Meaning of the perfect tense

Mark Wilson emory2oo2 at hotmail.com
Sun Jan 14 21:45:09 EST 2001


Cindy:

You wrote:

------
Action completed before the time of speaking is not the same as omnitemporal
or gnomic or future. Therefore, many scholars suggested that a
temporally-based definition of the perfect did not have sufficient
explanatory power to account for Jn. 5:24.
------

I am not picking up on the temporal dilemma in Jn. 5:24, but I would ask 
this question regarding the Perfect Tense, especially in light of Dana and 
Mantey's definition. Would it not be correct to say that the Perfect Tense 
is related, not to the time of speaking, but to any contextually developed 
deictic center (DC)? Once a DC is developed contextually, the Perfect Tense 
will "now" (as opposed to Dana and Mantey) hold true: a prior situation (to 
the DC) that is being viewed as concurrent with the DC (in fact, being 
viewed as in a State at the time of the DC)?

Perhaps in Jn. 5:24, we could have something very roughly like:

"this one has eternal life and does not come into judgment
why...
(because) this one now (concurrent with DC) resides in a state of life, 
having passed out of death."


Mark Wilson


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