PORTER Did Paul Baptize Himself? 109
in Acts 22.16 with the middle voice form of the verb does not gram-
maticalize that perspective. The use of the middle, here seems to indicate
that Ananias does not tell Paul to baptize someone else (that would require
the active voice form), nor does he tell him to be baptized by someone
(that would require the passive voice form), but he does tell him to be
involved in the baptismal process, with Paul the subject of the verb. The
action of baptism is internal to the process itself, rather than an action
acted upon another or being caused by someone or something external to
the process. Whether someone else was actually involved in the process by
Paul is not something that can be decided by the use of the middle voice
form, and to ask it to do so is to ask the wrong question of the Greek
middle.
- Conclusion
The Greek voice system continues to be difficult to define and to under-
stand. This is evidenced by the mix of opinions found within both the
commentary literature on the use of the middle voice form, pdiTTioai, in
Acts 22.16 and the grammatical literature on voice and this verse. Much of
the difficulty seems to have been caused by repeated attempts to analyze
the problem utilizing the same categories as have been used for a number
of years. There has been a failure to re-examine fundamental categories,
such as the semantics of the Greek voice system, and what semantic fea-
tures are grammaticalized by the voice forms. The Greek voice-form
system grammaticalizes the causality system in Greek, that is, the seman-
tic relationship between actions and their causes, and whether and how
these causes are linked to the subjects as agents and patients in these
processes. The middle voice seems to grammaticalize the feature of inter-
nal causality, in which the cause of the action arises from the process,
rather than relying upon another agent. With this framework in mind, one
can offer the following gloss of Acts 22.16: 'get up, experience baptism
and wash away your sins'.in Acts can be relied upon, see S.E. Porter, The Paul of Acts: Essays in Literary
Criticism, Rhetoric, and Theology (WUNT, 115; Tubingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1999).