[B-Greek] EXESTAKENAI in Acts 8:11: transitive or intransitive?
Carl W. Conrad
cwconrad at artsci.wustl.edu
Tue Mar 8 15:55:43 EST 2005
At 3:12 PM -0500 3/8/05, Randy Leedy wrote:
>Acts 8:11 reads, in part, DIA TO hIKANWi CRONWi TAIS MEGEIAIS
>EXESTAKENAI AUTOUS.
>
>Nearly all the versions I have access to translate EXESTAKENAI
>transitive, e.g. "because he had for a long time astonished them with
>his magic arts" (NASB).
>
>I don't recall ever having seen a perfect tense form of hISTHMI
>functioning transitively, however. The New Jerusalem Bible, though, is
>the only one I can find that reflects an intransitive sense: "because
>for a considerable period they had been astounded by his wizardry."
>
>BDAG puts this passage in the "transitive" section, but none of their
>other examples are perfect tense, and they clearly label their
>"intransitive" section as applying to the perfect active.
>
>Can anyone adduce additional examples of the perfect of hISTHMI (or one
>of its compounds) in a transitive sense? I have electronically searched
>all the perfects of hISTHMI or its compounds in the NT, and the only
>candidates I find other than Acts 8:11 are two occurrences of ANQISTHMI
>with the dative (Rom 9:19 and 13:2), but the dative appears to me to be
>as likely to be adverbial as to be a direct object. At any rate, the
>example at hand has accusative object, if indeed hUMAS is an object at
>all.
>
>The only other clue I can find is that the 1st perfect infinitive (of
>PARISTHMI) occurs twice in the LXX with what could be construed as a
>dative object (but it could also be adverbial); all other perfect
>infinitives in Biblical Greek, except for the passage in question, are
>2nd perfect. I did not find in Liddell and Scott any notes about a
>transitive/intransitive distinction between 1st and 2nd perfect
>infinitives such as exists in the 1st and 2nd aorist conjugations, but I
>did not give their article is this the key that unlocks the puzzle?
>
>Liddell and Scott does mention that the perfect can have a transitive
>sense, but if the transitive sense is pretty well absent from biblical
>Greek, why use it in Acts 8:11 where an intransitive sense is also quite
>natural? Are the versions simply reflecting an English stylistic
>preference for the active voice?
>
>Thanks in advance for any knowledgeable help. Please CC any replies to
>RLeedy at bju.edu as I see the list only in digest form, and sometimes
>the digest exceeds the length that my email program is willing to
>display.
Randy, two thoughts occur to me:
(1) why couldn't AUTOUS be the subject of EXESTAKENAI, "because for some
time they had been amazed at his magic"?
(2) on the other hand, I've come to think of hISTHMI/hISTAMAI and its
compounds as bearing different senses in the active and middle: the middle
is intransitive, the active transitive and causative. Now it is true that
this very ancient verb has two forms in the aorist (ESTHSA, active
causative and ESTHN intransitive aorist of hISTAMAI); for the perfect of
hISTHMI/hISTAMAI I find 65 examples, but all of them are active--there
isn't any middle-passive form at all. I don't think that's surprising
either, inasmuch as the perfect middle-passive is a relatively
late-emerging form--originally there was only one default perfect-tense
form, the one we call 'active.'
Now it's true that this verb EXISTHMI/EXISTAMAI occurs in the perfect tense
here and only here in the GNT. Another anomally is that it is spelled with
an 'A' rather than an 'H': it's EXESTAKENAI rather than EXESTHKENAI. An odd
form altogether, isn't it?
But note that the active form is used two verses earlier (Acts 8:9 SIMWN
... MAGEUWN KAI EXISTANWN TO EQNOS THS SAMAREIAS. It's clear that EXISTANWN
here is intended to be an active participle of the transitive verb--BDAG
lists this as a "by-form" of EXISTHMI. I wonder whether the form of the
perfect infinitive in Acts 8:11 with an 'A' instead of an 'H' isn't meant
quite distinctly to be a perfect ACTIVE (transitive and causative)
equivalent of the "by-form" EXISTANW.
That seems to me the most likely explanation of what must be viewed as an
exceptional form.
Yet on the other hand again, I really don't see any reason, if this verb
can be transitive active or intransitive middle and if there's only one
perfect-tense form, why this verb in the infinitive cannot have a
transitive sense in this passage. But on the other hand, I also see no
reason why AUTOUS cannot be the subject of the infinitive--it's not really
that uncommon for the subject of an infinitive to follow after it.
--
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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