[B-Greek] 2 Thess. 2:6-7--two proposals
Carl W. Conrad
cwconrad at artsci.wustl.edu
Thu Mar 1 19:36:16 EST 2007
On Mar 1, 2007, at 6:23 PM, Webb wrote:
> Dear Carl,
>
> You gave EGEIRW as an example of a verb that can sometimes be
> construed as
> either middle or passive. But the difference between EGEIRW and
> GINOMAI is
> that EGEIRW can be transitive, and GINOMAI cannot. HGERQH EK MESOU
> could
> mean either "got up out of the middle" or "was lifted out from the
> middle".
HGERQH is, of course, the aorist of EGEIROMAI. Yes, there is an
active EGEIRW, but the primary verb really is the middle; the active
form is causative. More often than not we see HGERQH used without any
hUPO + genitive agent construction; some would prefer to translate it
always as "was raised" and call it some such thing as a "divine
passive" (a designation I've always thought amusing). I would prefer
to English HGERQH as "he rose." Although this verb is sometimes used
in the active in the sense of "erect" a structure, it is most
commonly used of persons rising or awaking.
Nevertheless I think that there are frequent occasions when we might
wish to understand GINOMAI without an agent-construction as
essentially passive, as in the petition of the LP: GENHQHTW TO
QELHMA SOU (Mt 6:10) -- I should note that I think GENHQHTW is simply
an alternative form of GENESQW. We could understand this petition as
"May your will come to be" -- but how is that supposed to happen
unless someone obediently performs God's will? It makes good sense,
therefore, to English the petition as "May your w1ll be done."
> Unless there was absolutely no other way the sentence could make
> sense, I
> can't see a reason to express GINOMAI EK MESOU as something beyond
> (1) "gets
> out of the way" or (2) "gets [under his own power] out of the
> situation".
> And I think each of those readings makes good sense in and of
> itself in 2
> Thess. 2:7. For example, looking at option (1):
>
> The lawless one is going to appear at some future point. There's only
> (MONOS) one thing holding him back: the restrainer (hO KATECWN),
> who, at
> some future point, will presumably stop restraining, and at which
> point the
> lawless one will appear. I reckon that the idea of "to stop
> restraining" can
> be expressed equally well as "to get out of the way" (GINOMAI EK
> MESOU).
> What's wrong with that? Particularly in view of the fact that the
> writer
> personalizes the restrainer by calling him hO KATECWN, not just TO
> KATECON,
> the presumption is that this personal force has the option of
> restraining so
> long, and then stopping. If "until he gets out of the way" sounds
> like an
> unlikely rendering of ARTI hEWS EK MESOU GENHTAI, I'd like to hear
> your
> reason for thinking so. Otherwise I can't see what would induce me to
> imagine another implied actor, who has the supposed role of
> removing the
> restrainer from the place where he metaphorically stands restraining.
>
> On the assumption that you've encountered the verb GINOMAI in tens of
> thousands of instances, I accept your statement it's not out of the
> question
> that GINOMAI can occasionally carry have an implicit passive sense.
> So once
> again, the question I'd have is, wouldn't that be the last option,
> in the
> case that a middle sense, "action performed by the subject and
> involving the
> subject", didn't seem possible?
We need to distinguish what we understand the Greek formulation to
mean and how we choose to English the idea expressed in the Greek
formulation. I think that in the context hEWS EK MESOU GENHTAI does
mean -- in the Greek, "until he gets out of the center of things."
That is expressed with maximal economy, and I don't think that most
who want to English it would be satisfied with that formulation. One
might use, "until he's gone" and perhaps that would be sufficient,
BUT if the interpreter supposes that this exit of the restrainer
comes about through some instrumentality or agency beyond the
"restrainer's" intention, the interpreter may prefer to English the
formulation as "until he is removed." I wouldn't quarrel with that; I
would simply emphasize that there is not a one-to-one correspondence
between how we understand the semantic force of the Greek and how we
choose to make it intelligible in English.
