Students of mine will know my predilection to call the θη forms of the so-called ‘aorist passive’ instead ‘theta-eta middles’. In today’s post, I want to explore how this understanding of the middle helps us make better sense of biblical texts.

In Mark 16:6 we read:

6 ὁ δὲ λέγει αὐταῖς· μὴ ἐκθαμβεῖσθε. Ἰησοῦν ζητεῖτε τὸν Ναζαρηνὸν τὸν ἐσταυρωμένον· ἠγέρθη, οὐκ ἔστιν ὧδε·

Is ἠγέρθη best translated ‘he is risen’, or ‘he was raised’, or something else? Before you can answer a translation question, you need to answer a meaning question. What is ἠγέρθη telling us?

The verb ἐγείρω overlaps pretty well with English expressions for ‘get someone up’. That covers both a person moving from a lying position to a standing position, and from being asleep to being awake. Just as ‘get your brother up’ might mean ‘go and wake him’ or ’cause him to stand up’.

And for this reason, when you encounter middle forms of this verb, they fall into the category of direct reflexivity that involves change in body posture. The middle voice indicates the change in body posture, regardless of the agent.

That’s why, for instance, the θη middle participle forms in the opening of Matthew, ἐγερθεὶς … ὁ Ἰωσήφ are most naturally read as Joseph getting up from sleep, without supposing or caring whether he was woken by an external cause or not. Similarly at the end of Matthew, 26:36, it’s Jesus’ disciples who get up, no need to presume any external agent (when Jesus says to them, ἐγείρεσθε ἄγωμεν)

What you need to grasp at this point is that it’s perfectly normal Greek to use ἠγέρθη in the middle and mean something like “X got up”. Just like I could say to you, “I got up at 6 o’clock this morning”.

ἐγείρω is used in reference to Jesus getting up from the dead, and sometimes with a clear agent – in the active. Acts 10:40 τοῦτον ὁ θεὸς ἤγειρεν, Acts 130:30, 13:37 similarly. We find similar structures through the epistles.

We nowhere (I can see) find an expression of Jesus raising himself, if we’re looking for an explicit reflexive structure, e.g. like ὁ Ἰησοῦς ἑαυτὸν ἤγειρε. Nor should we expect one. That’s the kind of idea perfectly expressed by ἠγέρθη.

Which is why, if we return to Mark 16, no point is being made about the agent or cause of Jesus’ getting-up. It’s the fact that he’s gone from lying in the grave, dead, to being upright, awake, and alive, that is in view. The middle doesn’t need an agent, and doesn’t have to imply one. It leaves it ambiguous. Theologically, we might say both that God raised him from the dead, and that Jesus arose. But the middle θη just tells us that he got up, that he’s up!