[B-Greek] John 1:12-13 - translating the participle
Mark Wilson
emory2oo2 at hotmail.com
Thu Aug 14 16:05:21 EDT 2003
Eric:
You wrote:
-------
>"But as many as received (ELABON - aorist finite) Him, to them he gave
>(EDWKEN - aorist finite) the right to become (GENESQAI - aorist
>infinitive) children of God, even to those who believe (PISTEUOUSIN -
>present participle) in His name, who were born (EGENNHQHSAN - aorist
>finite) not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of
>man, but of God."
>
>As I understand things, the present participle does not have a time sense,
>but rather has a continuous aspect.
--------
Participles often DO have a time sense, as well as aspect. In fact, they
will often behave much
like Finite Indicative verbs. Finite Indicative verbs have time sense in
relation to the
deictic center, often the time of speaking/writing. Or, to say it another
way, the Finite
Indicative verbs have time sense IN RELATION TO their deictic centers.
Whereas the Participle
has time sense IN RELATION TO its deictic center, known also as its
head/controlling verb.
Present Participles will denote action concurrent (present) with their
controlling verbs (their
deictic centers). If the controlling verb is a past tense finite indicative,
then the "present"
participle is "present" IN RELATION TO that PAST deictic center. An Aorist
Participle will
denote antecedent action to a Present controlling verb. When the controlling
verb and
participle are both Aorist, they will often have the same time reference.
(What syntactical
order they are put in may affect their temporal relation.)
The problem is when you think of Present Time as YOUR present time, not the
contextually
developed present time.
You also wrote:
-------
Since all the other verbs in these
>verses are aorist and likely have a past time sense from the author's
>perspective, should PISTEUOUSIN be translated in some manner as a past
>tense (I don't know how you'd best be able to do this in English and
>retain the continuous aspect of the participle)?
--------
PISTEUOUSIN should be translated concurrent with the time of the verb. At
the very moment they received him, they likewise became believers.
You wrote:
-------
Or are these finite
>aorist verbs gnomic(?) aorists, and hence what John wrote isn't restricted
>to being about what happened in the past to those in Jesus' lifetime who
>believed in Him,
------
Why are you assuming that this refers to Jesus' lifetime? If you are trying
to force
a restricted sense on the Aorists, are you not asking whether this is
restricted to those prior to
the writing of this Gospel (a more accurate deictic center, if you ask me)?
My thoughts,
Mark Wilson
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