[B-Greek] aorist and its temporal reference

Con Campbell concampbell at netspace.net.au
Sat Jan 24 12:30:36 EST 2004


Thanks Rolf for that informative post. Just a couple of acknowledgments re
methodology... It seems that Rod Decker excludes translation Greek from his
analysis. See p.95 of his book: 'Of the 518 aorist indicative forms in Mark,
7 occur in translation Greek and were thus not considered.' Also, speaking
of less specific Semitic interference, Porter has a whole chapter on the
issue (Ch.3: ' The Influence of Semitic Languages on Verbal Aspect in the
New Testament').

While you rightly suggest that the methodology needs to be clarified/sorted
out, I think there has been consideration of some of the issues you raised.

Cheers,

Con Campbell

Canberra, Australia

-----Original Message-----
From: b-greek-bounces at lists.ibiblio.org
[mailto:b-greek-bounces at lists.ibiblio.org]On Behalf Of furuli at online.no
Sent: Saturday, January 24, 2004 11:40 PM
To: b-greek at lists.ibiblio.org
Subject: [B-Greek] aorist and its temporal reference


Dear list-members,

In our quest for the temporal reference of aorist we encounter
several problems. In Jude 1.14 the aorist of ERCOMAI has future
reference, but a scrupulous differentiation between semantics and
pragmatics makes us ask: Is future reference an uncancelable part of
the aorist? There is absolutely no evidence for the widespread belief
that Jude quoted the Ethiopic Enoch (Greek translations of Enoch is
younger than manuscripts of Enoch). But the texts of Jude and Enoch
in this verse are so similar that both may be quotations of an older
Hebrew document. The Ethiopic text uses a verb in the perfect, and to
use perfect with future reference is not very common (I have 965
examples (6,9 %) of Hebrew perfect (QATAL) with future reference
though). This may suggest that the possible Hebrew source of both
texts used a perfect (QATAL), and this may be the reason why the
Ethiopic text uses a perfect. So we  must ask whether this is also
the reason why Jude chose aorist.

I will illustrate the case further by examples from the MY and the
LXX. In the Hebrew OT there are 94 examples of the phrase (AD HYYOM
HAZZE (until this day). In all these examples the deictic center (C)
is "this day," and the reference seems to be present (event time
coincides with C).  Of the 94, there are 7 nominal clauses, 1 with
infinitive, 5 with active participles, 1 with WAYYIQTOL+ participle,
41 with WAYYIQTOL (consecutive imperfect), 3 with YIQTOL (imperfect),
and 36 with QATAL (perfect). In all the 94 clauses with the different
verbs we expect the event time to coincide with C.  This is actually
the case, but there are interesting differences which illustrates the
differences between the imperfective (consecutive imperfect) and
perfective (perfect) aspect in an elegant way.

1) Joshua 8:29 (NIV) And they raised a large pile of rocks over it,
which remains to this day.

2) Deut 3:14 (NIV)  it was named after him, so that to this day
Bashan is called Havvoth Jair.)

3) Josh 22:3 (NIV) For a long time now - to this very day - you have
not deserted your brothers

4) Josh 23:9 (NIV) to this day no one has been able to withstand you.

In all the five clauses there is one Hebrew verb pointing to the
adverbial "to this day".  In 1) and 2) there are consecutive
imperfects and in 3) and 4) there are perfects.  In the LXX 1), 2)
and 4) have aorists while 3) has a perfect.

If we look at 3) and 4) the period is seen as a whole, and RT
intersects ET at the coda, which coincides with C. This may also be
the reason for the choice of Greek perfect in 3). But  1) and 2) is
different, because the action of raising a large pile and Jair's
naming ended a long time before the deictic center. This means that
the force of 1) and 2) is resultative; the actions ended a long time
before C, but the resultant stage held at C.  So the imperfective
aspect makes a part of event time (ET may include both action and
state) visible at the beginning of ET, while the perfective aspect
aspect does not make a particular part of ET visible. The resultative
force is illustrated by the English translation which must use two
English verbs (one fientive and one stative) in each verse to
translate one Hebrew (or one Greek verb).  Example 5) below has the
adverbial "until the evening"; it has a Hebrew consecutive imperfect
and a Greek aorist, and the clause can be treated exactly as 1) and
2).

5) Joshua 7:6 (NIV) Then Joshua tore his clothes and fell facedown to
the ground before the ark of the LORD, remaining there till evening.

Returning to the question about aorist and its reference, we may ask:
The resultative force of the aorists of 1), 2) and 5) is that an
uncancellable part of the aorist, or is it only a result of
translation?  And we may ask a similar question regarding the NT? Do
we find so much translational noise and so much noise due to the
Hebrew mother tongue of the writers that it is difficult to find the
semantic meaning of the aorist in the NT? I do not claim that this is
the case, but the questions should be asked, and there should be a
methodology to deal with the matter.

The point I want to stress by this post and my previous one, is that
when we look for examples of the temporal reference of the aorist, we
should take into consideration that  preconceived ideas regarding
aspect and the meaning of aspect may lead us into circular thinking,
and that there may be noise in the texts that can mislead us in our
temporal assessments.


Best regards

Rolf


Rolf Furuli
University of Oslo








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