[B-Greek] Re: Stanley Porter on Greek Grammars
Chet Creider
creider at uwo.ca
Mon Jan 19 09:13:28 EST 2004
This thread has come up long before I was ready for it, but I've studied both Fanning and Porter and, as a linguist, there are a few comments I'd like to make, although they are very general and very premature. First
and probably most important, I would like to second everything Rod Decker writes comparing Fanning and Porter. Porter's assessment of Fanning is rather desperate, even ad hominem at times, and I am glad to see that Decker was not taken in by it.
Second, I think it must be realized that the authors of the great grammars of Greek (in English, Smyth and Goodwin) knew perfectly well that what they called tenses were non-temporal in very many instances, particularly outside of the indicative mood. That they worked hard to explain non-past instances of the aorist in the indicative mood was and is a reasonable thing to attempt to do. Of NT Greek grammarians, I find Moulton quite thoughtful, at least in this regard.
Third, Iver Larsen was kind enough to forward a large chunk of earlier
B-Greek discussion on the aorist (and Porter/Fanning/Olsen) and one
item particularly stands out to me as promising: the suggestion by
Randall Buth that this was a clear case where prototype theory was
appropriate. I admit that this has been my thinking almost from the
first time that I encountered this controversy. Prototype thinking
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