Gnomic Aorist / Heb 7:2a
Roe
d.roe at t-online.de
Sun Dec 10 11:28:49 EST 2000
Carl Conrad wrote:
> ... a "gnomic"
> aorist expresses a proverbial "timeless" truth; what happened
> repeatedly in the past but no longer does must fall into the
> category of what Whitehead once called "the immortality of
> past objective fact"
[snip]
> >hWi KAI DEKATHN APO PANTWN EMERISEN ABRAAM
> I don't think EMERISEN in Heb 7:2a is a gnomic aorist at all;
> I think it is simply a factual statement about a past event
> ... a one-time
> happening, a historical event of a particular time and place.
That was my inconclusive "feeling" about it... So, had the author
wanted to express Whitehead's "immortality of past objective fact", what
would he/she have used, the imperfect? Or is it at all possible to
express this with the aorist?
Thanks again!
David
D.W. Roe
Rheinland-Pfalz, Germany
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