[B-Greek] 1 Peter 1:15

Steven Lo Vullo themelios at charter.net
Tue Jan 11 00:06:44 EST 2005


On Jan 10, 2005, at 8:52 PM, kgraham0938 at comcast.net wrote:

> @Steve:  You wrote
>
> But dude, GENESQW is undoubtedly traditionally MIDDLE in form. So if
> you subscribe to traditional ideas on voice, you must accept that it is
> middle, not passive. Did you understand the point I was making in
> comparing GENHQHTW in Mt 26.42 with GENESQW in MPoly 7.1?
>
>
> Response:  Actually no I did not, I was reading along and when I got 
> to Matthew I looked it up and replied to that only.  After that I 
> closed the email and went on to read something else.  But you make a 
> good point.

I kind of suspected that from your response. But I think I was not as 
clear as I should have been, so allow me to make the point again.

First the texts in question:

Mt 26.42   GENHQHTW TO QELHMA SOU

MPoly 7.1 TO QELHMA TOU QEOU GENESQW

Now Charles' comment on Mt 26.42:

"GENHQHTE

Matthew 26:42 He went away again a second time and prayed, saying, 'My
Father, if this cannot pass away unless I drink it, Your will be done.'

GENHQHTO TO QELHMA SOU - aorist passive imperative 3s

Concept remains passive in my understanding as per previous posts."

When he says, "as per previous posts," we must assume that his argument 
is that GENHQHTW in Mt 26.42 cannot be considered middle, for then this 
would be a prayer for God's will to bring itself into being. This is 
not a misrepresentation on my part, but is is in harmony with his 
previous and later posts, where in every case in which he is explicit 
he portrays middle semantics as reflexive when he sets forth the choice 
between passive and middle for each respective example.

But when we look at the clause in MPoly 7.1, which is practically 
identical to that of Mt 26.42 except that we have a middle form of 
GINOMAI rather than passive, we quickly see that (a) there is no 
necessity whatsoever to take a middle form of GINOMAI in a prayer like 
this as reflexive and (b) the middle in a prayer like this is perfectly 
natural to a speaker of Koine. This totally destroys the contention 
that understanding GENHQHTW in Mt 26.42 as middle somehow cannot make 
good sense. The middle certainly made good sense to the author of 
MPoly.

> But for clarification basically what you guys are argueing for is that 
> certain QH passives are not always passive but sometimes can be 
> translated as middle?
>
> And some middle forms of verbs can be translated as passives?  
> Especially amonst words like GINOMAI etc.
>
> That is the arguement in a nutshell right?

I'm probably not the best person to ask about this. But I think Carl 
Conrad and others on the list would say that -QH form verbs should NOT 
be considered passive, but middle/passive, like middle/passives in the 
present tense. In other words, a -QH form verb may be either middle or 
passive. Though originally resistant to Carl's views on this issue, I 
have come over the months to see some merit in what he is saying. But I 
have not as yet been able to fully embrace his views.
============

Steven Lo Vullo
Madison, WI




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