Jude 3 Aspect

Barry Hofstetter
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Jude 3 Aspect

Post by Barry Hofstetter »

3 Ἀγαπητοί, πᾶσαν σπουδὴν ποιούμενος γράφειν ὑμῖν περὶ τῆς κοινῆς ἡμῶν σωτηρίας ἀνάγκην ἔσχον γράψαι ὑμῖν παρακαλῶν ἐπαγωνίζεσθαι τῇ ἅπαξ παραδοθείσῃ τοῖς ἁγίοις πίστει. [SBL]

Okay, aspect mavens. We have γράφειν...γράψαι. What's the difference? I read the present infinitive of writing in general, writing something non-specific (perhaps because the actual letter he was going to write was inchoate), and the aorist as writing something specific, something that was already formed, as it were, in his mind Yes? No? Maybe?
N.E. Barry Hofstetter, M.A., Th.M.
Ph.D. Student U of FL
Instructor of Latin
Jack M. Barrack Hebrew Academy
καὶ σὺ τὸ σὸν ποιήσεις κἀγὼ τὸ ἐμόν. ἆρον τὸ σὸν καὶ ὕπαγε.
Stirling Bartholomew
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Re: Jude 3 Aspect

Post by Stirling Bartholomew »

Barry Hofstetter wrote:3 Ἀγαπητοί, πᾶσαν σπουδὴν ποιούμενος γράφειν ὑμῖν περὶ τῆς κοινῆς ἡμῶν σωτηρίας ἀνάγκην ἔσχον γράψαι ὑμῖν παρακαλῶν ἐπαγωνίζεσθαι τῇ ἅπαξ παραδοθείσῃ τοῖς ἁγίοις πίστει. [SBL]

I read the present infinitive of writing in general, writing something non-specific (perhaps because the actual letter he was going to write was inchoate), and the aorist as writing something specific, something that was already formed, as it were, in his mind Yes? No? Maybe?

inchoate vs something specific, something that was already formed

What does that have to do with aspect?

I read the first infinitive as a temporally indefinite argument to the participle ποιούμενος in the clause πᾶσαν σπουδὴν ποιούμενος γράφειν. The goal was unrealized. But the tense aspect of the infinitive contributes almost nothing to the semantic content of the clause.
C. Stirling Bartholomew
MAubrey
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Re: Jude 3 Aspect

Post by MAubrey »

I think the first is imperfective because it is incomplete and cannot be viewed as a bounded event--i.e. more or less what you've described, if I'm understanding your correctly.

As for the perfective that follows, I wonder if there is a relationship between deontic modality (=necessity and ought-ness) and perfective aspect that creates a situation where the event is treated as bounded and the perfective aspect is the preferred. A (extremely) quick search of the NT shows that the verb ἀναγκάζω appears to only take perfective infinitives rather than imperfective infinitives. If anyone wants to search beyond the NT for more data...I'd curious what you'd find.
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Stirling Bartholomew
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Re: Jude 3 Aspect

Post by Stirling Bartholomew »

Stirling Bartholomew wrote:
I read the first infinitive as a temporally indefinite argument to the participle ποιούμενος in the clause πᾶσαν σπουδὴν ποιούμενος γράφειν. The goal was unrealized. .
πᾶσαν σπουδὴν ποιούμενος γράφειν ὑμῖν περὶ is a contextualizer, so in some vague sense it happened in the past but don't go looking at infinitive marking to find that information, it isn't there.
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MAubrey
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Re: Jude 3 Aspect

Post by MAubrey »

Stirling Bartholomew wrote:inchoate vs something specific, something that was already formed

What does that have to do with aspect?
I read Barry as meaning inchoate as unbounded (or in your words, "the goal was unrealized").
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Barry Hofstetter
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Re: Jude 3 Aspect

Post by Barry Hofstetter »

MAubrey wrote:
Stirling Bartholomew wrote:inchoate vs something specific, something that was already formed

