[B-Greek] 2 Thess. 2:6-7--two proposals
Carl W. Conrad
cwconrad at artsci.wustl.edu
Fri Mar 2 04:52:38 EST 2007
On Mar 1, 2007, at 7:55 PM, Webb wrote:
> Dear Carl,
> Thanks for your comments. There's still a question that I would
> value your
> take on: Supposing a context where somebody is pictured as temporarily
> standing in somebody else's way, blocking his progress, does ARTI
> hEWS EK
> MESOU GENHTAI sound like a natural way to express the idea, "until
> he gets
> out of the way"?
(a) I think ARTI belongs to KATECWN, NOT to the hEWS clause.
(b) Perhaps "leaves the scene" (as suggested in BDAG) might do, but
that phrase and "gets out of the way" both suggest very strongly that
hO KATECWN ARTI "leaves the scene" or "gets out of the way"
voluntarily, and I think that is probably not intended. I think "is
gone" is more neutral"; "is no longer present" might be better yet. I
can see why you don't like "until he is removed" -- because that
seems unambiguously passive, but if "removed" is a predicate
adjective rather than part of a periphrastic verb form, then it's
better English (I think). How about "until he is out of the way"?
I do think that GINOMAI and its various usages brings into focus the
distinctive problem of the Greek "middle-passive" and why it is so
apparently difficult to understand for those of us (most, I think)
who've learned a grammar of voice that is essentially bipolar. We
have been taught to think that verbs are transitive, in which case
they are either active or passive, or they are intransitive. And we
approach the Greek middle-passive forms with that notion in mind and
we want to "disambiguate" the middle-passive forms we confront in a
Greek text and drop each in one or the other category: middle or
passive. But matters are more complicated: transitive verbs in the
middle voice can take an objective complement/object when the verb's
subject is an agent, but intransitive middle-passives indicate
alteration of condition or coming into a new state. Difficulties
arise when the alteration of condition or the coming into a new state
SEEMS to depend upon an external agent or instrumentality. If that
agent or instrumentality is expressed in a hUPO + genitive (or
equivalent) or instrumental-dative construction, then we don't
hesitate to understand the semantic force as passive and translate
the verb form into a passive expression in the target language. BUT
the Greek middle-passive form is in itself ambivalent. EGENETO means
"came to be" -- whether as an existential verb in the sense "entered
into existence" or "came about/happened" or as a copula in the sense
"got to be X" as in our phrase now under consideration, EK MESOU
GENESQAI. ESTAQH, like ESTH (of which ESTAQH is a later form) means
"came into a standing position (from a seated or lying position)" or
"came to a standstill (from being in motion)." But we tend to look
for a passive expression to convey the sense of ESTAQH -- something
like "it was made to stand" or "it was stationed." But only an agent
or instrumental qualifying adverbial expression can trip the balance
unmistakably toward a passive interpretation of the form, and many
traditionalists will endeavor to explain all MP forms -- both the MAI/
SAI/TAI and the -QH- forms as falling unambiguously into either a
"middle" or a "passive" category. I don't like that approach to
understanding and translation of these forms; its worst consequence
has been the categorization of a great number of middle-passive forms
as "deponents" -- a term that I think serves primarily to assist the
translation process while it conceals or obscures the semantic force
of the verb form in Greek.
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Carl W. Conrad [mailto:cwconrad at artsci.wustl.edu]
> Sent: Thursday, March 01, 2007 4:36 PM
> To: Webb
> Cc: 'B-Greek'
> Subject: Re: [B-Greek] 2 Thess. 2:6-7--two proposals
>
>
> On Mar 1, 2007, at 6:23 PM, Webb wrote:
>
>> Dear Carl,
>>
>> You gave EGEIRW as an example of a verb that can sometimes be
>> construed as
>> either middle or passive. But the difference between EGEIRW and
>> GINOMAI is
>> that EGEIRW can be transitive, and GINOMAI cannot. HGERQH EK MESOU
>> could
>> mean either "got up out of the middle" or "was lifted out from the
>> middle".
