[B-Greek] Theological Passives.

Carl W. Conrad cwconrad at ioa.com
Sun Feb 12 05:09:50 EST 2006


On Feb 11, 2006, at 8:45 PM, Bert de Haan wrote:

> Many passive verb forms in the GNT are described as "Theological  
> Passives."
> Is that because of an effort to pigeon-hole verb forms into  
> categories or
> are there noticably more passive verb forms in the GNT than in  
> other Greek
> writings?

I suppose that this is what has often been called a "divine passive"  
-- use of the passive
in order to avoid naming God as the agent of an action. This topic  
has come up before.
I've always thought it was somebody's fantasy, but I know that there  
are those who
take the notion seriously. What is clear about middle-passives is  
that there's an
intention to focus the statement on the grammatical subject's role in  
the action rather
than upon any agent or instrument, Consequently, if the agent is not  
indicated in a
clause, one has to make a judgment whether a "passive" form was used  
for the
purpose of avoiding use of God's name.

The question as to whether there are more passive verb forms in the  
GNT than in
other Greek writings might be rather difficult to answer, inasmuch as  
both the
MAI/SAI/TAI,MHN/SO/TO forms and the -QH- forms can bear middle or
passive semantic force. There might be difficulty overcoming  
subjectivity of
judgment.


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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