Adverbial aorist participles

Jon Robertson jmrober at pop6.ibm.net
Thu Oct 1 06:25:13 EDT 1998


Carl,
Yes, some examples would be in order.  I was just being lazy!  There 
are actually a number in the book of Acts.  To name just a couple:

Acts 23:35 - DIAKOUSOMAI SOU,  EFH, hOTAN KAI hOI KATHGOROI SOU 
PARAGENWNTAI  KELEYSAS EN TWI PRAITWRIWI TOU hHRWIDOU FYLASSESQAI 
AUTON
	The question here is the temporal relation between when the governor 
"said" (EFH) what is reported and when he commanded (KELEUSAS) Paul 
to be kept in the Praetorium.  While it is possible he did the 
ordering first and then spoke to Paul, before he was led away, it 
seems much more natural to take it in the opposite order, i.e. - he 
spoke to Paul and then ordered him to be taken to the Praetorium. 
This would mean that the action of the aorist participle took place 
after the action of the main verb.  Simultaneous action seems 
impossible here.

Acts 25:13 - AGRIPPAS hO BASILEUS KAI BERNIKH KATHNTHSAN EIS 
KAISAREIAN ASPASAMENOI TON FHSTON
	In spite of several attempts I have come across, it seems to me 
nearly impossible to understand that Agrippa and Berenice greeted 
Festus before they came to Caesarea.  Of course, sometimes the 
action of an aorist participle can take place at the same time as 
the main verb, explaining how the action of the main verb took place 
(something like "he did (finite verb) this by doing (aorist 
participle) this"), but this seems to really stretch the point here - 
they arrived at Caesarea by greeting Festus??  Or that they 
arrived simultaneously with greeting?  Well, maybe...  Again, the 
aorist of subsequent action, if allowed, would give  wonderful sense 
- Agrippa and Berenice arrived at Caesarea and (then) greeted Festus.

Other examples to glance at are Acts 12:25 (where some translations 
make  the preposition EIS mean "from" to make sense out of an 
aorist participle of antecedant action); 16:6,7; 23:27 (where we 
could then take the tribune's words to mean exactly what is 
previously described, rather than a "white lie"), and Luke 1:9.  Acts 
17:26 is also often cited, but theological concerns make it more 
difficult to decide what is in mind.  In all of these narratives, the 
syntactical order seems to establish the narrative order.   Porter, 
in his Verbal Aspect, pp. 385-6 also cites a number of possible 
extra-biblical cases.  I came up with a couple of classical instances 
he does not mention, but I don't have them at hand.  (My work was 
done in Chicago, I now am in Quito Ecuador and my somewhat "over 
zealous" wife seems to have packed it in the boxes to stay...)  
Robertson's treatment (in the BIG grammar) of the issue is (and I say 
it with great reverence) quite cavalier and does not really answer 
the issues, in my opinion (HTIB="humble though it be").  I would love 
to hear a little more feedback on this!!  Another interesting point 
is that in all the possible cases the aorist participle comes after 
the main verb (thus possibly setting up the relation between 
syntactical order and narrative order).  Also, in my study of aorist 
participles in Acts (which conveniently I cannot produce at the 
moment), I was surprised to find that aorists of contemporaneous 
action actually outnumbered the aorists of antecedent action.  Of 
course, all of this has to do with the larger picture of verbal 
aspect and how far the greek tenses grammaticalize (or not) temporal 
ideas.  I would prefer not to enter into that now and stay on the 
issue of the meaning of these passages.

Jon Robertson
jmrober at ibm.net



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