[B-Greek] Clarification re voice form: Acts 10:48
Carl W. Conrad
cwconrad at artsci.wustl.edu
Sun Apr 23 09:39:12 EDT 2006
In view of the ongoing thread on the question of BAPTIZW/BAPTIZOMAI
in the GNT the past few days, I think that I need to revise and also
to explain a couple of the points I have argued.
1. I would agree with most of what Iver has most recently stated on
this matter: that the baptism discussed by Paul in Rom 6:4 and
interpreted along the same lines in a Jesus-saying in Mk 10:38-39 is
different from the Hebrew baptisms described elsewhere, different in
that it is a ritual act associated with the death (and resurrection)
of Jesus.
2. It is true that Acts 8:38 (KATEBHSAN AMFOTEROI EIS TO hUDWR, hO TE
FILIPPOS KAI hO EUNOUCOS, KAI EBAPTISEN AUTON) indicates the descent
of both BAPTIZWN and BAPTIZOMENOS into the water, but it does not
tell us exactly what the BAPTIZWN actually did to the BAPTIZOMENOS --
does not indicate the HOW of the BAPTISMA. It may be that the
BAPTIZWN laid hands upon the BAPTIZOMENOS, either before or after the
entry into the water. There is certainly no doubt that the use of the
active BAPTIZW here and elsewhere in the GNT with a personal direct
object indicates that the BAPTIZWN acted somehow efficaciously upon
the BAPTIZOMENOS. I don't dispute that and I do not consent to the
proposition that I seemed to be endorsing on Friday (Apr 21) that the
BAPTIZOMENOI "performed the acts UPON themselves." What I did write
was misleading: what I really intended to say, and should have said,
is that the BAPTIZOMENOI underwent the BAPTISMA of their own accord,
regardless of the fact that another person was involved as agent in
the process.
3. Regarding voice-terminology: I regret having said that BAPTISQHNAI
is aorist middle; I ought to have said that it is aorist middle-
passive; I would prefer the term middle-passive be applied to every
MAI/SAI/TAI/MHN/SO/TO aorist and future form and to every -QH- aorist
and future form. I won't speak for Randall; I would like to think
that by PAQHTIKH he is referring to the -QH- morphoparadigm; he
seems, however, to be interpreting the form BAPTISQHNAI in Acts 10:48
as distinctly "middle" semantically: "they acted for themselves" --
i.e. without dependence upon the action of an agent. I think I would
rather underscore the functional ambivalence of the middle-passive
form: it indicates that the subject is engaged in a process, whether
of one's own volition or involuntarily, whether self-actuated or
actualized by an external force or agent.
4. The conviction I have gradually come to regarding the middle-
passives of BOTH types (MAI/SAI/TAI,MHN/SO/TO and -QH-) is that these
forms are inherently multivalent: not simply ambiguous as meaning
EITHER middle OR passive but rather meaning simply that the subject
is engaged in a process or experience which may be involuntary, self-
initiated, initiated and carried out by an external force or agent,
OR several of these possible actualizations simultaneously. What the
verb form (which is essentially intransitive) actually means is that
the subject enters into a state indicated by the particular verb in
question. In many languages this notion is expressed by reflexive
verb forms, in Hebrew (I think) by Niphal, Pual, and Hithpael forms,
in Greek by the middle-passive. In English the most convenient way of
expressing the middle-passive of Greek is with "get" + participle:
"get drunk," "get sleep," "get killed," "get baptized." The
convenience of the use of "get" with the participle as a verb form is
that it is non-specific regarding the degree of participation of the
subject or of some force or agent in the process of entering into the
state in question.
5. That is the conviction to which I have gradually come. I think it
is a more nuanced view of middle-passive voice function than what I
was asserting when I first began exploring the implications of the
word HGERQH in GNT usage several years ago. At that time I would have
insisted that HGERQH is middle simply because it represented the
aorist of the present-tense form EGEIRETAI, "he/she wakes up." I now
think it is more appropriate to understand HGERQH as meaning "he/she
entered into a waking state." Is that middle or is it passive? It's
really intransitive and unqualified with regard to indicators of HOW
the subject comes to be awake, whether with or without the assistance
of some external force or agent such as a rooster crowing, an
earthquake, or divine agency operant directly upon the sleeper.
