Paul Danove, «The 'aiteo' / 'aiteomai' Distinction in the New Testament: A Proposal.», Vol. 25 (2012) 101-118
This article investigates the seventy New Testament occurrences of aiteo to determine the motivation for and distinctive implications of the verb’s active and middle forms. The introductory discussion specifies the semantic and syntactic characteristics of aiteo and develops two features that have implications for distinguishing verbal usages. The discussion then proposes the distinction between active and middle forms and demonstrates this distinction in occurrences of the verb.
102 Paul Danove
Experiencer. The translations place the verbal complements in brackets, [
], and abbreviate their semantic functions according to their first letters,
Agent (A), Content (C), and Experiencer (E):2
τίνα δὲ ἐξ ὑμῶν τὸν πατέρα αἰτήσει ὁ υἱὸς ἰχθύν (Luke 11:11) [The
son (A)] will ask [which father among you (E)] [for a fish (C)]?
ᾐτήσατο παρ᾿ αὐτοῦ ἐπιστολὰς… (Acts 9:2) [He (A)] asked [of him
(E)] [letters (C)]….
In these occurrences, the verb form is active in Luke 11:11 and middle
in Acts 9:2. Most grammars interpret the active/middle distinction in
terms of the affectedness attributed to the subject. They propose that
active forms offer no guidance concerning subject affectedness and that
middle forms signal that the subject is affected by the action.3 Since this
provides a general statement of the distinction developed in this article,
all subsequent translations mark the subject affectedness associated with
middle forms by placing “with affect” in brackets, [ ], after the subject.
This procedure produces the following translations for the two examples:
Act. The son will ask which father among you for a fish? (Luke 11:11)
Mid. He [with affect] asked of him letters…. (Acts 9:2)
These occurrences also diverge in the realization of the Experiencer,
an accusative case noun phrase in Luke 11:1 and a παρά prepositional
phrase in Acts 9:2. This divergence grammaticalizes the relative empha-
sis attributed to the Content and Experiencer. Emphasis on the Content
highlights the production and transmission of the Content (the Agent
2
All examples are taken from B. Aland et al., eds., The Greek New Testament (4th rev.
ed.; Stuttgart 1993), which the following discussions reference as the UBS text.
3
J. Lyons, Introduction to Theoretical Linguistics (London 1969) 373, discusses the
nature of this affectedness; cf. R.J. Allan, The Middle Voice in Ancient Greek: A Study in
Polysemy (ASCP 11; Amsterdam 2003) 19-20. Saeed, Semantics, 162-65, considers various
categories of affectedness. Further discussion of subject affectedness associated specifically
with middle base forms appears in Allan, Middle Voice, 112-14; A. Rijksbaron, The Syntax
and Semantics of the Verb in Classical Greek: An Introduction (Amsterdam 2002) 147-
50; E. Bakker, “Voice, Aspect, and Aktionsart: Middle and Passive in Ancient Greek”,
in Voice: Form and Function (ed. B. Fox and P. J. Hopper; Amsterdam 1994) 36; and P.
Danove, Grammatical and Exegetical Study of New Testament Verbs of Transference: A
Case Frame Guide to Interpretation and Translation (NTGk 13; LNTS 329; London 2009)
22-23. M.H. Klaman, Grammatical Voice (CSL 59; Cambridge 1991) 92, notes that the use
of the middle to encode subject affectedness is common to many Indo-European languages.