Carl W. Conrad
Department of Classics, Washington University (Retired)
1989 Grindstaff Road/Burnsville, NC 28714/(828) 675-4243
cwconrad2 at mac.com
WWW: http://www.ioa.com/~cwconrad/
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Carl W. Conrad [mailto:cwconrad at artsci.wustl.edu]
> Sent: Thursday, March 01, 2007 2:01 PM
> To: Webb
> Cc: 'B-Greek'
> Subject: Re: [B-Greek] 2 Thess. 2:6-7--two proposals
>
>
> On Mar 1, 2007, at 3:02 PM, Webb wrote:
>
>>
>> Dear Oun,
>> 1. Difference btw active vs passive -- may it have something to do
>> with the nature of 'middle' in Gk?
>
> What it really has to do with is the fact that the forms labeled
> middle-passive and passive (QH) all, when intransitive, bear the
> sense "enter into state X." The nearest English equivalent is "get" +
> predicate word (which may be a participle): GINOMAI is the
> quintessential middle-passive verb that can quite readily be
> Englished (usually) as "get" or "come to be" with a predicate word.
>
>> Not to me, it doesn't. It has to do with my understanding that
>> GINOMAI is
>> strictly an intransitive verb. It never EVER takes an object. If a
>> verb
>> can't take an object, you can't turn it into a passive. In English,
>> for
>> example, the verb "to be" doesn't take an object. Like GINOMAI, it
>> can take
>> a predicate nominative or a predicate adjective and whatnot, but it
>> can't
>> take an object. If a verb (let's say X is a verb) is capable of being
>> transitive, then it is capable of taking an object. "I X this
>> thing." For
>> the most part, that also means that I can use the object as the
>> subject, and
>> throw the verb into the passive voice to express an equivalent
>> statement:
>> "This thing is Xed by me". But you can't say "I am ammed". There
>> is no
>> passive voice for the verb "to be", or for any strictly
>> intransitive verb.
>> So in 2 Thess. 2:7, whatever GENHTAI means, it can't mean that
>> something
>> else acts on the subject of the verb. Whatever action there is, is
>> carried
>> out by the subject. From my limited knowledge of Greek, ARTI hEWS
>> EK MESOU
>> GENHTAI can't possibly mean "until he is taken out of the
>> way" (pace KJV,
>> NASB, NIV, NCV, NRSV, TEV).
>
> Of course GENHTAI can't mean that something else acts on the subject
> of the verb -- but that may be implicit as it is always implicit in a
> MP form: GINETAI EK MESOU means "gets to be out-of-the-way, out-of-
> the-scene, off-the-table, out-of-this-world, out-of-this-life." Just
> as EGEIRETAI means "enters into a waking (or upright) state" it is
> open to interpretation as "awakes" or "gets awakened." While I think
> one ought to understand this ambivalence of the Greek MP form, I
> don't really have any objection to understanding EK MESOU GINETAI as
> "gets removed" (passive) or "gets out of the way" (intransitive/
> ergative: the subject may simply leave the center of action or he/she
> may be forcibly removed by an external agent.
>
> I have no quarrel with BDAG's entry on this passage.
>
> BDAG, s.v. GINOMAI: EK T. OURANWN G.
> 6. to make a change of location in space, move
> b. EK TINOS (Job 28:2): γ. EK MESOU be removed, Lat. e medio tolli
> (cp. Ps.-Aeschin., Ep. 12, 6 EK MESOU GENOMENWN EKEINWN; Plut.,
> Timol. 238 [5, 3]; Achilles Tat. 2, 27, 2) 2 Th 2:7 (HFulford, ET 23,
> 1912, 40f: 'leave the scene'). Of a voice fr. heaven: EK T.
> OURANWN G. sound forth fr. heaven (2 Macc 2:21; cp. Da 4:31 Theod.)
> Mk 1:11; Lk 3:22; 9:35; cp. vs. 36.
>
>
>> 2. It should be 'And now you know what's ~ ', not 'And you know
>> what's now
>> ~'
>> I've got a lot of translations in front of me, including Lattimore,
>> who is
>> not particularly influenced by the English bible translation
>> tradition. No
>> one them takes NUN with OIDATE. I'm inclined to trust them on this.
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