6. There are two or maybe three important points here, in my
perspective.
(a) In terms of morphology both the MAI/SAI/TAI,MHN/SO/TO forms and
the -QH- forms are middle-passive in essential meaning. In the course
of the development of ancient Greek the -QH- forms gradually became
more standardized in the aorist and future tenses for indicating
middle-passive functionality;
(b) Whether or not a particular verb-form should be understood as
middle or passive in semantic force has much to do with the
idiosyncracies or the Aktionsarat of the verb in question: some verbs
are clearly transitive and will involve a primary antithesis of
active and passive, while others, especially those traditionally
termed "deponents" are essentially verbs of process with lemmas in -
MAI/MHN/QHN -- and if these verbs have active forms (e.g. EGEIRW)
they are really causative forms of what is essentially an "ergative"
or middle-voice form;
(c) I think it is a mistake to insist in the case of every middle-
passive verb (whether MAI/SAI/TAI,MHN/SO/TO type or -QH- type) that
it should be interpreted as EITHER middle OR passive. According to
their Aktionsart that may be appropriate for several verbs, but for
several others it is NOT appropriate -- precisely because an action
indicated by the verb may be voluntary and deliberate while at the
same time it is performed by another person; that's the case with
KEIRETAI, "he gets his hair cut" and I think it is also the case with
BAPTIZETAI, "he gets baptized."
Further to (c): I have often in this forum complained about the
insistence on EITHER/OR interpretation of adnominal genitives
qualifying verbal nouns as being necessarily EITHER subjective OR
objective genitives when the morphological linkage of two words does
no more than indicate association; Wallace's category of "plenary
genitive" as a term indicating deliberate multivalent usage of an
adnominal genitive with a verbal noun at least acknowledges the
multivalency of these genitives. Sometimes we can clearly discern
"subjective" or "objective" semantic force in one of these genitives,
but often enough we can't, however much we may imagine that it MUST
be either one or the other. These adnominal genitives are inherently
multivalent, and our determination to categorize them instance-by-
instance has more to do with how we interpret and convey such phrases
into a target language than with how the Greek text itself works.
Middle-passive forms are similar to such adnominal genitives in that
they are inherently multivalent; while the Aktionsart of some verbs
will enable the reader to discern unmistakably a middle or passive
semantic force, others are not so readily forced into a middle or
passive interpretation. Some may recall our lengthy thread last year
on GENHQH- forms in the GNT and the dubious endeavor there to show
that all such forms must be "passive." Ambivalence and multivalence
are hard things to cope with generally in life; it's no wonder that
we find it difficult to cope with in language.
On Apr 21, 2006, at 2:16 PM, Carl W. Conrad wrote:
> On Apr 21, 2006, at 1:44 PM, Harold Holmyard wrote:
>
>> Dear Randall,
>>
>>> Culturally, the person "baptising someone else" is functioning as a
>>> witness and a teacher. Contrary to endless debates, they did not
>>> dunk
>>> or pour (or sprinkle). The person being baptised went down with
>>> their
>>> own motor skills while the teacher was a witness. Now many people on
>>> the list will read Acts 8:35ff as putting Phillip in the water
>>> itself, but that is not a necessary reading if one starts with
>>> the cultural
>>> pictures just described. As for the Greek here, the PAQHTIKH
>>> experiencer/passive would be naturally read as MESH middle.
>>
>> HH: Do I assume correctly that this implies an idea like: "And he
>> ordered them to get baptized . . . "?
>
> Better: "get themselves baptized" (text: PROSETAXEN DE AUTOUS EN TWi
> ONOMATI IHSOU CRISTOU BAPTISQHNAI), understanding BAPTISQHNAI in an
> aorist MIDDLE sense. That is, as Randall explained it, they were to
> perform the acts for themselves.
Carl W. Conrad
Department of Classics, Washington University (Emeritus)
1989 Grindstaff Road/Burnsville, NC 28714/(828) 675-4243
cwconrad2 at mac.com
WWW: http://www.ioa.com/~cwconrad/
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