[B-Greek] Re: Stanley Porter on Greek Grammars
Chet Creider
creider at uwo.ca
Mon Jan 19 09:54:57 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, associated particularly with cognitive linguistics, but also with several other modern approaches, could be regarded in this context as a way to formalize and render testable traditional thinking about the aorist in the indicative.
Fourth, it may interest readers of this group to know that quite independently of Porter a very fine Homeric scholar, Egbert Bakker, has been developing the claim that the aorist in Homer was non-temporal in the indicative. I was only in contact with Bakker briefly a couple of years ago when he gave a seminar at which he put forth those ideas, and I don't know if there is any published work yet. It is very clear that the last word has yet to be said on this fascinating topic. (Please note that I am not suggesting any relationship between the situation in Homeric times and Koine/NT times, nor endorsing either Porter's or Bakker's hypotheses. Both are good scholars, however, and whatever they say/write is worth thinking about.) At present, Rod Decker's book is the most up-to-date and thoughtful treatment of aspect/tense problems in our (NT) ballpark.
Chet Creider
Professor & Co-Director, Linguistics Programme
University of Western Ontario
London, Ontario CANADA
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