[B-Greek] On the Perfect Tense
waldo slusher
waldoslusher at yahoo.com
Thu Feb 26 13:37:10 EST 2004
An offlist response to me did a better job of
clarifying an issue than I did and I wanted to add his
thought.
PAST Deictic Centers are very common in narrative
literature, as in the Gospels. The default DC in
epistles is very often the time of writing.
However, the portion of the epistle of Galatians that
I objected to was the portion that was dealing with a
past set of events (the giving of the law and the
coming of Christ). The Perfect tense's dual
temporality, as I am suggesting with this historical
observation by Paul, holds true. The anterior event
was the giving of the law. The state obtaining
subsequent to that giving held during the entire
length of time. Had Paul wrote about this "giving of
the law" BEFORE Christ came, then it could indeed be
said of a Perfect tense that the state of the law
acting as a tutor was THEN holding (THEN being the
present time of Paul's writing). Of course this
example is purely hypothetical.
I wonder if you had this objection in mind, Kimmo,
when you referred to deixis? Deixis IN EPISTLES is
generally PRESENT TIME, but not at all in HISTORICAL RECONSTRUCTION.
=====
Waldo Slusher
Calgary, AB
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