[B-Greek] Middle voice or Intensive

Carl W. Conrad cwconrad at artsci.wustl.edu
Tue Feb 10 11:42:56 EST 2004


At 7:32 AM -0800 2/10/04, Mitch Larramore wrote:
>IHSOUS AUTOS OUK EBAPTIZEN ALL' hOI MAQHTAI OUTOU
>
>Can someone explain to me the difference between an
>Intensive pronoun usage and a Middle voice usage. I am
>having a hard time distinguishing them in my mind.
>
>Intensive: Jesus himself did not baptize
>Middle: Jesus ???

Yes, you ARE confused. AUTOS simply highlights the noun with which it
accords; middle-voice indicates the "affectedness" of the subject in/by the
verb-form. In the above the verb EBAPTIZEN is active; that active verb is
also implicit as the verb with the alternative subject: hOI MAQHTAI AUTOU
(EBAPTIZON).

Middle voice would be: IHSOUS EBAPTIZETO "Jesus underwent baptism" or
"Jesus had himself baptized" (you can see how it's hardly possible to
distinguish a middle from a passive sense here). If we had a sentence
IHSOUS AUTOS EBAPTIZETO, I think it would imply that Jesus himself did
something that we might be surprised at: he himself underwent
baptism--deliberately with full cognizance of what he was doing (i.e. it's
NOT passive). In Matthew's telling of the baptismal story that's precisely
a key point.
-- 

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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