Voice Markers in Septuagint Greek in the Light of Hebrew Interference: A Corpus‐Based Study on the Aorist System of the Book of Genesis*

Abstract

AbstractIn this paper, we examine the behaviour of so‐called passive and middle aorist forms in the Greek reflected in the Genesis of the Septuagint. The Septuagint, and Biblical Greek more generally, displays a considerable aberration with respect to other varieties of Ancient Greek regarding the relative frequency of passive vis‐à‐vis middle aorist forms. Here, we explore this feature of Septuagint Greek in some detail, showing that there is a more or less consistent, binary system at this stage, where the passive aorist is the preferred expression of monoargumental detransitive clauses, while the middle primarily appears in biargumental detransitive clauses. A comparison with the original text in Biblical Hebrew suggests that its binyanim system, with systematic distinction between transitive and detransitivising stems, may have played a key role in accelerating this process, which was already present in earlier stages of Greek. This process resulted in a general ousting of the aorist middle, which essentially became a lexically restricted variant of the active voice.