[B-Greek] Luke 9:1-2 and healing (Was Carl Conrad's account of Voice and Deponency )

Iver Larsen iver_larsen at sil.org
Sat May 1 01:15:10 EDT 2010


----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Ben Hudson" <ben.hudson at student.moore.edu.au>
To: <b-greek at lists.ibiblio.org>
Sent: 30. april 2010 05:49
Subject: [B-Greek] Carl Conrad's account of Voice and Deponency


> I've been trying out a bunch of verb-pairs which are 'Deponent' and
> non-'Deponent' synonyms as a way of seeing the theory in action.
>
> Take IAOMAI and QERAPEUW, both meaning 'to heal'. IAOMAI is 'deponent' (under
> the old way of talking about these things) and QERAPEUW (non-deponent).
>
> In Luke 9:1-2 Jesus summons the 12 and
> "1 He gave them power and authority over all the demons, and |power| to heal
> (QERAPEUW) diseases.  2 Then He sent them to proclaim the kingdom of God and
> to heal (IAOMAI) the sick."
----------------------------
Although the two verbs have much semantic overlap, they do not quite mean the
same.

QERAPEUW means "to serve" or in the context of people with diseases "to treat"
or "take care of". You can treat/take care of  both the person and the disease,
and it is the normal expectation that the patient gets well after treatment. The
context will usually clarify the expectations and results.

IAOMAI means "to restore to health", including spiritual health. In the NT, this
verb is only used with a person as object. You do not restore a sickness to
health, you restore people. It has a lot of overlap with SWiZW.

I was curious (?) that many English versions, following the example of the KJV,
say in Luke 9:1 "cure diseases". In my admittedly low-level knowledge of the
English language, I am more used to people being cured than diseases. I thought
a person was cured from a disease, not that the disease was cured.

There may be a historical reason for one verb being an MP, and a semantic shift
may be involved, but I don't want to speculate on it, since I don't know.

Iver Larsen




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