Deponent Verb in 2 Thess. 2:10

Grammar questions which are not related to any specific text.
WAnderson
Posts: 52
Joined: July 4th, 2011, 5:18 pm

Re: Deponent Verb in 2 Thess. 2:10

Post by WAnderson »

Thanks, Carl. I realize there are limits to what we can infer from the grammar itself. My original line of thought was that it is middle, indicating some sense of self-interest, and also, based on dechomai in this context indicating "approval or conviction by accepting" (BDAG), I postulated that their not receiving the love of the truth might therefore indicate a stronger motivation than simply indifference. Perhaps "hostility" was too strong a word, reading too much into the word itself. Maybe a better way to put it might be that their refusal is deliberate, as opposed to apathetic?

Anyway, my original interest in all this (and why I ended up posting my questions on this forum) was theological, specifically the process of spiritual deception and resulting judgment seen in 2 Thess. 2:9-12.
cwconrad
Posts: 2112
Joined: May 5th, 2011, 5:52 pm
Location: Burnsville, NC 28714
Contact:

Re: Deponent Verb in 2 Thess. 2:10

Post by cwconrad »

WAnderson wrote:Thanks, Carl. I realize there are limits to what we can infer from the grammar itself. ...

Anyway, my original interest in all this (and why I ended up posting my questions on this forum) was theological, specifically the process of spiritual deception and resulting judgment seen in 2 Thess. 2:9-12.
I sort of suspected a theological concern; I'm glad you didn't bring it up in discussion, because our headnotes have indicated that we keep our focus on what the Greek text may mean as a Greek text but do not discuss theological implications of how we read a text.
οὔτοι ἀπ’ ἀρχῆς πάντα θεοὶ θνητοῖς ὑπέδειξαν,
ἀλλὰ χρόνῳ ζητέοντες ἐφευρίσκουσιν ἄμεινον. (Xenophanes, Fragment 16)

Carl W. Conrad
Department of Classics, Washington University (Retired)
WAnderson
Posts: 52
Joined: July 4th, 2011, 5:18 pm

Re: Deponent Verb in 2 Thess. 2:10

Post by WAnderson »

Carl, I assure you my motive for posting was grammar based, not theological. I do not consider this a theology forum. What I meant was that my initial theological interest led me to seek clarification re. the grammar. Please consider any future questions I may have to be motivated by a desire to better understand Koine Greek for its own sake.
Stephen Carlson
Posts: 3351
Joined: May 11th, 2011, 10:51 am
Location: Melbourne
Contact:

Re: Deponent Verb in 2 Thess. 2:10

Post by Stephen Carlson »

Barry Hofstetter wrote:Well, ok, I'm not. What I do find interesting is how the older textbooks themselves, such as Crosby & Schaeffer, introduce them in a very factual way, and then simply give the meanings for each deponent verb as they come up. They certainly didn't need to go into a lot of theory as to why deponents were deponent -- they simply forced us poor students to learn them. Of course, I was familiar with the concept from Latin, so I found it even less troubling than my fellow students (none of whom had had Latin prior to starting Greek, interestingly enough). This was the real point to my post -- teach students that these particular words use these particular forms, and that these particular words have these particular meanings. Call them what you will, but somebody has to explain to the poor student why λύονται can sometimes mean "are being destroyed" but δέχονται never seems to mean "are being received." The older textbooks did this without unduly stressing any theoretical reasons.

So, I suspect you guys are right, and there are better, more up to date linguistic ways of doing it. In the meantime, until all the really new textbooks come out...
I'm not all that far from you. The main difference is that the theory I give about why deponents are deponent has nothing to do with the misleading "middle in form but active in meaning" but rather, "here's why this deponent is really a middle." I also tell them that English actives do the work of both Greek actives and (many) middles, and so they should get used to seeing English active glosses for Greek middles (including deponents). But I stress that's really just a quirk of English's limited voice system, not because those Greek verbs are "active in meaning."

Stephen
Stephen C. Carlson, Ph.D.
Melbourne, Australia
Stephen Carlson
Posts: 3351
Joined: May 11th, 2011, 10:51 am
Location: Melbourne
Contact:

Re: Deponent Verb in 2 Thess. 2:10

Post by Stephen Carlson »

WAnderson wrote:Thanks, Carl. I realize there are limits to what we can infer from the grammar itself. My original line of thought was that it is middle, indicating some sense of self-interest, and also, based on dechomai in this context indicating "approval or conviction by accepting" (BDAG), I postulated that their not receiving the love of the truth might therefore indicate a stronger motivation than simply indifference. Perhaps "hostility" was too strong a word, reading too much into the word itself. Maybe a better way to put it might be that their refusal is deliberate, as opposed to apathetic?
Whether they fail to receive the benefit of the love of truth indifferently or deliberately is not something the middle voice encodes. Either possibility is, uh, possible, and you'd have to let the context be your guide.

Stephen
Stephen C. Carlson, Ph.D.
Melbourne, Australia
Post Reply

Return to “Grammar Questions”