Fwd: Meaning of the perfect tense

Mike Sangrey msangrey at BlueFeltHat.org
Fri Jan 12 11:51:36 EST 2001



CWestf5155 at aol.com said:
> Aspect indicates the author's choice of a verb to convey a given
> perspective. 
>  In your given example, it would have been possible to convey the
> meaning of  transfer with an aorist, and it still would not be
> semantically inconsistent  with an existing state.  It would have been
> possible to convey the meaning of  transfer with a present (and that
> would make it structurally connected to the  presents ECEI ZWHN
> AIWNION and EIS KRISIN OUK ERCETAI). 

>  John 5:24
>  AMHN AMHN LEGW hUMIN hOTI hO TON LOGON MOU AKOUWN KAI PISTEUWN TWi
>  PEMYANTI ME ECEI ZWHN AIWNION KAI EIS KRISIN OUK ERCETAI, ALLA
>  *METABEBHKEN* EK TOU QANATOU EIS THN ZWHN.

Cindy,

Allow me to push this a little, so as to clarify my understanding of 
aspect as you understand it.  Perhaps this has been answered and I've
just missed it.

There seems to me to be interesting interplay going on between
the lexical and aspectual parts of METABEBHKEN.  METABAINW is, by
itself, not a point action.  It expresses some sense of movement,
unlike, say, FRASSW or maybe GINWSKW.  In a sense there is a
`lexical aspect' and a `syntactic aspect'.  So...

Which is the more accurate in understanding
    METABEBHKEN EK TOU QANATOU EIS THN ZWHN:

That the people Jesus is referring to
1.  Moved from the state of death to the state of life.
2.  Were in a state of transfer from death to life.
3.  Have arrived at a final state made explicit by EIS... (barely
    different from `1'.)

Note that it is difficult for me to word the question (in English)
and not implicitly refer to tense (time).

And I hope you see the nature of my question.  I want to ATTACH the
nature of aspect to the verb and not to the objects of the prepositions
and yet it seems far more natural to me, both semantically and
theologically to do the later.  Or am I just confused?

Thanks ahead of time.




More information about the B-Greek mailing list