From: Carl W. Conrad (cwconrad@artsci.wustl.edu)
Date: Fri Nov 24 2000 - 13:10:06 EST
At 5:03 PM +0000 11/24/00, Mark Wilson wrote:
>Carl wrote:
>
>----
>(and I don't personally know of any instance of resurrection that someone
>performed on his own initiative!).
>----
>
>Of course, Christ, on his own initiative, performed a resurrection on
>Lazarus (technically speaking). But I assume Carl means that nobody
>initiated "his or her own" resurrection. Which is what my statements on this
>passage indirectly implied (albeit, theologically so).
>
>My point was partially based on the theological point found in the Gospel of
>John"
>
>10:17 This is why the Father loves me--because I lay down my life, so that I
>may take it (LABW) back again. No one takes it away from me, but I lay it
>down of my own free will. I have the authority to lay it down, and I have
>the authority to take it (KAI EXOUSIAN ECW PALIN LABEIN AUTHN) back again.
>This commandment I received from my Father."
>
>
>My point was that Paul allows for a "co-initiative." (Sorry, but that's the
>only word that comes to mind.) And hence, I did acknowledge that God the
>Father is seen as "resurrecting" Christ. But I simply did not exclude also
>that Christ was given the authority, and exercised it, to resurrect himself.
>
>Carl: is this crossing the "Theological" line for B-Greek? I certainly hope
>not! And if so, please accept my apologies in advance. (It seems to me that
>on occasion we are justified in going outside a specific passage in our
>attempts to understand more fully that specific passage. Perhaps we are
>"picking up" on some SECONDARY implications by doing so, but that is all I
>was implying, namely, secondary implications.)
In my response I was really focusing more on the question of what it would
mean to understand forms of EGEIROMAI as middle/reflexive rather than
passive. I don't want to get into theology at all, and I'm probably
focusing more than anybody really cares to do on just a form, let's say,
EGEIRETAI, which could mean "he wakes up/he rises (from sleep, from a
reclining position, like the paralytic of Mark 2, or from death)"
(middle/intransitive), "he is awakened/roused, made to get up" (from sleep,
from a reclining position, from death) (passive sense, even if the
morphology is essentially middle/reflexive). And I really don't want to say
anything more than that, in my opinion, when an agent isn't directly
stated, EVEN when, as in those passages in 1 Cor 15, we know that Paul
surely conceives of the resurrection of Christ as brought about by God, yet
where there is no agent explicitly indicated, the form EGEIRETAI doesn't
really assert anything more than that the subject is undergoing a process
of awakening or resurrection--it says nothing whatsoever about what
Aristotle might term an "efficient cause" of the awakening or resurrection,
and that this is why I'd hesitate to CALL the form EGEIRETAI passive in
that context.
--
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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