[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)
---
B-Greek home page: http://www.ibiblio.org/bgreek
B-Greek mailing list
B-Greek at lists.ibiblio.org
http://lists.ibiblio.org/mailman/listinfo/b-greek
____________________________________________________________________________________
The fish are biting.
Get more visitors on your site using Yahoo! Search Marketing.
http://searchmarketing.yahoo.com/arp/sponsoredsearch_v2.php
More information about the B-Greek
mailing list