Re: I Cor. 6:9, passive or middle of PLANAW

David L. Moore (dvdmoore@ix.netcom.com)
Fri, 22 Nov 1996 12:45:13 -0500

At 10:06 AM 11/22/96 -0500, Stephen C. Carlson wrote:
>At 11:16 11/21/96 -0500, David L. Moore wrote:
>> The BAGD lexicon gives the active sense of the verb as "lead astray,
>>cause to wander;" Louw and Nida define it similarly. But isn't PLANAW
>>cognate to the word for *planets* (viz. ASTERES PLANHTAI of Jude 13) and
>>dependent on the same root meaning. Did 1st-Century cosmology think of the
>>planets as *led* about or, rather, as wandering according to their own course?
>
>The planets were the "wandering stars." Their position relative to the
>"fixed" stars changes from night to night. If observed over a course of
>time, they will appear to travel across the background of the stars,
>sometimes even going backwards for a brief period of days. Ptolomy
>postulated the existence of "epicycles" to account for this retrograde
>motion, but today's heliocentric model for the solar system works much
>better.

Well that certainly would account for their being called PLANHTAI,
but were they thought of as led on that course by some influence apart from
themselves or as being wanderers by their own nature.

Really, we should probably just let this particular matter drop,
since the point I was trying to make depended on the asumption that words
with identical roots and similar etymology (PLANAW and PLANHTHS) would be
similar in meaning. And such considerations may, or may not indicate
similarity in meaning.

The argument for the reflexive middle meaning of PLANAW in 1 Cor.
6:9 really should be able to stand on the basis of the context. And the
context does appear to bear it out as shown by the part of my post not
quoted by Stephen. Something that seems odd to me, however, is that Baur
classifies the reflexive and other middle meanings at s.v. PLANAW, 2:c:beta
and gamma as passives (see the heading of section 2) and makes no mention of
middle voice.

David L. Moore Director
Miami, Florida, USA Department of Education
dvdmoore@ix.netcom.com Southeastern Spanish District
http://members.aol.com/dvdmoore of the Assemblies of God