[B-Greek] John 11:4 and the Middle/Passive of DOXAZW

Carl Conrad cwconrad2 at mac.com
Fri Feb 25 12:33:28 EST 2011


On Feb 25, 2011, at 7:13 AM, John Sanders wrote:

> If I may make a few comments.
> 
> 1.  I agree with Dr.Conrad and others, but I also am in agreement with
> MARKOS on his rule of medio-passivity.  But one should keep in mind that the
> rule cannot be applied indiscriminately, there is a place for it.

But that was precisely my qualification of the rule of FWSFOROS, that
you cannot assume that the semantic force of a middle-passive form is
middle any time it isn't accompanied by an adverbial indicator of 
agent or instrument. You have to take into consideration the nature of
the verb, particularly whether it's fundamentally transitive or not.

> 2.  Although there has been much written lately concerning the middle voice
> and reflexive use, I would not think that the normal sense of the
> middle/passive form is reflexive.  If anything, I would suggest that an
> intensifier would be more appropriate:  I myself, you yourself, he himself,
> she herself, we ourselves, you yourselves, they themselves, etc.

Yes, I think that "direct reflexive" usage is restricted to certain verbs
like NIPTOMAI, KEIROMAI and the like.

> This is not to say that there are not other senses to be understood,
> depending upon the specific word, such as the middle of NIPTW being
> understood as reflexive or the active of APTOMAI being understood as
> lexically different, etc.
> 
> 3.  If I may, I would like to present how I would read this text and how I
> understand it, this is not a grammatical analysis.
> 
> I will begin with the hINA clause, after Hina.  DOXASQHi “encodes” third
> person singular aorist middle subjunctive (in the passive form).  That is
> how I see it, it “encodes” nothing more.  This followed by the subject, hO
> VIOS TOU QEOU, then by a prepositional phrase, DI’ AUTHS, which marks for
> “passivity” and identifies the agent of passivity specifically.
> 
> 
> 
> It might be easier to understand my thinking by using some simple English
> examples.  First an English sentence demonstrating the active voice:  “Peter
> hit Roger.”  Now I will transform this into a “middle voice”.  I do this by
> defining, for my purposes here, a verb in the “middle voice” as one that is
> prefixed by some type of intensifier, in this case it is “himself”, so we
> have “Peter himself-hit Roger.  Now to turn this into a passive I turn Roger
> into an agent, so we have:  “Peter himself-hit by Roger”.

Why not "got hit"? I think that "get" as an auxiliary has long been used with
participles with an adaptability comparable to that of the Greek middle-passive 
verb-forms.

> Normally I would construct the English to be something like “Peter is being
> hit by Roger.”  If we think of the verb as the complex “is-being-hit”  then
> we have the first component “is”, marking the tense, the second component,
> “being” marking passivity, and the third component, “hit” identifying the
> lexical meaning.

Why not "gets hit"?

> In other words, in modern English we mark the verb for passivity.  In
> classical and koine Greek passivity is marked by an appropriate
> prepositional phrase identifying the agent of passivity.

Always? I really think that a fundamentally transitive verb used in a
middle-passive form doesn't require a prepositional phrase indicating an
agent or instrument. I think in such a case the passive sense is ordinarily
recognizable.

> 4.  This brings us to another issue.  What if we have a construction such as
> “Peter himself-hit.”  In general we can view the verb as either middle or as
> passive with an implied agent.  This is where the “Carl Conrad Rule of
> Medio-Passivity” come into play.

or "Peter gets hit."

> Some time ago (a year, perhaps longer) some one wrote on this list that in a
> scriptural verse (I forget which verse) he understood the Greek verb to have
> a “middle force”, whereas he saw the same verse in the KJV translation as
> being passive (with an implied agent).  Some one else chimed in saying that
> was another case of the KJV getting it wrong.  Those are words that I want
> to verify myself and not take at face value.  So I looked at the verse in
> question and chuckled to myself.  What they saw in the English as a passive
> (with an implied agent) I saw as intransitive.  Therefore, I thought the AV
> got it exactly right, even translating the ambiguity of the Greek (middle or
> passive with implied agent) to an English gloss with ambiguity (intransitive
> or passive with implied agent).
> 
> If one comes to a reading with middle in mind, then you will read it as
> middle or if you come with passive in mind you will tend to read it
> accordingly.
> 
> 5.  Now let me drop a wrench into what I have constructed.  Some verbs
> regularly use both a middle form and a passive form.  We can think that they
> are just duplicates of one another in some form of transition stage.  Or we
> can think that the passive form is “encoding” for passivity and the middle
> form is “encoding” for a middle force.  This is what I think is happening.
> 
> So with this exception, I tend to think of a passive form as middle rather
> than passive with an implied agent.


There certainly ARE middle verbs with passive forms that are really 
passive, but I don't think there are very many of them.

Ultimately I think that "knowing" Greek, i.e. reading and/or listening
to it and understanding it in its own flow, is not a matter of applying rules
for what's middle and what's passive; much more it's a matter of knowing
the verbs and their idiosyncrasies. Is APEKRIQH passive? No. Is 
EBLHQH passive? Almost certainly. And so forth. I still think that
this snippet from Alice through the Lookng Glass gets it about right:

'When I use a word,' Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone, 
'it means just what I choose it to mean--neither more nor less.'

'The question is,' said Alice, 'whether you CAN make words mean 
so many different things.'

'The question is,' said Humpty Dumpty, 'which is to be master-- 
that's all.'

Alice was too much puzzled to say anything, so after a minute 
Humpty Dumpty began again. 'They've a temper, some of them-- 
particularly verbs, they're the proudest--adjectives you can do 
anything with, but not verbs--however, I can manage the whole l
ot of them! Impenetrability! That's what I say!'

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






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