two models?

Steven Lo Vullo slovullo at mac.com
Fri Oct 25 22:42:27 EDT 2002


Clay:

I honestly do not mean to add gasoline to the fire, but I feel I must 
offer a corrective--or at least a counterbalance--to your comments 
below. I do this because there are no doubt many second-year Greek 
students out there who are using GGBB and need to be confident that 
they are not being led down the road to irretrievable ruin. In 
addition, I think it is a matter of simple fairness to accurately 
represent the views of a man who has worked very hard to help students 
make sense of NT Greek.

> Here is:  THE MAIN ISSUE
>
> The hybrid categories that combine morpho-syntactic elements with 
> semantic
> elements are completely misleading. For example take the "Gnomic 
> Aorist"
>
>
> Wallace:
>
> ******************************
> Gnomic Aorist
>
> A.  Definition
>
> The aorist indicative is occasionally used to present a timeless,
> general fact. When it does so, it does not refer to a particular event
> that did happen, but to a generic event that does happen. Normally, it
> is translated like a simple present tense. This usage is quite rare in
> the NT.
> ******************************
>
> The semantic notion of timelessness is not a feature of the Aorist 
> form.
> Timelessness is not communicated to the reader/listener by verb 
> inflection.
> It is completely misleading to talk about a "Gnomic Aorist" in the 
> same way
> that it would be to talk about Marxist bananas, since bananas are not
> capable of holding political ideologies. When NT Greek students discuss
> categories like this they are talking about "nothing at all" since the
> "Gnomic Aorist" is a non-existent animal.

I think the above snippet was taken out of context and a conclusion was 
drawn that was never intended by the author. Note some of Wallace's 
earlier comments on the aorist tense (emphasis in caps mine):

"...often the choice of a tense is made for a speaker by the action he 
is describing. At times the tense chosen by the speaker is the *only* 
one he could have used to portray the idea. Three major factors 
determine this: lexical meaning of the verb (e.g., whether the verb 
stem indicates a terminal or punctual act, a state, etc.), contextual 
factors, and other grammatical features (e.g., mood, voice, 
transitiveness, etc). This is the difference between aspect and 
Aktionsart: Aspect is the basic meaning of the tense, unaffected by 
considerations in a given utterance, while Aktionsart is THE MEANING OF 
THE TENSE AS USED BY AN AUTHOR IN A PARTICULAR UTTERENCE, AFFECTED AS 
IT WERE BY OTHER FEATURES OF THE LANGUAGE.

"The use of the aorist in any given situation DEPENDS, THEN, ON ITS 
COMBINATION WITH OTHER LINGUISTIC FEATURES" (p. 556).


"There are two errors to avoid in treating the aorist: saying too 
little and saying too much.

"First, some have *said too little* by assuming that nothing more than 
the unaffected meaning can ever be seen when the aorist is used. This 
view fails to recognize that the aorist tense (like other tenses) DOES 
NOT EXIST IN A VACUUM. Categories of usage are legitimate because THE 
TENSES COMBINE WITH OTHER LINGUISTIC FEATURES TO FORM VARIOUS FIELDS OF 
MEANING.

"Second, many NT students see a particular category of usage 
(Aktionsart) as underlying the entire tense usage (aspect). This is the 
error of *saying too much*. Statements such as 'the aorist means 
once-for-all action' are of this sort. It is true that the aorist may, 
under certain circumstances, describe an event that is, IN REALITY, 
momentary. But we run into danger when we say that this is the aorist’s 
unaffected meaning, for then we force it on the text in an artificial 
way. We then tend to ignore such aorists that disprove our view (and 
they can be found in every chapter of the NT) and proclaim loudly the 
'once-for-all' aorists when they suit us" (p. 557).

Whatever else one may think of the above statements, it should be clear 
that Wallace DOES NOT and COULD NOT think or mean that "timelessness is 
... a FEATURE of the Aorist form," or that it is "communicated to the 
reader/listener by verb inflection," as you say above. This should be 
clear even from the quote you proffer above. He does not say the aorist 
tense intrinsically contains the idea of timelessness; rather he says 
that the aorist indicative is occasionally USED to PRESENT a timeless, 
general fact. These comments must be understood in conjunction with his 
earlier general discussion of the aorist (and his even earlier 
discussion of tense).

Finally, it should be said that the kinds of clarifications and caveats 
I pointed out above are not rare; the book is replete with them. You 
said in an earlier post that you "suspected" that Wallace "knew 
better." There is no reason to "suspect"; he makes the point explicitly 
over and over.
============

Steven R. Lo Vullo
Madison, WI



More information about the B-Greek mailing list