20 Stratton L. Ladewig the hands of those who revise and set out, sometimes with scant acknowl- edgment, the daring original work of their predecessors. Therefore criticism of shortcomings from a modern point of view, and of mistakes in method, as, for example, the failure to distinguish between the descriptive and the nor- mative approaches to grammar (a common feature of ancient grammatical work) can rightly be made against early grammarians, but must not be taken as censure or disparagement of them in the way that one would take it in the case of a modern writer on grammar who failed to make such a fundamental distinction (and there are still those who do), or who showed similar lack of organization or method in his grammatical and linguistic work. In passing comments on ancient scholars we must remember our privileged position in having an already developed and formulated subject of study, which we owe not least to the profit derived from considering the mistakes of our academic fore-runners, in Greece and elsewhere59. Robins’s words are applicable to the history of deponency. Whereas the first attempts at formulating the relationship of the subject to the verb were somewhat crude, there was a real attempt to wrestle with the situation in which the form of the verb did not correspond to its function. With the progression of time, grammarians refined their understand- ing and description of deponency, but the roots are ancient. Modern grammarians who are questioning — even denying — deponency have misevaluated the ancient milieu of this particular aspect of Greek voice. Stratton L. LADEWIG Center for the Study of New Testament Manuscripts 2001 W Plano Pkwy Ste 1043 Plano, TX 75075-8606 U.S.A. sladewig@csntm.org 59 Robins, Ancient and Mediaeval Grammatical Theory, 4.