Re. The aorist!

Theodore H. Mann thmann at juno.com
Mon Nov 23 14:38:25 EST 1998


Actually, I thought the aorist was "indefinite," meaning that it "states
only the fact of the action without specifying its duration" (Mounce:
BBG).

Theodore "Ted" H. Mann
thmann at juno.com

>At 7:47 AM -0500 11/23/98, Paul F. Evans wrote:
>> List,
>>  
>> Help me out here.  I am really afraid to ask this question for fear 
>of 
>> striking up a re-ignition of the great aspect discussion of '96! 
>> However, I am interested in an opinion.
>>  
>> In taking basic first year Greek I was told that the aorist was a 
>> punctilliar (spelled correctly?) tense signifying past action 
>completed 
>> in the past.  However, after many years of NT study (I should know 
>more), 
>> I have come across many grammars that bill the aorist as the generic 
>
>> tense which says nothing particular about the action it describes.  
>The 
>> theory seems to be that if the writer wished to say something 
>special 
>> about the action of a verb he would choose a tense other than the 
>aorist. 
>> Obviously I have discovered that the aorist is only a past tense in 
>the 
>> indicative or imperative moods. If the aorist is a a  punctilliar 
>tense, 
>> describing past completed action, it would be little different from 
>the 
>> prefect, because obviously done is done and the results would 
>persist.
>>  
>> My question is whether the aorist is a sort of generic tense which 
>> describes nothing special about the action of the verb, and whether 
>it is 
>> true that a writer would choose another tense when he wanted to 
>specify 
>> something specific in that sense.
>>  
>> If this is a dumb question forgive me!  Only,  I come across a 
>> significant body of literature that makes much about the use of the 
>
>> aorist for its theology and others who discount such (I am 
>interested 
>> only in discussing the nature of the aorist here).

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