[B-Greek] Rewrite of Mounce 2nd ed ch. 20 by Decker
waldo slusher
waldoslusher at yahoo.com
Fri Jan 23 10:42:47 EST 2004
--- furuli at online.no wrote:
> 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).
I may be misunderstanding you here. Whether the event
takes time to complete or is instantaneous is not
relevant to perfective aspect (or imperfective).
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.
Eve, REACH the peak 3) is Future Tense, since one
cannot command a past action. This is why many see a
close aspectual relationship between the Future and
Aorist in Greek.
>
> 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.
Just a quick clarification on this. The Aorist does
not address issues of whether or not the event
ACTUALLY continued (thought this is normally a Perfect
tense aspect, it is unaddressed in the Aorist). The
Aorist is used to PORTRAY how the author wants his
readers to view it FOR THIS PARTICULAR INSTANCE. The
author may PORTRAY the same event using a different
aspect on another occasion. (Beware to distinguish
Aktionsart from Aspect!)
>
> 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"?
Here again you appear to be departing from the
authors PORTRAYAL; your question (and again I may be
misunderstanding you) seems to be wondering how did
(or does) this rest ACTUALLY take place. The Aorist
does not address this concern. Translating "rest" as a
simple aorist should be done because thats what the
author wrote. You may be trying to answer questions
the author had no intention of resolving.
>
> 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").
Be very careful here. Better to say that the Aorist
codes for the action to be CONCEIVED by the reader (or
PORTRYED by the writer) as perfective, regardless of
how the action ACTUALLY obtained. The author does NOT
want to draw the readers focus to a specific location
on the time line with the Aorist (in fact, it's
purpose is to avoid that). Rather, that is what the
imperfects do!
>
> 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.
However you want to translate this, be sure to convey
the original authors PORTRAYAL of the event. If you
are trying to allow for the Aorist to not imply the
event must be completely over with in the past then
you are on the right track. The author of Hebrews is
simply highlighting that aspect for whatever purpose.
Waldo
=====
Waldo Slusher
Calgary, AB
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