Time out !!

Emory Pitts emory2002 at hotmail.com
Wed May 31 10:38:06 EDT 2000



Harold R. Holmyard III:

You wrote:

Eugene Goetchius, in_The Language of the New Testament_, a beginner's Greek 
grammar:
>
>Like the present participle, the aorist participle does not, properly
>speaking, have "tense"; i.e., it does not necessarily refer to past >time 
>or to any other sort of time. Like the present participle, the >aorist 
>participle indicates as *aspect* of action; more precisely, it >indicates 
>an action conceived as *indefinite*, or as a *simple event*(without 
>reference to its being in progress, or being completed). The >aorist 
>participle may, therefore, refer to any action, whether it be >past, 
>present, or future with respect to the action of the main verb.

---------

This is confusing to a new Greek student, or at least to me. The reason is 
because I am trying to work my way through _Greek Grammar Beyond the Basics_ 
by Daniel B. Wallace.

In his chapter on the Participle, subheading "The Verbal Side of the 
Participle" section a. Time, he writes:

Generally speaking, the tenses behave just as they do in the indicative. The 
only difference is that now the point of reference is the controlling verb, 
not the speaker. Thus, time in participles is relative (or dependent), while 
in the indicative it is absolute (or independent).

The aorist participle, for example, usually denotes "antecedent" time to 
that of the controlling verb. But if the main verb is also aorist, this 
participle "may" indicate contemporaneous time.

Daniel Wallace has a footnote related to this last statement, where he says:



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