[B-Greek] EXESTAKENAI in Acts 8:11: transitive or intransitive?
Randy Leedy
Rleedy at bju.edu
Tue Mar 8 16:43:54 EST 2005
Yes, Carl, your number 1 suggestion of hUMAS as subject is what I had in
mind for the intransitive sense, since in that case hUMAS could not be
object. That's the way I'd be inclined to read it if there weren't such
a strong consensus of versions going the other way, seeming to me to fly
in the face of the usual intransitive usage of hISTHMI in the perfect.
You mention to absence of perfect middle/passives. There are a couple
of occurrences in the LXX of uncompounded hISTHMI in this form
(Judges[A] 6:31 and Daniel 5:1), and 18 others using various compounds,
according to BibleWorks morphology.
The -AKENAI form of the perfect active infin is also unparalleled in
Biblical Greek as far as I can find; the scribes didn't seem to balk at
it enough for a variant to make it into the NA apparatus, though. So it
is a bit of a puzzle. I suppose your suggestion of a causative active of
EXISTANW is as good a guess as any; at least better than anything I've
come up with other than that the English translators just missed
something. But I'm not comfortable thinking that I got something right
that nearly all the translators missed, at least not without some pretty
careful consideration of what may justify their rendering, and your
suggestion perhaps does just that. I'll leave the jury out for a while,
though, to see whether any clearer explanations come in.
Randy
>>> "Carl W. Conrad" <cwconrad at artsci.wustl.edu> 03/08/05 3:55 PM >>>
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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