The function and significance of middle voice verbs in the Greek New Testament

Abstract

Prompted by the re-consideration of the concept of deponency for Greek verbs in recent decades, this exploration seeks to open new vistas for understanding the middle voice in the Greek New Testament. While the middle voice has often not been emphasised in NT studies, statistical data derived from morphological data bases indicate that middle verb forms appear not infrequently throughout the New Testament and therefore warrant due consideration. This study focuses on verbs with middle morphology in both present and aorist tenses in Paul’s writing in First Thessalonians and Second Corinthians. Three criteria derived from a literature survey are applied to the middle verbs in context, indicating that middle verb forms may indeed be shown to have middle function. The results thus generated are then applied to a further sample of middle verbs in Galatians to explore the exegetical implications of reading middle forms as truly middle in function. This undertaking is shown to contribute to the exegetical fecundity of a text with consequent potential to impact the theological interpretation. It is therefore proposed that the middle voice of a verb is significant, operating synergistically with the lexical sense, context and other factors encoded by verb morphology, to contribute to the understanding of a New Testament text under consideration.