[B-Greek] Voice: Distinguishing a Middle from a Passive

Mitch Larramore mitchlarramore at yahoo.com
Fri Nov 9 19:10:50 EST 2007


My Reader's Greek New Testament (I'm not going to
ever, ever mention the word 'interlinear' again on
this site!!!!!) lists the following words with
definitions in both the Active and Passive:

EKPLHSSW: I amaze; Passive: I am amazed

MHKUNW: make long; Passive: I become long, grow

I've tried to follow the discussions on Voice out here
on this list (giving most of my attention to Dr.
Conrad and Dr. Buth) and still am significantly
confused, but I attribute that to my already deficient
understanding of even English grammar, much less
Greek. Anyway, both of these Passives to me seem like
Middles, since the emerge/arise from WITHIN a person's
body/soul. I simply do not understand why someone
(complied by: Goodrich and Lukaszewski) would call
these Passives.

Here is my question: What is the biggest, most
critical distinguishing characteristic(s) that
separates a Middle from a Passive? I suppose that at
times the distinguishing characteristic is a bit foggy
for some words, but could you find unambiguous
examples (at least 3 PLEASE!) that would help me
understand how to distinguish a Middle from a Passive?

I'll worry about the ambiguous words later <:o)--

Mitch Larramore
Sugar Land, Texas

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