Tag Archives: Friedrich Wilhelm Blass

The Voices of the Greek Verb

The system of three voices of the verb – active (transitive), passive (instransitive), and middle (i.e. transitive with the reference to the subject) – remains on the whole the same in the New Testament as in the classical language. In the former, as in the latter, it frequently happens in the case of individual verbs that by a certain arbitrariness of the language this or that voice becomes the established and recognized form for a particular meaning, to the exclusion of another voice, which might perhaps appear more appropriate to this meaning. It is therefore a difficult matter to arrive at any general conception for each of the voices, which when applied to particular cases is not bound at once to become subject to limitation or even contradiction.… Learn Koine Greek

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Aramaic Style of the Greek New Testament

The national Aramaic or Hebrew element influenced Greek-writing Jewish authors of the Greek New Testament in a threefold manner: (1) It is proable that the speaker or writer quite involuntarily and unconciously rendered a phrase by his mother tounge by an accurately corresponding phrase; (2) The reading and hearing of the Old Testament in the Greek version of the Septuagint coloured the writer’s style, especially if he desired to write in a solemn and dignified manner (just as profane writers borrowed phrases from the Attic writers for a similar objects); (3) A great part of the New Testament writings (the three first Gospels and the first half of the Acts) is in all probability a direct working over of Aramaic or Hebrew materials.… Learn Koine Greek

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