From: Carl W. Conrad (cwconrad@artsci.wustl.edu)
Date: Sun Dec 05 1999 - 21:13:47 EST
At 7:04 PM -0600 12/5/99, Steven Craig Miller wrote:
>To: the participants of the B-Greek list,
>
>The Greek verb AGALLIAOMAI appears to have been a Hellenistic coinage, a
>LXX neologism. It occurs 74 times in the LXX (according to LEH), as what is
>sometimes called a "deponent" verb. It also occurs 11 times in the NT,
>twice in the active voice (Lk 1:47 & Rev 19:7; cf. 1 Pt 1:8vl). Thus it
>seems that this verb was coined as a "deponent" verb, but by the first
>century it had evolved to the place where it could also be used with the
>active voice. The original notion of a "deponent" was to describe those
>verbs which had "lay aside" the active forms. Here we have an example of a
>verb which has picked up the active forms. So I wonder, what is the
>opposite for deponent? Could we call AGALLIAW a "reponent" verb?
>
>I'll also note that although AGALLIAW has active forms in the NT, BAGD
>classifies the rest of them as deponents. Leaving aside whether or not
>"deponent" is a meaningful grammatical category, I wonder are there other
>(so called) "deponent" verbs which in the NT have picked up active forms?
For God's sake, PLEASE don't invent a new term such as "reponent." The
(apparently) ineradicable term "deponent" is bad enough, as I've already
said more times than I care to count in this forum, because it seems based
on a dubious assumption that ordinary self-respecting verbs are either
active or were somehow meant to be active--even if in fact they are
intransitive. My own view is that the distinction between active and
middle/reflexive has more to do with how the subject is normally perceived
in relationship to the action. The problem, I think, is comparable to the
problem we have with the "tenses"--only in the indicative can we ordinarily
talk of the tenses as having time relationships in a real sense (and not
always even there), but we tend to use terms like present, aorist, future,
and perfect as if they really expressed time even in subjunctive, optative,
imperative, infinitive, and participle. We have a morphology distributed
among paradigms that we call "tenses" although they have nothing to do with
what French called "temps" or English "time." Likewise we have a morphology
of paradigm types termed "Active," "Middle/Passive," and "Passive" and then
terms like "deponent," "semi-deponent," "quasi-deponent." I personally
think that such terms only intensify the confusing nature of what we call
"voice" in the Greek verb to an intolerable degree, when it is complex
enough when reduced to the simplest possible terms and paradigms.
I can't speak with any assurance about NT Greek verbs in general; I do know
that at least one other verb, EUAGGELIZOMAI is generally middle taking an
object in the NT but is used in a passive sense in Mt and Lk in the
response of Jesus to the disciples of John the Baptist, "PTWCOI
EUAGGELIZONTAI." I think that there are other verbs too. I know that PAUW
in Attic Greek generally means to make someone else stop doing something
but is normally middle with a participle to express the notion of "desist
from doing" (EPAUSAMHN TAUTA PRATTWN). I find it fascinating that EIMI has
a future middle and moves in later Greek to having a present middle EIMAI
as its regular form. In general I think the Greek-speaker has/had a natural
tendency to use a middle-voice form for any verb involving a high degree of
personal involvement of the subject, but I think we'll see some
fluctuations and deviations in the voice-usage of verbs that are just
coming into standard use. I admit this must sound very speculative, but I
really believe it's true, and I think the phenomena you're pointing out
about AGALLIAOMAI and AGALLIAW are not at all surprising.
Carl W. Conrad
Department of Classics/Washington University
One Brookings Drive/St. Louis, MO, USA 63130/(314) 935-4018
Home: 7222 Colgate Ave./St. Louis, MO 63130/(314) 726-5649
cwconrad@artsci.wustl.edu
WWW: http://www.artsci.wustl.edu/~cwconrad/
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