[B-Greek] APOSTREFW - aktive and middle

Raymond C Olson rcolson at telusplanet.net
Mon Feb 14 12:59:06 EST 2011


Dear Carl,
As a lurking mentoree, I read through, resonated and was reminded and 
greatly encouraged to press on in NTG.  Thank you!  If I can presume to be 
included in the "we are ALL of us who deal with NT Greek amateurs," I'm 
surely somewhere at the bottom of the heap.  Thanks again for wise and 
valuable counsel.
Ray

-----Original Message----- 
From: Carl Conrad
Sent: Saturday, February 12, 2011 7:11 AM
To: B-Greek
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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