[B-Greek] APOSTREFW - aktive and middle

Mark Lightman lightmanmark at yahoo.com
Sat Feb 12 09:47:29 EST 2011


<...Despite a dissertation in defense of the doctrine (of deponency) written at 
Dallas Seminary recently...>

Hi, Carl,

Is this available on line?  If not, what is the essence of the defense, other 
than the very sound advice that it is better to bear those ills we have than to 
fly to others that we know not of.
 Mark L



FWSFOROS MARKOS




________________________________
From: Carl Conrad <cwconrad2 at mac.com>
To: B-Greek <b-greek at lists.ibiblio.org>
Sent: Sat, February 12, 2011 7:11:32 AM
Subject: Re: [B-Greek] APOSTREFW - aktive and middle

I was going to respond to this off list, but what I want to write to you is 
largely what I have written so frequently on list that it's become boring. My 
"ad nauseam" notes have a reputation and an "odor" on B-Greek. Bear with me: I'm 
a 76-year-old retired Greek teacher, away from the campus for ten years now, 
having taught my last Greek class in January of 2001. But I hope that I'm 
harmless ... and BG regulars will know to delete before they've reached the end 
of this opening paragraph.

On Feb 12, 2011, at 7:52 AM, Richard Smith wrote:

> Very thorough and informative. Thanks to all who helped with their comments. I 
>think part of my misreading is that English translation definitions may use 
>words with transitive and intransitive senses, and sometimes I miss that a 
>particular Greek form may not have convey both of the transitive and 
>intransitive senses of the English translation. I apply the English possibilites 
>to the Greek. I will be  more attuned to that going forward. 
>

It's worth noting -- and bearing always in mind -- that the better English 
translations don't endeavor to render the Greek original in the word-order or 
grammatical structures of the Greek but rather in word-order and grammatical 
sructures that are appropriate to good English prose. Of course, every English 
translation from the Greek is an interpretation of the Greek, and unless the 
Greek original is so concrete and simple that it doesn't say anything very 
important, it is almost certainly going to skew and misrepresent the original in 
some way or other -- not intentionally, ordinarily -- although the translation 
is often skewed in part by the translator's own preconceptions. That's what the 
old Italian proverb is intended to convey: "Traduttori traditori" -- 
"Translators are not to be trusted!" I've often (too often?) said that one 
seeking to gain competence in Biblical Greek should aim at understanding what  
the original Greek is communicating in its own terms, and NOT on ho
w that Greek will sound or look in an English translation.

> And "transitive" and "intransitive" are helpful classifications for me, as is 
>"deponent" still.

One of the insights into how language works that I've gained relatively recently 
is that grammar -- including lexicology, syntactic rules, morphology, etc. --, 
whether it's the traditional grammar of "dead scholars" of the decades and 
centuries past or the theoretical constructions and analyses of the academic 
linguists of more recent years -- is fundamentally analytic. It's function is to 
help us explain or give an account to ourselves and each other about HOW the 
Greek utterance or written statement means what we understand it to mean. I 
honestly believe that grammatical analysis cannot begin until one has already 
reached at least a tentative understanding of the Greek text. But I also believe 
that grammatical  analysis will not help one reach an understanding of WHAT the 
text means so much as of HOW it means what it means. Understanding the meaning 
must precede analysis. And that is why so much classroom work and self-study of 
Greek (and other languages, of course) turns ou
t so often to be a waste of time: students can recite paradigms of verbs and 
nouns and regurgitate glossaries of Greek verbs and nouns and recite the rules 
of syntax -- and still be unable to make sense of Greek texts.

The distinction between "transitive" and "intransitive" verb usage is helpful 
and will continue to be helpful to students who haven't learned and constructed 
a more useful way of accounting for the way verbs work in context with other 
words with which they construe in particular texts. Iver has referred to an 
alternative method of accounting for how these elements of Greek statements 
relate to each other; many students of Greek do indeed find that alternative 
more  helpful. What's problematic, however, is that the reference works upon 
which we must rely for want of better reference works still employ terminology 
that some of us believe is outdated and unhelpful. BDAG is really a very fine 
lexicon for Biblical and early Christian literature; it's barely ten years since 
this edition was published -- but many of us believe that decscribing a 
verb-form as "passive with active usage" is, if not something worse, an instance 
of "obscurum per obscurius" -- a still murkier  explanation
  of something that's murky in the first place.

"Deponency" is a grammatical "doctrine" (by which I mean a bit of traditional 
lore about the voice of Greek verbs that don't conform to the rules as 
traditionally understood) that is currently under attack. Despite a dissertation 
in defense of the doctrine written at Dallas Seminary recently, the doctrine was 
the subject of a special session on Greek Linguistics at last  November's 
meeting of SBL in Atlanta; the upshot of that session is that the ranks of 
defenders of the doctrine have thinned very considerably as more intelligible 
accounts of Greek verbal voice phenomena have been offered and the ways that 
middle and passive forms actually function in ancient Greek are being analyzed 
in more helpful ways. The facts to be explained remain "messy" but the 
explanations offered for those facts seem to many to be LESS messy than they are 
in the traditional doctrine of "deponency."

> But I am a very amateur self taught NT Greek reader. I offer that in way of 
>introduction. 
>

The fact is that we are ALL of us who deal with NT Greek amateurs. NOT ONE of us 
reads the NT Greek texts with the instantaneous grasp of the text's meaning 
gained by those who first listened to those texts read aloud. Some of us are not 
"rank" amateurs, but not one of us can honestly claim to be an "accomplished" 
professional  either.


Carl W. Conrad
Department of Classics, Washington University (Retired)

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