Before getting into verses 18-20, I am going to talk a bit about the middle voice in Greek. We have mostly been aware of the active voice, and the passive voice. You need to add the middle voice to your box of language tools.
Up to now, we have talked mostly about the active voice:
...where the subject of the verb performs the action of the verb (e.g. Jesus entered the temple. Jesus is the one who took initiative, and did the entering.)
...or the passive voice:
...where the subject of the subject of the verb is acted on by an agent (e.g. The temple was entered by Jesus. The temple is the subject of the sentence, but it it not the thing doing the action of the verb.)
We have run into middle voice verbs, where we said they were verbs with passive word formation, but active meaning. This is the situation with around 75% of the middle voice verbs in the NT.
There is, however, a more distinct function of the middle voice. It is where the subject of the verb is also in some way the object of the verb. English translations often require the use of a word like "himself" or "herself" to capture this nuance of the middle voice.
A good example of a passive word form that is usually understood as a middle voice would be in John 8:59. Jesus has been in a conversation with Jewish leaders, and the passage says:
Then they picked up rocks to stone him with. But Jesus hid himself (ἐκρύβη), then left the temple.
ἐκρύβη could either be understood as κρύπτω (to hide; the root of our English word "cryptography" — hidden writing — with a middle voice ending (he hid himself), or as κρύπτω with a passive voice ending (he was hidden, i.e. By God). The middle voice, in terms of word prefixes and suffixes, looks identical to the passive.
The way the word is understood can affect the translation. In John 8:59, Jesus has been having a conversation with Jewish leaders, and they pick up rocks to stone him.
At that point, Ἰησοῦς δὲ ἐκρύβη.
ἐκρύβη could either be understood as κρύπτω with a middle voice ending (he hid himself), or as κρύπτω with a passive voice ending (he was hidden, i.e. By God).
Versions that understand this as a middle voice include:
- NIV
- ESV
- NASB
- GNT
- NET
By understanding this as a middle voice, these translations communicate that Jesus took initiative to hide himself from those who wanted to kill him.
A version that understands this as a passive is:
- NLT
By translating this as a passive voice, the NLT communicates that something supernatural was going on. God miraculously hid Jesus from those who wanted to kill him.
The grammar of this verse could go either way. Translators make a judgment call on how to render this word — either as a passive or middle voice verb — and their decision influences the mental image we develop of this event as we read the text.
Now that you have your own interlinear rendering, and have a pretty good picture of the Greek for this verse from my lecture, it is time to start trying to come up with your own proper translation.
Complete your first draft before looking at anybody else's translation.
Now that you have roughed out your own proper translation, you may take a look at some comparison versions. These are all pitched at the general level I want you to aim for:
For the sake of the learning experience, I want you to aim to get your proper translation into idiomatic, Canadian Standard English.
Think about the anchor people of the CBC National News, not King James.
WWCD (What would the CBC do?): If the CBC National News would never use the wording of your proper translation, you need to go back to the drawing board to try again.
This recent study from Johns Hopkins University:
https://www.sciencealert.com/handwriting-is-better-than-typing-when-learning-to-read-study-finds
...suggests that your language acquisition will come significantly faster, and be more thorough, if you write out the text of Acts 1:19-20 by hand onto a blank manuscript. This is much better than just staring at Greek on your computer screen.
Download and print a . Copy out the Greek of the verses on the lines, and just below it, your proper translation.
Since this is not a word-for-word, interlinear rendering, but a proper translation, likely your translation will not line up exactly with the Greek above the line. That is OK. What you want is to be able to come back to this a year or two from now, look at it and be able to compare your proper translation with the Greek original, and see how they connect.