in
>seeing this passage as more middle or passive, and less active? By this I
>am asking if one would see only a reference to the subject's need to act as
>opposed to being passive in the situation to some degree.
The fact of the matter is that there is no difference whatsoever in meaning between GENESQW and GENHQHTW; the -QH- verbs forms were in process of supplanting -MHN/-SO/-TO verbs increasingly during the Hellenistic era. And one ought not to accept the notion, albeit traditional, that GINOMAI is a "deponent" verb, with middle-passive forms but "active" meanings--the meaning here is NOT "active" in the sense of a transitive verb that takes a direct object. What one really needs to grasp is that the middle-passive verb has its own distinctive meaning commonly involving a process or alternation which the subject is experiencing or undergoing, whether voluntarily or involuntarily.
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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