Luke 22:5 Ambiguous syntax αὐτῷ c. συνθέσθαι/δοῦναι ?

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cwconrad
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Re: Luke 22:5 Ambiguous syntax αὐτῷ c. συνθέσθαι/δοῦναι ?

Post by cwconrad »

Stephen Hughes wrote:Carl, how does your new way of dealing with middle/ pasive verbs in Koine handle a verb like συνθέσθαι, which is both transitive and intranstive in the middle?

With another meaning, the middle/passive is the middle passive of the active - same lexical meaning and a voice dependent grammatical meaning. With this special meaning in the middle/passive, however, the verb is effectively deponent in this meaning, when it is used in an infinitive construction (following the syntactic pattern of a verb of thinking, saying or the like).

Is their an explanation for cases like this?
1. What you call the “new way of dealing with middle/passive verbs in Koine” is not mine, although I acknowledge and do seek to promote it. Many have labored to clarify and demonstrate middle forms and usage in several languages (Kemmer, especially), the most important work in Greek by Rutger Allan.
2. Did you have in mind some particular example of συνθέσθαι as “both transitive and intransitive in the middle”?
3. Middle-marking indicates that the verb so-marked is subject-affected, not whether it is transitive or intransitive.
4. My understanding of this verb is that it means (a) (transitive) put two or more things together; (b) (intransitive) concur with another or others in an enterprise or process, often used as an auxiliary verb with an infinitive complement. The middle usage falls in the common category of middle reciprocal verbs, many with συν- prefix and a dative of the person(s) involved.
5. I have no idea what you mean by “effectively deponent.” Traditionally the term “deponent” refers to verbs whose morphology is inconsistent with their semantic function. συντίθεσθαι with complementary infinitive is much like ἅρχεσθαι or παύεσθαι with a complementary infinitive, the sense being something like “undertake in concert” to do x”
6. If you really are interested in the “new way of undertanding the middle-passive”, you’d do well to read Rutger Allan’s work; while the print version is expensive, the PDF of the original dissertation is readily accessible, its URL posted frequently in this forum.
οὔτοι ἀπ’ ἀρχῆς πάντα θεοὶ θνητοῖς ὑπέδειξαν,
ἀλλὰ χρόνῳ ζητέοντες ἐφευρίσκουσιν ἄμεινον. (Xenophanes, Fragment 16)

Carl W. Conrad
Department of Classics, Washington University (Retired)
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