**Warning: Linguistic nerdiness to follow. Proceed at your own risk.
It's been a few months since I've posted, but this post is continuing the Greek Geekery commenting on how knowing some biblical (Koine) Greek can sometimes illuminate new and otherwise unknown avenues of meaning.
For many who love the Bible, the inevitable ambiguity with interpreting, understanding, and applying it in daily life brings frustration and sometimes the temptation to find whatever one wants to in its pages. Indeed, we come to any text with assumptions and expectations, but that primed preconception can too easily lead down the slippery slope of making the Bible mean whatever we want it to mean. Even the most well-intentioned and careful interpreters lapse into unconsciously creating the text in their own image. This projection is a ubiquitous roadblock that serious Bible students and people of faith know about and avoid as much as possible.
One way to check our personal preferences and projections is to ground our interpretation of the texts in their historical and cultural context, which partly means language study. In the case of the New Testament, this means Greek. While historical and linguistic study is not a guarantee of objective or perfect understanding of biblical texts (that ideal isn't truly viable), but it at least provides a variety of expertly informed perspectives with the common interest of discovering "what really happened" using the best investigative tools available today.
What follows is simply an appropriately edited email correspondence between myself and a new student who was interested in Greek but had never taken a course. It is an example of how linguistics and semantics place logical limitations on what the text can mean.
Query from student:
Dr. Jesse,
In Matthew 7:7 it is written: "Ask, and it will be given to you; search, and you will find; knock, and the door will be opened for you" (NRSV). Usually, the for is translated as to. What puzzled me was it seemed that 'given to' and 'opened to' would indicate that there’s something active outside of the Self.
I dug a little deeper. In the Greek original the words for 'to give' and 'to open' are 'dothesetai' and 'anoigesetai'. What's interesting is the form that both conjugations take, which is called the 'middle voice'. The 'middle voice', according to the description in the Strong's Concordance, indicates the subject performing an action upon himself (reflexive action) or for his own benefit. Furthermore, the word for 'you', humin, comes from 'humeis' which is translated to 'to (with or by) you or yourselves'.
So, taking these realizations into account, the passage would more likely be understood as: "Ask, and you'll give it upon yourself, search, and you will find, knock, and you will open the door for yourself." What do you think?
Thanks,
Student
Here was my answer to the student:
Dear Student,
The issue you bring up is a delightfully interesting and observant one, but answering it requires drawing on a lot of nuance and complexity of Koine Greek grammar and syntax to give a sound response. Here goes...
You rightly point out that the verbs used in Mt.7:7 are dothesetai and anoigesetai. And, yes, they are expressed here in what is known as the middle voice. (Aiteite kai dothesetai humin, zeteite kai euresete, krouete kai anoigesetai humin.) More specifically, they are both third person singular future middle perfect indicative. And voice simply refers to the relationship between the subject and verb in the sentence. With the active voice the subject does the action of the verb, while with the passive voice the subject receives the action of the verb.
The classical definition of middle voice is that the action of a verb in some way affects the subject (often called the 'self-interested nuance of the middle’). Every primer on Classical and Koine Greek I know about and have consulted claims that the middle voice doesn't precisely and solely express the reflexive idea. If the subject of the verb performs an action to his/her/itself (in this instance: 'it will be given' and 'the door will be opened', 'it' and 'door' are the subjects), Greek usually requires the reflexive pronoun (hautou), which is not used here in Mt. 7:7. Rather, in the middle voice, the subject ('it', 'the door') does the action of the verb ('will be given', 'will be opened') to the direct object (both verbs use humin, the second person dative plural = 'to you all'), yet it is implied that the verb action somehow affects the subject ('it', 'the door').
Therefore, in one sense you are correct that there is a 'self-interested' or 'reflexive' sense to the middle voice, but this would not be applied to the direct object (humin, 'to you all'), but rather to the subject of the sentence ('it', 'the door'). So, if you wanted to explicitly render this element of reflexivity into this passage it would read: 'Ask, and it itself will be given to you. . .knock and the door itself will be open to you.'
To translate the passage the way you suggest ('Ask, and you'll give it upon yourself. . .knock, and you will open the door for yourself) would be to completely disregard not only the implications of the middle voice of both verbs but, more importantly, the correct declension and syntactic position of the pronoun (humin), which in this sentence is clearly the direct object (not the subject) and which is second person dative plural (‘to you all’).
Now, that's Koine Greek grammar and translation. Then there's the issue of exegesis, which is the next step and is a rather different enterprise. How we interpret, theologize, and make meaning from this proper translation from the Greek is a distinct, though very much related, matter. It's totally possible to understand all of this subject-verb-object activity as symbolically happening within one's own consciousness , without an external agent involved (depending on one’s theological assumptions and orientation). It's also equally possible to view it as happening in the realm of relationships between individuals and God inter-personally. That's the exciting, beautiful, and frustratingly ambiguous nature of language and interpretation.
Yet, here’s the point I want to emphasize: If we are really intent on taking the Bible seriously, that is, interested in what it communicates to us, then we must begin with its (original) languages and historical context. This means starting with the attitude of opening ourselves up to what the Bible has to say on its own terms first, rather than conforming it to what we want it to mean according to our own personal tastes.
Responsible biblical interpretation lays a firm foundation for constructing theological interpretations that are not only attuned to our own place in life, but also soundly grounded historically and linguistically in the actual text itself. Otherwise, why even use the scriptures unless it's simply for proof-texting and amassing support for one's own interests and aims?
I hope the Greek explanation wasn't too terribly tedious, but the nature of the question begged a rather technical answer. I encourage you to continue furthering your interest in Greek language of the Bible. It's intellectually satisfying and spiritually enriching!
Grace and peace to you,
Dr. Jesse
