[B-Greek] Fw: divine passive?

George F Somsel gfsomsel at yahoo.com
Thu Jul 31 10:48:29 EDT 2008


I'm not sure what you intend when you say "in Greek prayers" though I suspect you mean in non-biblical Greek literature since you speak of "Greek literature of the period."  Since I would need to give that a bit of thought and perhaps some searching, I will only reference biblical literature, and even then only one instance.
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19 ἄφες τὴν ἁμαρτίαν τῷ λαῷ τούτῳ κατὰ τὸ μέγα ἔλεός σου, καθάπερ ἵλεως αὐτοῖς ἐγένου ἀπ̓ Αἰγύπτου ἕως τοῦ νῦν. 
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19 AFES THN hAMARTIAN TWi LAWi TOUTWi KATA TO MEGA ELEOS SOU, KAQAPER hILEWS AUTOIS EGENOU AP' AIGUPTOU hEWS TOU NUN.
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Here we have an imperative ἄφες [AFES] used in addressing God so it was not entirely unknown for the imperative to be used in prayer.
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 george
gfsomsel 


… search for truth, hear truth, 
learn truth, love truth, speak the truth, hold the truth, 
defend the truth till death.


- Jan Hus
_________ 



----- Original Message ----
From: "Matson, Mark (Academic)" <MAMatson at milligan.edu>
To: George F Somsel <gfsomsel at yahoo.com>; vunzndi at vfemail.net
Cc: b-greek at lists.ibiblio.org
Sent: Thursday, July 31, 2008 9:32:39 AM
Subject: RE: [B-Greek] divine passive?


George:
 
Thanks for sending me to Wallace on this (and your extensive citation here).  Wallace is saying what I thought – that is that the concept “divine passive” really obscures a more mundane reason for the passive – that is to either hide, obscure, simply understate the agent as the focus.    So Wallace’s summary statement here is exactly what I was thinking (I should have looked it up, and as soon as you cited it I pulled Wallace off the shelf).
 
I think that much of this (as your BDF quote shows) goes back to Jeremias, although one of the cites of Jeremias in BDF I was never able to find.  But I think Jeremias may be overstating it. In fact, to the extent that the qadish may stand behind the Lord’s Prayer, the verbs there are Aramaic hithpael, which is not so much passive as reflexive…  (I have to do a lot more work on this before I venture much of an argument).
 
My question still stands for those who are far more comfortable in Greek literature of the period – was it common in Greek prayers to avoid active verbs (especially imperatives)?, or was this concept of passive possibly used?  I guess I would like to refute Jeremias on the facts.  I guess a related question for my classicist colleagues – are there places that would point me to where prayers might be found in Greek literature?  I can do a TLG search for grammatical and lexical forms, … not sure how to find “types” or “forms” of literature.
 
mark


      


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