[B-Greek] Passive Imperative
Harold R. Holmyard III
hholmyard at ont.com
Sun Aug 14 15:43:41 EDT 2005
Dear Carl,
>
>I do think that the "passive imperative" is something of a misnomer:
>only if conceived as having middle voice can these imperatives have
>any sense whatsoever as addressed to a second person that is to
>undergo the action. One cannot really say that KAQARISQHTI, ARQHTI,
>and BLHQHTI are commands addressed to God or some external agent to
>bring about the healing, lifting up, or hurling as directed in these
>verb-forms: the commands are addressed to the person who has appealed
>to Jesus and to the mountain: "get healed" -- i.e. "enter into a
>state of health" or "rise up and plummet into the sea." And I think
>you're right, Mitch, that these verbal forms make no sense whatsoever
>if conceived as orders to the persons involved to suffer a fate
>inflicted upon them by some external source. Even the English phrases
>used to translate them make no sense: "be raised up and be hurled."
>As second-person imperatives these forms require an implicit logic of
>the addressee being somehow empowered to fulfill these commands.
>
>Our problems with such forms as these arise, I believe, from
>application of thinking in terms of the English opposition of active
>and passive to what one observes of the Greek opposition of active
>and middle-passive, and from failure to appreciate the ambivalence of
>the Greek middle-passive forms. We are helped, I think, to get closer
>to understanding Greek usage if we appreciate the meaning of verbal
>phrases using "get" as an auxiliary verb with a "passive"
>participle: "Get lost!" -- meaning "I don't want to see you any more"
>-- "I want you to go somewhere out of my sight and sphere of action."
>or "I got soused last night" -- meaning "I drank so much last night
>that I became intoxicated." Neither of these expressions really
>implies that some agent other than the person addressed or
>grammatical subject of the verb plays any role in bringing about the
>indicated result.
HH: I feel quite comfortable with the middle-passive classification
of verbs since Hebrew Niphal and Hithpael verbs can both be passive
or middle. Context gives guidance as to which it is. But what about
forms in Greek where there is a difference between middle and passive
forms? There I would not expect flexibility, since otherwise why have
a distinction in forms.
Yours,
Harold Holmyard
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