[B-Greek] Rewrite of Mounce 2nd ed ch. 20 by Decker
furuli at online.no
furuli at online.no
Fri Jan 23 08:59:59 EST 2004
Dear list-members,
Because of several questions off-list I return to this subject in
order to clarify a few points related to circular reasoning.
When I assessed the temporal reference of the Hebrew verbs, I could
not use the best parameter, namely, the intersection of event time by
reference time in relation to the deictic point. The reason is that
in order to know the mentioned intersection we have to know the
aspect. But because the goal of my investigation was to find the
aspect of each conjugation (WAYYIQTOL, QATAL etc), I could not decide
the aspect before I started, something which would have been circular
reasoning. So instead I had to use the relationship between event
time and the deictic point to find the temporal reference. This works
well in most cases, but because event time may start before the
deictic point and continue after it, in some cases there are
problems. Such reasoning as above is necessary on the part of the
reseacher to make a scrupulous distinction between pragmatic and
semantic factors. But sad to say, I am afraid we cannot avoid some
circularity in the study of a dead language, but we should strive to
reduce it as much as possible.
I will illustrate the problem of circularity by some English examples:
1) Eve has reached the peak
2) Eve is reaching the peak
3)*Eve REACH the peak.
Assuming that the English participle codes for the imperfective
aspect and perfect for the perfective one, we can understand 1) and
2). Because 1) is perfective, the only possible interpretation is
that the event is completed, and RT intersects ET at the "coda" (
this is not strictly true, because "reach the top" is an
instantaneous event, but my words illustrates the case). We know that
2) is imperfective, so we expect to see "a small sequence of
progressive action with details visible" somewhere. The only place
where we can find this is before the "reaching"-event - Eve was on
the point of reaching the peak, and RT intersects ET before the end
(=the punctiliar event of reaching the peak). But what about 3) which
is marked neither for aspect nor for tense, where does RT intersect
ET in this case? As long as we cannot tell the aspect we have no
answer. The same is true with tense, we cannot know by the unmarked
form whether the tense is past or future.
Let us now apply this to Greek.
Heb 4:4 (NIV) says: "And on the seventh day God rested from all his
work" This is a quote from Gen 2:2 where we find a WAYYIQTOL (v. 3
has QATAL). All WAYYIQTOLs are imperfective according to my
analysis, and this means that the state of rest may have continued
after the deictic point - the state was open, to use a metaphor. The
LXX, which very often translates the WAYYIQTOL with the aorist, uses
the aorist of KATAPAUW in this case. The same is true in Hebrew 4:4.
In Psalm 95:8-11 it is argued that God's rest still continued when
the Psalm was written, and in Hebrews 4 the argument seems to be that
the rest still continued, and would even continue into the future.
We therefore have two pieces of information, 1) God rested, or
started to rest when everything had been created, and 2) the rest of
God continued a long time after creation was finished. After
reviewing the context in this way, I would ask: Why do translators
use simple past for KATAPAUW? My point is not to introduce an
alternative translation, but to illuminate the reasons for the
traditional translation. In order to find these reasons I will pose
another question: Are there reasons why we should not render the
clause "And on the seventh day God has rested from all his work"?
I suppose that there are three basic reasons for the traditional
rendering, 1) aorist is believed to code for past tense, 2) aorist is
believed to code for the perfective aspect, and 3) the perfective
aspect is defined as "completed" (or at least "complete"). If our
goal is to find out whether aorist codes for past tense, 1) cannot be
used as a premise. Point 3) holds for the English perfective aspect
but not for the Greek one, so that must be rejected. Then just point
2) remains, and then we come to the area where circularity may enter
the scene. In order to use the relationship between the intersection
of event time by reference time and the deictic point, we must assume
that aorist is perfective, but is this circular reasoning? I cannot
answer that question, before I have analyzed several thousands of the
aorists, but those who work with this should ask themselves the
question. And further, is it circular reasoning to ascribe the
English definition of perfetivity, namely, "completed" to the Greek
counterpart, and on this basis assess whether aorist can have
non-past reference?
So back to my question: Why not translate "And on the seventh day God
has rested from all his work"? That translation would not necessarily
presuppose that the aorist KATAPAUW was imperfective, it would only
presuppose that the English definition "completed" for the perfective
aspect was wrong. States expressed by perfective verbs can just as
well as states expressed by imperfective verbs continue up to the
present moment and even beyond that. It seems to me that Heb 4:4 is
such an example. But the consequence of using perfect in English in
this context is to signal a shift of KATAPAUW from past to present
reference, because the stress (what is made visible) in English
perfect is the present moment and the continuance of the state.
My conclusion is that when we do research on Greek verbs, it is
important to ask questions as those above, in order to reduce
circularity to the minimum.
Best regards
Rolf Furuli
University of Oslo
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