From: Carl W. Conrad (cwconrad@artsci.wustl.edu)
Date: Tue Jan 23 1996 - 14:36:29 EST
On 1/22/96, Kenneth Litwak wrote:
> I've noticed, especially in the Apostolic Fathers, more so than I have
>in the
> NT, though it's present there certainly, the use of the Aorist subjunctive
> passive in both comands and assertions, both things that don't seem
> appropriate to what I know about the subjunctive and especially inappropriate
> for a "passive" voice. Can someone explain to me how this form came to be
> used this way, if that's understood by scholars at all?
This is more than one question and not a simple one at all; "how come"
questions involving language invoke a sort of mystical "psychoanalysis of
linguistic history."
For one thing, the "passive" in Greek, morphologically speaking, is not
really a passive at all but a non-thematic aorist ACTIVE in form but more
often than not intransitive or middle in sense. I like to start an
explanation with a form like 3d sg. EFANH (in the sense "he/she/it
appeared") from FAINOMAI. But if you add to this an agent construction,
e.g.
TAUTA PANTA EFANH hUPO TOU QEOU
the construction takes on a passive sense: "All these things were revealed
by God." This type of construction became regularized ultimately with a
QH/E formative element as a "regular" passive in the aorist. But "passive"
has to to be qualified as a term here because it's only a transitive verb
that is going to take a passive meaning in that form, and also because
there are numerous verbs that are middle (rarely if ever active) voice in
the present tense but "divide themselves" (reflexive verbs are much more
native to Indo-European than passives, I think) between middle and
"passive" forms in the aorist, and there are numerous "deponent" verbs
which some of us call "passive deponents" because they have an aorist that
is passive in form rather than middle.
One verb of this sort that Luke likes is EUAGGELIZOMAI. According to BAGD
this appears in the aorist middle as HUAGGELISAMHN in the LXX but in the NT
it is much more commonly in the passive, HUAGGELQHN. Another example is
that weird verb used of feeling compassion, SPLAGXNIZOMAI; its aorist is
ESPLAGXQHN, which is obviously not passive. As I recall, we even have an
imperative of this verb addressed to Jesus by someone wanting healing,
SPLAGXNISQHTI--and of course this isn't passive in meaning either. And it
is my impression that these aorist "passive" forms are multiplying in
Hellenistic Greek where the same verbs may have used aorist middles earlier
to express the same senses.
The future passive is, of course, a hybrid development out of the aorist
passive, simply formed by adding the formative element -S- to the aorist
passive stem + thematic vowel + middle endings.
All of this implies, I think, that the so-called passive voice is an
extremely artificial development in Greek, one wherein a passive function
is grafted onto a morphological system that is originally
middle/intransitive in function. As I said, the REFLEXIVE is really much
more natural to Indo-European. Consider (cf. "Stellen Sie Sich vor") what
is meant by "to find oneself" or "to be found" and look at the usage of
hEUREQHN in the NT, as, e.g., in Phil 2:7
KAI SXHMATI hEUREQEIS hWS ANQRWPOS ...
So it isn't just the imperative or subjunctive forms in which these awkward
aorist "passives" are found/find themselves/appear, they are really quite
common.
> BTW, since it's raised so many questions, I meant to type Ps 16:1, not 161.
> Unfortunately, the keyboard on my NT machine at home practically requires
> plastique to make a keystroke, hence I have more typos at home where I can't
> easily fix them than at work. ANd after all that, I realzied I should have
> been translating Ps 15, not 16. Why couldn't the LXX Psalm translator at
>least count correctly to 16?
Considering the Greek of the Psalms in the LXX, it was all the translator
could do to get the Hebrew into intelligible Greek! ;-)
Carl W. Conrad
Department of Classics, Washington University
One Brookings Drive, St. Louis, MO, USA 63130
(314) 935-4018
cwconrad@artsci.wustl.edu OR cwc@oui.com
WWW: http://www.artsci.wustl.edu/~cwconrad/
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