What does that have to do with aspect?
I read Barry as meaning inchoate as unbounded (or in your words, "the goal was unrealized").
Yes, that's right. And I'm not saying that the information is encoded in the infinitive so that it must have this meaning in an Aktionsart sense, but that context means that each infinitive was suited to express what the author wished. I like the suggestion that it's actually the use of ἀνάγκην ἔσχον which requires the aorist infinitive, parallel to the frequent use of the future infinitive with μέλλει. But that invites the question: why is it necessary for necessity to require an aorist infinitive?
N.E. Barry Hofstetter, M.A., Th.M.
Ph.D. Student U of FL
Instructor of Latin
Jack M. Barrack Hebrew Academy
καὶ σὺ τὸ σὸν ποιήσεις κἀγὼ τὸ ἐμόν. ἆρον τὸ σὸν καὶ ὕπαγε.
MAubrey
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Re: Jude 3 Aspect

Post by MAubrey »

Barry Hofstetter wrote:I like the suggestion that it's actually the use of ἀνάγκην ἔσχον which requires the aorist infinitive, parallel to the frequent use of the future infinitive with μέλλει. But that invites the question: why is it necessary for necessity to require an aorist infinitive?
That's what I was trying to answer in searching through instances of ἀναγκάζω. I'm thinking that its because necessity creates a situation where the event expressed by the infinitive is pragmatically bounded even though it hasn't yet taken place.
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Stirling Bartholomew
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Re: Jude 3 Aspect

Post by Stirling Bartholomew »

Ok, Barry does speak like a guy from WTS, I remember standing in the book store at Western (Portland OR) looking a two volume work by H. Dooyweerd (magnum opus) and a fellow student standing next to me said: "they read that sort of thing at Westminster" which decoded means the read Van Til Westminster (50 years ago) but when Barry was their probably John Frame. Anyway, these people right letters to each other in Latin. Like the group of classics students at the center of The Secret History by Donna Tartt.

I have no problem with any of the above.
C. Stirling Bartholomew
Barry Hofstetter
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Re: Jude 3 Aspect

Post by Barry Hofstetter »

Stirling Bartholomew wrote:Ok, Barry does speak like a guy from WTS, I remember standing in the book store at Western (Portland OR) looking a two volume work by H. Dooyweerd (magnum opus) and a fellow student standing next to me said: "they read that sort of thing at Westminster" which decoded means the read Van Til Westminster (50 years ago) but when Barry was their probably John Frame. Anyway, these people right letters to each other in Latin. Like the group of classics students at the center of The Secret History by Donna Tartt.

I have no problem with any of the above.
Well, I already had my M.A in Classics before I started at WTS. I fortunately never read a word of Dooyeweerd (although I read handbook summaries to get ready for my comps). I read some Frame on my own, but he was never assigned for a class (he was still at WTS-West at the time, though). Lots of Van Til, though. Quod Latinam optimam esse certissime consentio, ἀλλὰ ἡ Ἑλληνικὴ Ῥωμαίᾳ διάλελκτος καὶ δὴ καὶ ἰσή ἐστι.
N.E. Barry Hofstetter, M.A., Th.M.
Ph.D. Student U of FL
Instructor of Latin
Jack M. Barrack Hebrew Academy
καὶ σὺ τὸ σὸν ποιήσεις κἀγὼ τὸ ἐμόν. ἆρον τὸ σὸν καὶ ὕπαγε.
Stephen Carlson
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Re: Jude 3 Aspect

Post by Stephen Carlson »

I guess that I'm a little to this party. The γράψαι is surely reference to the writing of the Epistle of Jude, an action that this completed and bounded.

As for the imperfective γράφειν, it is hard to say what it is referring to, but it is something incomplete. Perhaps, the author was in the midst of writing another message and and had to put it aside in order to "contend for the faith." (This interpretation is taken seriously by those exegetes would argue that the other, interrupted writing is 2 Peter or Hebrews, but I think it is probably lost to history.) It also also seems possible to that he could be referring to an open-ended series of writings on salvation. It's really hard to tell without additional historical context, a context we sorely lack. At any rate, the basic idea that he'd rather be writing about something positive but felt compelled to pen this missive.
Stephen C. Carlson, Ph.D.
Melbourne, Australia
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