Wednesday, April 27, 2022
Passivum Divinum
David E. Aune, Revelation 6–16 (1998; rpt. Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2014 = Word Biblical Commentary,
Vol. 52B), pp. 394-395 (on 6:2):
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2b καὶ ἐδόθη αὐτῷ στέφανος καὶ ἐξῆλθεν νικῶν καὶ ἵνα νικήσῃ, "A crown was given to him, and the conqueror went out that he might conquer even more." This is the first occurrence of the aorist passive ἐδόθη, a passivum divinum, "passive of divine activity," used twenty-two times in Revelation (the third plural ἐδόθησαν occurs twice in 8:2; 12:14; on the passivum divinum, see Comment on 9:3).Id., p. 512 (on 9:3):
3b καὶ ἐδόθη αὐτῷ θυμιάματα πολλά, "and he was given a large quantity of incense." The use of the passive here (which may be the passive of divine activity, i.e., a circumlocution for the name of God) obscures the identification of the one who gives the angel the incense, though it is clear that the incense is placed in the λιβανωτὸς χρυσοῦς, the "golden censer."The term passivum divinum was apparently coined by Joachim Jeremias, Neutestamentliche Theologie, Erster Teil: Die Verkündigung Jesu (Gütersloh: Gerd Mohn, 1971), pp. 20-24, although earlier scholars had noted the phenomenon of using the passive to avoid the divine name as subject of an active verb. John Bowden's translation of Jeremias, New Testament Theology: The Proclamation of Jesus (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1971), pp. 9-14, doesn't reproduce the Latin phrase but instead translates it as the "divine passive". Doubt is cast on the reality of the passivum divinum by Peter-Ben Smit and Toon Renssen, "The passivum divinum: The Rise and Future Fall of an Imaginary Linguistic Phenomenon," Filología Neotestamentaria 27 (2014) 3-24.
