Meaning of the middle voice (was "Re: [B-Greek] 1 Peter 1:15")
Carl W. Conrad
cwconrad at artsci.wustl.edu
Fri Dec 31 08:15:55 EST 2004
Regular readers of B-Greek may not understand why I continue to grind away at
voicing opposition to this inveterate misperception of the way the voices
function in ancient Greek; I guess that one has to come to the point of
discerning that the notion of deponency and of middle and passive verb forms
that supposedly express an "active" meaning really is problematic when one
starts to ask, "Just what IS "active" meaning? I think that most people think in
terms of the antithesis of active and passive when they think of verbal voice at
all, and they tend to think that if a verb is not passive in meaning it must be
active. In my opinion, this means that one hasn't given much thought to what
"active" means in terms of the MEANING of a Greek verb form such as PASCEI or
PIPTEI, especially when such verb-forms are followed by a hUPO + genitive agent
construction; it also means that one probably thinks of the middle voice as
functioning only to indicate that the grammatical subject performs an action on
itself or for itself. And of course there's some truth in that--but it leaves
completely unanswered why a form such as GENHQHTE is semantically equivalent to
the more erstwhile more common form GENESQE, why this verb has no authentic
active form at all, unless one considers the cognate GENNAW. The conventional
wisdom says that GINOMAI is a "deponent" verb, that its form is middle (although
we DO indeed see aorists in EGENHQHN that mean the same as the middle EGENOMHN)
but that its meaning is "active"--whether we express that meaning in English as
"become" or "come to be" or "happen" or "come to birth" or simply understand it
as the aorist equivalent of the copulative EIMI. But is the sense of GENHQHTE in
1 Peter 1:15 AUTOI hAGIOI EN PASHi ANASTROFHi GENHQHTE really "active"? What is
the sense of GENHQHHTE here? "Become" doesn't really work very well; "Be holy"
is a little better English but still not really good; "Become holy"? No. The
sense is really something like "make yourselves holy" or "sanctify yourselves"
or "show yourselves as being holy." The sense here really is middle.
I have formulated a sort of "primer" on ancient Greek voice entitled, "Active,
Middle and Passive: Understanding Ancient Greek Voice," a 9-page PDF document
setting forth my view of how the forms and functions of the voice-forms in
ancient Greek are best understood. A fuller explanation of my perspective and
the rationale for it is a longer PDF document, "A New Perspective on Ancient
Greek Voice"--this one in need of further revision to make it clearer and to
incoporate still more evidence that I've compiled since that version was
written. Both these documents are readily available at my web-site:
http://www.ioa.com/~cwconrad/Docs/UndAncGrkVc.pdf
and http://www.ioa.com/~cwconrad/Docs/NewObsAncGrkVc.pdf
They are also available at my Washington University site:
http://www.artsci.wustl.edu/docs/UndAncGrkVc.pdf
and http://www.artsci.wustl.edu/docs/NewObsAncGrkVc.pdf
As I've said and reiterated, I really don't expect to topple the conventional
conception of ancient Greek voice, but I continue to hope that those who have
found that conventional conception puzzling and inadequate may be helped by my
own accounting of these features of ancient Greek.
At 4:28 PM -0800 12/30/04, Eddie Mishoe wrote:
>Jim:
>
>You wrote:
>
>> Ray Summers, Essentials of New Testament Greek, p.
>> 50. "Deponent verbs are
>> verbs which appear in the middle or passive form but
>> are active in function".
>
>I really think this is the definition of the "old
>school."
>
>My question is this: can you provide verification for
>this? We've all read this is Greek Grammar books but
>I've yet to see it verified. Have you done any study
>to this end or were you just quoting Summers? The
>reason I ask is because I did a quick study at one
>time and most of the "active" functions seemed better
>if taken as "middle."
>
>Thanks,
>
>Eddie
>
>--- Jim West <jwest at highland.net> wrote:
>
>> At 11:27 AM 12/30/2004, you wrote:
>>
>> >Jim, concerning your claim that deponents "should
>> >generally be translated active..." I wonder if you
>> >could produce a few examples where the Middle Voice
>> >should be rejected on grammatical grounds for the
>> >Active Voice. I had actually thought to do this
>> before
>> >but it appears you've already beat me to it.
>> >
>> >=====
>>
>> Ray Summers, Essentials of New Testament Greek, p.
>> 50. "Deponent verbs are
>> verbs which appear in the middle or passive form but
>> are active in function".
>>
>> Best
>>
>> Jim
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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