In Acts 13:48 -" τεταγμένοι" (appointed- YTL), What the Luke's narration implies to, "middle" or "passive "voice?

Question

Apparently, Luke simply narrates the event describing how "people throng" to Paul and Barnabas to hear the message, and with conscious volition "they" responded. Therefore, the "middle voice" would be more natural. And the "passive" interpretation, in my view, is re-contextualization in modern day context, and is an arbitrary decision.

Text: Acts 13:48 (YLT)

"And the nations hearing were glad, and were glorifying the word of the Lord, and did believe -- as many as were appointed (τεταγμένοι) to life age-during."

Answer 1

Vertically speaking, the appointment comes from God, hence the passive voice in Acts 13:48 New International Version

When the Gentiles heard this, they were glad and honored the word of the Lord; and all who were appointed [by God] for eternal life believed.

Horizontally speaking, the humans volitionally decide to accept the word of the Lord, hence, the middle voice as translated by Dottard:

as many as believed had set themselves for eternal life

In Acts 13:48 -“ τεταγμένοι” (appointed- YTL), What the Luke's narration implies to, “middle” or “passive ”voice?

Both are true. The vertical appointment comes from God and the humans horizontally accept the appointment. This is the concept of Co-reality.

Answer 2

How many fights has this caused in the church over the centuries!! Calvinists vs Arminians, to name just one of them; splits in the English and German churches and many more.

The verb in question is τάσσω (tassó) which occurs 9 times in the NT, sometimes with a specific military meaning (Matt 8:9, Luke 7:8). BDAG provides two basic meanings:

1. to bring about an order by arranging, arrange, put in place, eg, Rom 13:1, Matt 8:9, Luke 7:8, Acts 13:48, 1 Cor 16:15
2. to give instructions as to what must be done, order, fix, determine, appoint, eg, Acts 15:2, 18:2, 22:10, 28:23, Matt 28:16.

Significantly, BDAG puts the OP's verse, Acts 13:48 in the first category. Just as significantly, the verb in Acts 13:48 is Perfect Participle Middle or Passive - Nominative Masculine Plural. Thus, the verb is either in the middle or passive voice.

Most English versions translate this as though the verb is definitely in the passive voice and thus give something like, "all who were appointed for eternal life believed".

However, if the verb is understood in the middle voice (more likely), then it should be translated something like, "as many as believed had set themselves for eternal life".

Ellicott appears to agree:

As many as were ordained to eternal life believed.--Better, as many as were disposed for. The words seem to the English reader to support the Calvinistic dogma of divine decrees as determining the belief or unbelief of men, and it is not improbable, looking to the general drift of the theology of the English Church in the early part of the seventeenth century, that the word "ordained" was chosen as expressing that dogma. It runs, with hardly any variation, through all the chief English versions, the Rhemish giving the stronger form "pre-ordinate." The Greek word, however, does not imply more than that they fell in with the divine order which the Jews rejected. They were as soldiers who take the place assigned to them in God's great army. The quasi-middle force of the passive form of the verb is seen in the Greek of Acts 20:13, where a compound form of it is rightly rendered "for so he had appointed," and might have been translated for so he was disposed. It lies in the nature of the case that belief was followed by a public profession of faith, but the word "believed" does not, as some have said, involve such a profession.