[B-Greek] Acts 16,9a
Carl W. Conrad
cwconrad at artsci.wustl.edu
Mon Mar 29 20:58:55 EST 2004
At 5:23 PM -0800 3/29/04, Eddie Mishoe wrote:
>KAI hORAMA DIA NUKTOS TWi PAULWi WFQH....
>
>In response to an earlier posting of mine, Dr. Conrad
>offered this:
>
>================================================
>While it has sometimes been fashionable to view the
>construction WFQH + dative as an instance of dative of
>agent with a passive verb, I think the truth of the
>matter is that the form WFQH should be understood as
>an aorist intransitive middle: "made himself seen"
>("got himself seen").
>================================================
>
>Am I right in assuming that an intransitive middle
>sense is not possible with this usage, since "a
>vision" cannot act as an agent and make itself
>seen/appear?
Not really; it IS intransitive and simply means "appeared" or "became visible."
>Is this the often referred to "divine passive" where
>God made a vision appear to Paul (having searched some
>of the Archives, I recall Dr. Conrad not being overly
>convinced of a divine passive)?
Quite frankly I've thought of resort to calling a construction a "divine
passive" as something akin to what philosophers have termed "philosopher's
fatigue"--bringing in a supernatural cause when one runs out of any
plausible explanation for a phenomenon that is not understood. I think the
so-called "divine passive" may possible make sense in a context where there
is some anxiety about using QEOS as a name. Inasmuch as QEOS appears some
1317 times in the GNT, I would hesitate to assert that these writers are
somehow disinclined to use it. I don't doubt that there are instances--and
we note them in discussion here from time to time--of passives where God as
agent is not named but seems to be implicit; on the other hand, generally
when a passive is used it is used in order to put the focus upon what
happens to the subject rather than to avoid using QEOS with an active verb.
But WFQH here is NOT a passive; youcan call it an intransitive aorist, if
you like: "a vision became visible to Paul." There's really not a great
deal of difference in sense between hORAMA TWi PAULWi WFQH and hORAMA TWi
PAULWi EGENETO.
--
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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