[B-Greek] Heb. 10:22 -- Perf. Pass. Ptcs & Accusatives

Mitch Larramore mitchlarramore at yahoo.com
Tue May 18 14:12:31 EDT 2004


Cindy:

This has been helpful for me to see this interaction.
I was under the impression that even if the participle
is taken as a MIDDLE, that still does not negate
Christ as the agent who acts upon (passive sense) the
subject. 

The MIDDLE voice stresses that the subject permits or
initiates the action that comes upon himself, even if
that action comes from an outside agent, so if that is
the case, then Christ can still be the agent that acts
upon a willing subject, who through some decision has
"set things in motion to be acted upon."

Am I thinking rightly?

Mitch Larramore

--- CWestf5155 at aol.com wrote:
> 
> 
> In a message dated 5/17/2004 3:16:10 PM Mountain
> Standard Time, 
> cwconrad at artsci.wustl.edu writes:
> At 4:32 PM -0400 5/17/04, A. Philip Brown II wrote:
> >Chairein,
> >
> >Hebrews 10:22 reads "PROSERCWMEQA META ALHQINHS
> KARDIAS EN PLHROFORIAi
> >PISTEWS hRERANTISMENOI TAS KARDIAS APO SUNEIDHSEWS
> PONHRAS KAI LELOUSMENOI
> >TO SWMA hUDATI KAQARWi"
> >
> >I was working through this with my 2nd year Greek
> students and was a bit
> >puzzled by the the phrases
> >hRERANTISMENOI TAS KARDIAS
> >LELOUSMENOI TO SWMA
> >
> >I took the participles as middles and the
> Accusatives as direct objects.
> >My students took them as passives and the
> accusatives as accusatives of
> >reference. They thought it strange to view
> hRERANTISMENOI TAS KARDIAS APO
> >SUNEIDHSEWS PONHRAS as something we do to
> ourselves.
> >
> >BDAG parses both as middles, giving the sense of
> hRERANTISMENOI TAS KARDIAS
> >APO SUNEIDHSEWS PONHRAS as "after we have purified
> our hearts of an evil
> >conscience."
> >
> >I wasn't sure how to defend my analysis (apart from
> bald appeal to
> >authority).
> 
> Philip, you might, if you haven't yet done so, take
> a look at my "Active,
> Middle, and Passive: Understanding Ancient Greek
> Voice" at
> http://www.ioa.com/~cwconrad/Docs/UndAncGrkVc.pdf
> (hold down option key
> while clicking on it to download). I think that both
> these participles are
> middle; the distinction between the middle and the
> passive is actually
> pretty vague, inasmuch as the m-p form may mean
> "having gotten
> (oneself/one's heart) cleansed"--one's initiative is
> involved even if the
> agent of cleansing is another. Grammatically it is
> easier to understand TAS
> KARDIAS as direct object than as object of a passive
> verb. The notion of
> accusatives of reference with passive verb is
> time-honored but BDAG is
> really right here; there's surely a parallelism,
> moreover, in the two
> participles with their accusative objects.
> -- 
> Philip and Carl,
> 
> Though I find Carl's arguments about the middle
> generally convincing, in this 
> context I would take hRERANTISMENOI as a passive,
> because the phrase forms a 
> tie with 9:14 where the blood of Christ KAQARIEI THN
> SUNEIDHSIN hHMWN--that 
> is, the context has stated that our consenciences
> are cleansed by Christ's blood 
> to qualify us for access and service (cf. 9:8-10,
> 11-14). Similarly, in the 
> context of entering the Holy of Holies, body washing
> would refer to the 
> cleansing of Levites (Num. 8:7--where Moses is the
> "waher"), so I would take it as 
> passive also.  If baptism is being treated as a
> counterpart to the Levitic 
> washing, that reinforces taking this as passive--it
> is done to the believer.
> 
> The argument here is that Christ's work as a priest
> (which specifically 
> includes cleansing) gives us confidence to enter the
> Holy of Holies.  To take the 
> cleansing by sprinkling or washing as something one
> does for oneself is to miss 
> the preceding context.
> 
> Cindy Westfall
> Adjunct Faculty Denver Seminary
> ---
> B-Greek home page: http://metalab.unc.edu/bgreek
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