>
> HGERQH is, of course, the aorist of EGEIROMAI. Yes, there is an
> active EGEIRW, but the primary verb really is the middle; the active
> form is causative. More often than not we see HGERQH used without any
> hUPO + genitive agent construction; some would prefer to translate it
> always as "was raised" and call it some such thing as a "divine
> passive" (a designation I've always thought amusing). I would prefer
> to English HGERQH as "he rose." Although this verb is sometimes used
> in the active in the sense of "erect" a structure, it is most
> commonly used of persons rising or awaking.
>
> Nevertheless I think that there are frequent occasions when we might
> wish to understand GINOMAI without an agent-construction as
> essentially passive, as in the petition of the LP: GENHQHTW TO
> QELHMA SOU (Mt 6:10) -- I should note that I think GENHQHTW is simply
> an alternative form of GENESQW. We could understand this petition as
> "May your will come to be" -- but how is that supposed to happen
> unless someone obediently performs God's will? It makes good sense,
> therefore, to English the petition as "May your w1ll be done."
>
>> Unless there was absolutely no other way the sentence could make
>> sense, I
>> can't see a reason to express GINOMAI EK MESOU as something beyond
>> (1) "gets
>> out of the way" or (2) "gets [under his own power] out of the
>> situation".
>> And I think each of those readings makes good sense in and of
>> itself in 2
>> Thess. 2:7. For example, looking at option (1):
>>
>> The lawless one is going to appear at some future point. There's only
>> (MONOS) one thing holding him back: the restrainer (hO KATECWN),
>> who, at
>> some future point, will presumably stop restraining, and at which
>> point the
>> lawless one will appear. I reckon that the idea of "to stop
>> restraining" can
>> be expressed equally well as "to get out of the way" (GINOMAI EK
>> MESOU).
>> What's wrong with that? Particularly in view of the fact that the
>> writer
>> personalizes the restrainer by calling him hO KATECWN, not just TO
>> KATECON,
>> the presumption is that this personal force has the option of
>> restraining so
>> long, and then stopping. If "until he gets out of the way" sounds
>> like an
>> unlikely rendering of ARTI hEWS EK MESOU GENHTAI, I'd like to hear
>> your
>> reason for thinking so. Otherwise I can't see what would induce me to
>> imagine another implied actor, who has the supposed role of
>> removing the
>> restrainer from the place where he metaphorically stands restraining.
>>
>> On the assumption that you've encountered the verb GINOMAI in tens of
>> thousands of instances, I accept your statement it's not out of the
>> question
>> that GINOMAI can occasionally carry have an implicit passive sense.
>> So once
>> again, the question I'd have is, wouldn't that be the last option,
>> in the
>> case that a middle sense, "action performed by the subject and
>> involving the
>> subject", didn't seem possible?
>
> We need to distinguish what we understand the Greek formulation to
> mean and how we choose to English the idea expressed in the Greek
> formulation. I think that in the context hEWS EK MESOU GENHTAI does
> mean -- in the Greek, "until he gets out of the center of things."
> That is expressed with maximal economy, and I don't think that most
> who want to English it would be satisfied with that formulation. One
> might use, "until he's gone" and perhaps that would be sufficient,
> BUT if the interpreter supposes that this exit of the restrainer
> comes about through some instrumentality or agency beyond the
> "restrainer's" intention, the interpreter may prefer to English the
> formulation as "until he is removed." I wouldn't quarrel with that; I
> would simply emphasize that there is not a one-to-one correspondence
> between how we understand the semantic force of the Greek and how we
> choose to make it intelligible in English.
>
> Carl W. Conrad
> Department of Classics, Washington University (Retired)
> 1989 Grindstaff Road/Burnsville, NC 28714/(828) 675-4243
> cwconrad2 at mac.com
> WWW: http://www.ioa.com/~cwconrad/
>
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: Carl W. Conrad [mailto:cwconrad at artsci.wustl.edu]
>> Sent: Thursday, March 01, 2007 2:01 PM
>> To: Webb
>> Cc: 'B-Greek'
>> Subject: Re: [B-Greek] 2 Thess. 2:6-7--two proposals
>>
>>
>> On Mar 1, 2007, at 3:02 PM, Webb wrote:
>>
>>>
>>> Dear Oun,
>>> 1. Difference btw active vs passive -- may it have something to do
>>> with the nature of 'middle' in Gk?
