Journal: Detroit Baptist Seminary Journal
Volume: DBSJ 25:1 (NA 2020)
Article: The Fallacy Of The Excluded Middle: Reassessing The Category Of “Deponency” To Reclaim The Middle Voice In NEW Testament Greek Pedagogy
Author: Timothy Hughes

DBSJ 25 (2020) p. 79

The Fallacy Of The Excluded Middle:
Reassessing The Category Of “Deponency” To Reclaim The Middle Voice In NEW Testament Greek Pedagogy

Timothy Hughes1

It happens to every elementary Greek student. Just when he is getting used to verbs in his vocabulary lists ending in –ω, a whole new pattern of verbs emerges in his vocabulary assignments. Suddenly he is confronted with ἔρχομαι, βούλομαι, δέχομαι, and other vocabulary forms that mysteriously appear with middle/passive endings. And yet the English glosses provided seem active enough—they appear neither passive nor reflexive. He dutifully memorizes the vocabulary for the day and comes to class, hoping for an explanation. The traditional answer to the befuddled student has often come in the form of a lesson on a deponency.

When I first started teaching elementary NT Greek, the deponent verb was familiar territory for me and an easy concept to teach. I had been happily parsing these verbs for years. As I would explain, deponent verbs are middle or passive in form, but active in meaning. Typically, verbs so classified have no attested active form—certainly not in the NT. And for some reason not entirely known to us, I would continue, the middle/passive form essentially serves as the active form. Looking back on this explanation, I regret that I missed an opportunity to ensure my students better understood and appreciated the middle voice.

As scholars have continued to study the semantics of the Koine voice system, an increasing number of NT Greek teachers have come to conclude that “deponency” (at least as often taught or caught in NT Greek classrooms) is a suspect category. This paper summarizes some of these findings and argues that Greek teachers today should eliminate deponency as a category in their pedagogy, and replace it with a more robust understanding of the Greek middle voice. Pastor-scholars, as well, should consider reassessing their understanding of the category of middle-only verbs, since these verbs occur frequently in the New Testament.

DBSJ 25 (2020) p. 80

This conversation is more important than it may initially seem, because perpetuating a lack of clarity on what is actually occurring with so-called “deponents” aggravates and reinforces these four all-too-common misperceptions among students and even expositors: (1) that active and passive are the main voice choices in Greek and the middle is a sideshow; (2) that if it sounds active in English, the meaning must be active in Greek; (3) that the “true” middle c...