[B-Greek] John 13:4-5 present tenses

Eric Weiss eweiss at gte.net
Thu Mar 13 14:19:01 EST 2003


> My "problem" with regarding the "historical present" as the explanation
> (which was my first thought -- and I know that some, including Porter, I
> believe, challenge the concept of the "historical present") is that I
> would have expected DIEZWSEN to be in the present also -- unless the use
> of the aorist participle LABWN would cause the author to use the aorist
> for DIEZWSEN. In 13:12 you'd also expect LEGEI instead of EIPEN AUTOIS.
> But maybe I'm making a sermonological mountain out of a historical
> present molehill!


Closer to the verses at hand, the EIPEN in 13:7 would, I think, be LEGEI 
if this were merely a string of "historical presents" (unless it's 
formulaic to use APOKRIQEIS KAI EIPEN rather than the present forms of 
these verbs), and in 13:8,9 and 10, LEGEI is used (with APEKRIQH -- 
aorist -- interrupting in 13:8b). I would be happy to regard the 
presents in this passage as historical presents except for:
the aorist interruptions of EIPEN in 13:12 and 13:21;
the NA-27 accepted LEGEI (present) in 13:24;
the use of APOKRINETAI (present) in 13:26 (which makes the APEKRIQH in 
13:8b puzzling if this is all a "historical present").
Things like this make me wonder what John uses the various tenses for. 
Style? Whim? Conformity to Hebrew discourse markers as one has sugggested?
Am I seeing too much -- i.e., thinking there are peculiarities here 
where there really aren't?

-- 
Eric S. Weiss
http://home1.gte.net/vzn05pnm/index.htm
S.D.G.




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