[B-Greek] Acts 1:1

Carl W.Conrad cwconrad at ioa.com
Mon Apr 25 07:16:57 EDT 2005


On Apr 25, 2005, at 2:16 AM, ph.maertens at sapo.pt wrote:

> Dear listmembers,
>
> After a few years, I'm struggeling again through my (french) copy of  
> Wenham. At
> the same time, I try to follow the advice of reading large parts in  
> Greek on
> the one hand and to analyse smaller portions of the text. The other  
> day, I
> started the book of Acts and already in the first line, I stumbled on  
> something
> that is hard for me to understand.
>
> TON MEN PRWTON LOGON EPOIHSAMHN ktl
>
> Maybe under the influence of the translations I'm used to read, I  
> would have
> expected the form EPOIHSA - actif aorist. Or the text displays a  
> middle aorist.
> Why is that?
> Could someone please enlighten me ?

If you haven't access to BDAG you might check LSJ--perseus has it  
online and you'll find the entry for
POIEW at  
http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/cgi-bin/ptext? 
doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.04.0057%3Aentry%3D%2384235

If you'll check sense II subcategroy 5, you see "freq. in Med. with  
Nouns periphr. for the Verb derived from the Noun"--and within this  
it's indicated that LOGON POIEISQAI can be a periphrasis of LEGEIN.  
There really is a middle sense here, as in English, "I've made my  
speech" or "I've had my say about this ..."

It's worth noting, perhaps, that there are 568 instances of POIEW in  
the GNT, but only 22 instances of this verb in the middle-passive; if  
you check them out you can see that many of them are clearly instances  
of periphrasis of the verb, e.g. John 14:23 MONHN PAR' AUTWi POIHSOMEQA  
= MENOUMEN (fut.); 2 Peter 1:15 MNHMHN POIEISQAI = MNMONEUEIN;

Carl W. Conrad
Department of Classics, Washington University (Emeritus)
1989 Grindstaff Road/Burnsville, NC 28714/(828) 675-4243
cwconrad at ioa.com
WWW: http://www.ioa.com/~cwconrad/




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