>In our lectionary group today we were discussing acts
10:40,particularly... EDWKEN AUTON EMFANJ GENESQAI Someone read
one of the translations which has something like this... "...he
allowed him to appear." ??? Does that translation carry the force of
the actual text? Here's what I'm struggling with: Did God raise Jesus
or did Jesus make himself become visible? I believe GENESQAI is passive
thus indicating action received by the subject rather than
<underline>vice versa.</underline> <<
Jim, two points:
(1) One of the little points of grammar I've found myself emphasizing
more and more frequently happens to apply here: you tentatively
identify GENESQAI as passive, but actually it is middle. If you have
middle endings and you don't have a clear indication that the verb in
question is being used in a passive sense (which most simply means it
doesn't have the hUPO + genitive agent construction, although there
certainly are passives without a clear expression of agent), then you
ought to assume it is middle and assign it the meaning standard for the
middle of that verb. In this case the verb GINOMAI only appears in the
middle voice (although the root GEN/GON/GN does appear in an active
verb like GENNAW) and normally means "become," "come into being,"
or--particularly in the aorist, is often an equivalent of EIMI which
doesn't have an aorist tense. Here I think "to become manifest" is the
basic and simple sense of EMFANH GENESQAI.
(2) You ask, "Did God raise Jesus or did Jesus make himself become
visible?" Acts 10:40 does not leave this at all in question:
immediately prior to the clause you cite is TOUTON hO QEOS HGEIREN THi
TRITHi hHMERAi KAI ... The text clearly says that God raised him, and
given the phrasing, we surely ought to understand hO QEOS as continuing
in force as the subject of EDWKEN--and I suspect that this EDWKEN, like
the one we discussed in Rev. 3 yesterday, carries the idiomatic force
of Heb. NATHAN rather than the normal sense of DIDWMI (older Greek
regularly uses TIQHMI in this idiomatic sense of "establish" or "cause
to be.") so the sense has to be " ... and made him become manifest."
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/