[B-Greek] Romans 4:1

Carl W. Conrad cwconrad at artsci.wustl.edu
Fri Sep 12 11:55:35 EDT 2003


At 10:08 AM -0500 9/12/03, David Bielby wrote:
>TI OUN EROUMEN hEURHKENAI ABRAAM...
>
>hEURHKENAI is a Perfect Active Infinitive.  Does the translation "What shall
>we say...that Abraham discovered and continues to discover to this day"
>accurately reflect the completed and continuing sense of the perfect here?

I don't really think so; if you wanted to say that the results of the
discovery continue to this day, that would be more appropriate to the
perfect tense, but when you say "and continues to discover to this day,"
you're moving away from the stative to the imperfective notion. An
imperfect ABRAAM hEUREN TAUTA would mean "This is what Abraham has been
discovering (and continues to discover), and in the indirect-discourse
construction with the infinitive that would become: TI OUN EROUMEN
hEURISKEIN ABRAAM ...
-- 

Carl W. Conrad
Department of Classics, Washington University (Emeritus)
1989 Grindstaff Road/Burnsville, NC 28714/(828) 675-4243
cwconrad at artsci.wustl.edu
WWW: http://www.ioa.com/~cwconrad/



More information about the B-Greek mailing list