Here's one, at least--and I really believe there are several others, but I
can't put my fingers on them as readily as this:
Gal. 2:7 ... IDONTES hOTI PEPISTEUMAI TO EUAGGELION THS AKROBUSTIAS KAQWS
PETROS THS PERITOMHS, ...
Here there is no way to understand TO EUAGGELION other than as the object
of the perfect passive PEPISTEUMAI.
As Micheal notes, this is not at all uncommon in English: "The candidate
was given a boost by his colleagues" -- where "a boost" is what I was
taught to call a "received object of a passive verb." I've never heard
anyone or read anywhere that term, but I was taught it [there's another:
"it" as the object of "taught"] by a remarkable 5th-grade teacher who
drilled grammar into her pupils, and in all the years since I've wondered
whether that term, "received object of a passive verb," isn't a translation
of OBJECTUM RECEPTUM or some such Latin phrase. For the construction is
extraordinarily common in Latin, especially poetry, where it tends to be
called a "Greek accusative" and is too often explained as an "accusative of
speciication" when it is really the object of a middle or passive verb. One
very common example is VIR VINCTUS MANUS IN TERGO, "aman with his hands
bound behind him"--but MANUS is clearly the object of VINCTUS. Another:
PUELLA COMAM REDIMITA CORONA, "a girl with her hair restrained by a
garland," -- but here COMAM is the object of the passive participle
REDIMITA.
My hunch is that this construction is most commonly found with a perfect
passive rather than an aorist. It is relatively rare, but one sees it
occasionally.
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/