[B-Greek] APOLESAI & APOLHTAI, active & middle

Anita Clerke clerke at humanperformance.cc
Sun Jan 13 08:37:11 EST 2008


Thanks Vasilis for your reply. It was very helpful.
I gather from the book "Interlinear For The Rest Of US" by William D  
Mounce that APOLESAI (as found for instance in Matthew 10:28) is the  
aorist infinitive active voice.
Also that APOLHTAI (as found for instance in Matthew 5:29) is the  
aorist middle voice subjunctive.
I am trying to come to grips with the implications of the two  
inflections as found in the GNT. In particular, middle voice  
implications are very confusing to me still!

Would it be reasonable to say that:
1)  APOLESAI (often translated as destroy) implies the active work of  
the subject, and thus the reason or agent for the destruction is  
explicitly present. For example: "The drought destroyed the plants.";

2) a) APOLHTAI (often translated as perish) carries the connotation  
of the object being destroyed, but that this may have happened due to  
the absence of a necessary carer or preserver? I am thinking that  
Luke 21:18  is relevant here, as  if the head dies it can no longer  
nourish the hair.

2) b)Or is the meaning of APOLHTAI more along the lines that the  
perishing happened but that the reason for the destruction is not  
given explicitly. For example "The plants perished."? I am thinking  
that John 6:12 is relevant here.

Regards
Jonathan

On 11/01/2008, at 1:49 AM, vasilis tsialas wrote:

> Apolesai is the aorist infinitive of APOLLYMI, which means  
> (according to BDAG):
>
> 1. to cause or experience destruction
> 2. to fail to obtain what one expects or anticipates, lose out on,  
> lose
> 3. to lose someth. that one already has or be separated from a  
> normal connection, lose, be lost
>
> BDAG gives the first meanning for the specific verse.
> The specific inflected form occurs more than 40 times in LXX and NT.
>
>



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