Is TEMPUS A Part of Greek Grammar?

Jonathan Robie jwrobie at mindspring.com
Sun Sep 26 23:07:25 EDT 1999


At 04:35 PM 9/26/99 -0400, Cwinbery at aol.com wrote:

>In Rev. 5:10 there is a textual problem in that Ms Alexandrinus and some
>others have the present (omit the S). Alexandrinus is considered to be a very
>good ms in Rev. (better than Sinaiticus by some scholars). Even Westcott and
>Hort agreed with Alex. here.

The UBS 3rd has the future (with the S), and only a "C" confidence rating. 
In Metzger's Textual Commentary, he upgrades this to a "A" confidence 
rating, arguing that Alexandrinus "mistakenly" reads BASILEUOUSIN in Rev 
20:6 - I assume this means that it is alone or almost alone in reading 
BASILEUOUSIN rather than BASILEUSOUSIN in that case, and this gives an 
example where the future is mistakenly changed to a present with future 
meaning, so if it happened once, maybe this is likely to happen again.

At any rate, I don't see any real difference between BASILEUSOUSIN 
and  BASILEUOUSIN with future meaning. Both means of expressing the future 
seem fairly common in Koine (as is MELLW + infinitive), and I could easily 
imagine people changing in either direction. Since the change does not 
affect meaning, it doesn't seem particularly important for interpreting the 
verse.

Jonathan

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Jonathan 
Robie 
jwrobie at mindspring.com

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