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

Polycarp66 at aol.com Polycarp66 at aol.com
Thu Mar 13 14:55:39 EST 2003


In a message dated 3/13/2003 2:19:50 PM Eastern Standard Time, eweiss at gte.net 
writes:

> 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?
> 

I think what you have is a situation where the narrator falls out of his 
framework.  If I were to tell the old story about the man sitting in the bar 
. . . well, let's just do it.

A man was [past] in this bar and noticed [past] this other guy who was making 
[imperfect] strange gestures so he walks [historical present] over to him and 
says [historical present], "Hey, why are you waving your arms around like 
that and the other man says [historical present], "I'm chasing away the 
elephants."  The man says [historical present] to him, "There aren't any 
elephants in here." The man replied [past], "I'm doing a good job, aren't I?" 
 It's simply a failure to consistently follow through with the historical 
present.

gfsomsel


More information about the B-Greek mailing list