[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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