MAubrey wrote:[...]
This is still a confusion of meaning and reference. John and Mark don't need to agree. The event itself is neither imperfective or perfective. It's an external reality. John and Mark simply need to decide how they're going to conceptualize it. Grammarians have been saying this for at least 100 years:A. T. Robertson's Big Grammar, 1380 wrote:Perhaps a word more should be said as to the point of view of the speaker or writer. The same action can be viewed as punctiliar or linear. The same writer may look at it now one way, now the other. Different writers often vary in the presentation of the same action.
The fact that both writers use a different aspectual form says nothing about the overlap between the two forms. Rather, it says something about how each of the writers conceptualizes the predication. Beyond that, such an analysis still doesn't account for the morphological difference of the two forms. That is the biggest problem with your view and I really don't see how you can get around it. And I would say that continues to be the problem with all the other texts we're looking at. What you would need to do is provide an adequate account or explanation of why two distinct morphological forms would coalesce semantically while maintaining their morphological difference through the history of the language.
Since you say that the event itself is neither imperfective nor perfective, but only the writers' views of it can be classified as such, then I have one remaining question: Would a reader who reads both accounts in John and Mark think to himself that there is a difference in the way they viewed the same event described in the quote? When I said "semantics" I was actually referring to what the audience obtains from the communication. In the case of "nations" and "peoples", I was not saying that they have the same meaning but rather that the order is insignificant. The use of both in conjunction creates the same final mental representation of the reference; I never meant that one or the other could be omitted and still leave the representation unchanged.
MAubrey wrote:With that said, I should probably make a couple comments on 1 Peter 2:17...David Lim wrote:[...]
If "τον θεον φοβεισθε" and "τον βασιλεα τιματε" (and what if the original text says "την αδελφοτητα αγαπησατε" and not "την αδελφοτητα αγαπατε"?) both involve habitual action, why is "honour all [men]" not also in the present? Are you saying that Peter (not Paul) does not quite consider "honouring all men" as regular or on a constant basis, so he chose not to mark it, resulting in an aorist imperative?
The difference between τὴν ἀδελφότητα ἀγαπᾶτε & τὸν θεὸν φοβεῖσθε compared to πάντας τιμήσατε is, as I said before, an instance of general vs. specific. The generalized command "honor everyone" is in the aorist and the more specific commands are imperfective. "Everyone" is more general than "the king" or "the community of believers" or "God." The general nature of πάντας correlates well with the perfective aspect. Since it makes no reference to internal temporal structure, it is more naturally suited to non-specific commands than the imperfective aspect.
At first you said that the imperfectives are used because the actions are supposed to be regular or on a constant basis, but "honouring all [men]" is presumably also meant to be a habitual injunction, which is why I disagreed with your argument. Now you say that it is simply because the rest are more specific, but then that does not explain the tense because "honouring God" still makes no reference to any temporal structure that is different from "honouring everyone". The reader was exhorted to do both equally habitually, so it has nothing to do with perfective or imperfective aspect.
MAubrey wrote:As for the variant, the aorist variant αγαπησατε is too easily explained as an instance of dittography to be worth considering, not to mention its late appearance in the manuscript tradition.
Why would it be introduced and retained in the manuscript tradition if it was not suitable unlike the present? Is it not possible that both were almost equally suitable?
MAubrey wrote:David Lim wrote:But it is untenable to say that "πρωτον λεγετε ειρηνη τω οικω τουτω" in Luke 10:5 is imperfective!
But it is imperfective.
David, what's your first language?
Why is it imperfective? It is in a very specific situation, εις ην δ αν οικιαν εισερχησθε, in which the action is performed only once. It is exactly like the situation in Luke 10:10 with the imperative "ειπατε", εις ην δ αν πολιν εισερχησθε και μη δεχωνται υμας. I cannot see any difference in aspect between the two injunctions. Anyway my first language is English. Thanks for taking time to answer my queries!
