volume 5, issue 2, 2013, pages 178-197

DOI: https://doi.org/10.64438/sbsGZGQ2563
Published online: 2013-12-01
Published in print: 2013-12-30

Abstract: Passive aorist forms in some places of the New Testament obviously do not have passive meaning. We interpret this phenomenon as a shift from transitive to intransitive meaning, rather than a shift in the voice from the passive to the reflexive middle. Higher frequency of the intransitive meaning with transitive verbs characterizes the whole verbal system of the Koine Greek. This phenomenon is most often found with two verb groups – causative verbs and transitive verbs of motion expressing a movement change. Their middle forms were regularly “pseudoreflexive”, i.e. intransitive. In addition to this, in the Koine period we find this phenomenon with active and passive forms, too – eύστρεψα = eἰστράφην “I turned” (intransitively). This is a shift from the transitive (= bivalent) verbs, which express various relationships between the agent and the object, to intransitive (= monovalent) verbs, which express only the process the subject performs or is affected by. This can be defined as reduction of verbal valency or the loss of the category of the verbal voice. Language users do not consider the relationships between the agent and the object as important, and concentrate rather on the process itself. This observation can be used also in the interpretation of some passive aorists in the New Testament where it is not suitable to insist on the passive (or reflexive) meaning, because the verbs probably are not bivalent.