[B-Greek] aorist and its temporal reference

Con Campbell concampbell at netspace.net.au
Sat Jan 24 14:01:38 EST 2004


Dear Rolf,

Thank you again for your comments. I am keen to know more about your reasons
for thinking that WAYYIQTOL is imperfective, but that is probably more
appropriate for b-hebrew... In any case, I appreciate your sensitivity to
the issues of Semitic interference/influence (and would throw Aramaic into
the equation). I think a way forward methodologically is to try to discern
the patterns of verbal usage displayed by each NT author (regardless of
their language background); I really do think that discourse analysis has
potential for establishing aspectual values, rather than just being
something we do after assuming aspectual values. E.g. there are clear
patterns of usage in NT narrative for virtually all tense-forms; perhaps it
is a case of working out what aspects are doing what in the text based on
the patterns of the tense-forms. With this approach I am trying to develop
an inductive method, though admit it is difficult to avoid any circularity
with a dead language.

Con

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: Sunday, January 25, 2004 5:06 AM
To: b-greek at lists.ibiblio.org
Subject: RE: [B-Greek] aorist and its temporal reference


Der Con,

Thank you for your comments. I would like to add a few words. In his
chapter 3, Porter shows that in 80-90 % of the cases the LXX renders
Hebrew perfect and consecutive imperfect with aorist. Porter seems to
accept the traditional view of consecutive imperfect. If my analysis
of consecutive imperfect as imperfective and not perfective is
correct, this puts the aorists of the LXX in a completely different
light. In that case, thousands of aorists translate Hebrew
imperfective verbs and not only perfective ones. The consequence of
this would be that when we look to the NT to find the temporal
reference of the aorists, we need not only consider translation
Greek, but also allusions, and even the very language of each writer.
If an NT writer had Hebrew as his mother tongue, was that language
closer to Classical Hebrew, which I ascribe as an aspect language, or
to Mishnaic Hebrew, which all agree is a tense language? And
regardless of the answer, when he read the Classical Hebrew of the
Hebrew Bible and compared it with the LXX and its aorists, in which
way would he use the aorist when he wrote his NT book? So my radical
claim regarding Hebrew verbs may cause the issue to be more
complicated than it was when Porter wrote his thesis.


Best regards

Rolf

Rolf Furuli
University of Oslo




>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
>


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