Mark 1:3 - aktionsart versus aspect?
Steve Godfrey
skooch at earthlink.net
Sat Sep 14 06:45:29 EDT 2002
Dear List,
As a Greek student, I found the aktionsart approach to Greek tenses (as I
understand it, a focus on the nature and time of a given action) sometimes
less than completely helpful, especially for interpreting the Aorist tense.
Rather than trying to make use of the long list of types of aorists under
aktionsart, and then further to develop the ability to discern (divine?)
what kind of aorist is occurring, it often seemed more helpful to think in
terms of aspect (how an action is being portrayed) when considering the
function and significance of the aorist.
My Greek exegesis professor was sympathetic to aspect theory (as I
understand it, a focus on how an author wants to portray an action) and
suggested a framework for making practical use of aspect theory in exegesis.
He thought that in many cases, the significance of the Aorist was in its
aspect, which would often be to portray an action in its entirety. He
described the Aorist as the E.F. Hutton of the Greek tenses: the quiet
tense.
This kind of approach seems helpful to me in thinking about reasons why an
aorist imperative would precede a present imperative in this particular
example. Perhaps what we are to do is to prepare a way for the Lord, and
how we are to do it is by making straight paths from the exile we find
ourselves in to the place of promise God has for us (drawing on the grammar
as well as the historical context of Isaiah).
It seems though that much of the work being done on aspect theory is still
very theoretical. So is all of this just replacing one form of divination
with another?
This leads then to several questions which may be of interest for
discussion. First, would we agree that aktionsart works even less well with
the Hebrew verbal system than the Greek one, and that aspect may be more
prominent in Hebrew than in Greek? Second, what are the strongest arguments
and evidences for and against aspect theory in summary form? Third, what
resources have you found most helpful in evaluating aktionsart versus aspect
as either contrasting or complementary approaches for exegesis of the Greek
NT?
Thanks,
Steve Godfrey
Waukesha, Wisconsin
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