>>
>> What it really has to do with is the fact that the forms labeled
>> middle-passive and passive (QH) all, when intransitive, bear the
>> sense "enter into state X." The nearest English equivalent is "get" +
>> predicate word (which may be a participle): GINOMAI is the
>> quintessential middle-passive verb that can quite readily be
>> Englished (usually) as "get" or "come to be" with a predicate word.
>>
>>> Not to me, it doesn't. It has to do with my understanding that
>>> GINOMAI is
>>> strictly an intransitive verb. It never EVER takes an object. If a
>>> verb
>>> can't take an object, you can't turn it into a passive. In English,
>>> for
>>> example, the verb "to be" doesn't take an object. Like GINOMAI, it
>>> can take
>>> a predicate nominative or a predicate adjective and whatnot, but it
>>> can't
>>> take an object. If a verb (let's say X is a verb) is capable of
>>> being
>>> transitive, then it is capable of taking an object. "I X this
>>> thing." For
>>> the most part, that also means that I can use the object as the
>>> subject, and
>>> throw the verb into the passive voice to express an equivalent
>>> statement:
>>> "This thing is Xed by me". But you can't say "I am ammed". There
>>> is no
>>> passive voice for the verb "to be", or for any strictly
>>> intransitive verb.
>>> So in 2 Thess. 2:7, whatever GENHTAI means, it can't mean that
>>> something
>>> else acts on the subject of the verb. Whatever action there is, is
>>> carried
>>> out by the subject. From my limited knowledge of Greek, ARTI hEWS
>>> EK MESOU
>>> GENHTAI can't possibly mean "until he is taken out of the
>>> way" (pace KJV,
>>> NASB, NIV, NCV, NRSV, TEV).
>>
>> Of course GENHTAI can't mean that something else acts on the subject
>> of the verb -- but that may be implicit as it is always implicit in a
>> MP form: GINETAI EK MESOU means "gets to be out-of-the-way, out-of-
>> the-scene, off-the-table, out-of-this-world, out-of-this-life." Just
>> as EGEIRETAI means "enters into a waking (or upright) state" it is
>> open to interpretation as "awakes" or "gets awakened." While I think
>> one ought to understand this ambivalence of the Greek MP form, I
>> don't really have any objection to understanding EK MESOU GINETAI as
>> "gets removed" (passive) or "gets out of the way" (intransitive/
>> ergative: the subject may simply leave the center of action or he/she
>> may be forcibly removed by an external agent.
>>
>> I have no quarrel with BDAG's entry on this passage.
>>
>> BDAG, s.v. GINOMAI: EK T. OURANWN G.
>> 6. to make a change of location in space, move
>> b. EK TINOS (Job 28:2): γ. EK MESOU be removed, Lat. e medio tolli
>> (cp. Ps.-Aeschin., Ep. 12, 6 EK MESOU GENOMENWN EKEINWN; Plut.,
>> Timol. 238 [5, 3]; Achilles Tat. 2, 27, 2) 2 Th 2:7 (HFulford, ET 23,
>> 1912, 40f: 'leave the scene'). Of a voice fr. heaven: EK T.
>> OURANWN G. sound forth fr. heaven (2 Macc 2:21; cp. Da 4:31 Theod.)
>> Mk 1:11; Lk 3:22; 9:35; cp. vs. 36.
>>
>>
>>> 2. It should be 'And now you know what's ~ ', not 'And you know
>>> what's now
>>> ~'
>>> I've got a lot of translations in front of me, including Lattimore,
>>> who is
>>> not particularly influenced by the English bible translation
>>> tradition. No
>>> one them takes NUN with OIDATE. I'm inclined to trust them on this.
>
>
>
>
>
> ---
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Carl W. Conrad
Department of Classics, Washington University (Retired)
1989 Grindstaff Road/Burnsville, NC 28714/(828) 675-4243
cwconrad2 at mac.com
WWW: http://www.ioa.com/~cwconrad/
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