[B-Greek] middle voice or passive voice?

Apologeten post at apologeten.no
Wed May 25 16:18:56 EDT 2005


Thank you!

Thanks to you, Malcolm Robertson for your response, and also to you, Arthur King for your hint! Maybe I also will get a respone from Carl W. Conrad - when time allows! Thanks to all of you for taking the time and effort to help out!!!

I found the article "New Observations on Voice in the Ancient Greek Verb", November 19. 2002, by Carl W. Conrad very informative and interesting! 

It is an interesting idea that the middle and the passive ought to be seen as a single category of verbs, a "subject-focused" category, and that the greeks probably saw no need for a distinct passive morphoparadigm because the meanings of the middle  and the passive were so close to each other!

On this background, what would be the most probable translation of EPIKALEW in 1.Kor.1:2?

Malcolm suggests "all who are themselves calling upon the name ...".   As I see it, this is only one solution. 

The passive sense of EPIKALEW (as we find it in Acts 15:17 and James 2:7) is evidently to bear the name of Christ, i.e. that other people call you by the name of Christ and recognise you as one of his disciples, that is to say: that you are a christian!  

Now, if the middle sense is close to this sense, culd it not then mean in 1.Cor.1:2:

"all who take upon themselves the name of Christ"  (i.e. - choose to be one of his followers, to be a christian)

The meaning would then be essentially the same in both instances (as it should be if the two forms belong to the same category of verbs) - namely to be called by the name of Christ. In the first instance the weight is sleightly more on the passive aspect - "beeing called" (by others), while in the second instance the weight is more on the active sense of choosing (yourself) to be so called! The result in both instances is that you are now  a person having the name of Christ mentiones over your life in a special way! You are one of his! You belong to him! You are a christian!

This is in fact the meaning given to this verse in "The Interpreters Bible", v. 10, p. 17 and in "Sacra Pagina Series" v. 7, p. 47.

Do we not here have a close parallell to the example mentioned by Mr. Conrad in his article (p.6) : "shave oneself" (middle) or "have oneself shaved" (by others) (passive). In both instances the result is the same, the person is shaved!

For the time being, the translation "all who take upon themselves the name of Christ" (or something similar to this), seems to me to be the most likely translation of 1.Cor.1:2.

Any comments?

My best regards,
Fred V. Hjortland








 







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