[B-Greek] clarification

waldo slusher waldoslusher at yahoo.com
Wed Jan 28 09:25:00 EST 2004


Jody:

Rolf has done a very excellent job with his reply. I
want to add something that I am working on that may
also help you gain a better understanding on Deictic
Time/Center. I am only tentatively suggesting this.

Rolf opens with:

> 
> We need to differentiate between three different
> kinds of time,
> "deictic time", and the two members of the group
> "non-deictic time",
> namely "event time" and "reference time".
> We use deictic time when an event is seen in
> relation to the deictic
> center (C) (a vantage point which often is speech
> time). Events
> having past tense come before C, those having 
> present tense (or
> present reference) occur contemporaneously with C,
> and events having
> future tense occur after C   Tense represents
> deictic time.


The example I want to use is the controversial passage
in Jude, which reads in English:

1:14 Now Enoch, the seventh in descent beginning with
Adam, even prophesied of them, saying, "Look! The Lord
is coming (Aorist tense) with thousands and thousands
of his holy ones, 1:15 to execute judgment on all, and
to convict every person of all their thoroughly
ungodly deeds that they have committed..."

The Aorist tense of "coming" (ERCOMAI) here has caused
some to question the semantic temporal nature of the
Aorist in general. 

What I would like to suggest is that the use of the
Aorist tense here is a grammatical signal (by the
author) to indicate the DC, that is, since the Aorist
Tense is anterior to the DC, the DC would be
chronologically or logically AFTER the coming of the
Lord. What the author is doing by using the Aorist
tense here is shifting our focus (what part he wants
to make visible) away from the actual coming of the
Lord to the AFTERMATH of his coming...to judge and
convict. This is not to say that the coming is
unimportant, but rather that the coming itself, in
this particular portrayal of the end time events, is
not the focus....the subsequent judgment is where the
author wants his readers to focus. He is emphasizing
the judgment to come on certain groups of people. (In
this literary piece, the coming is almost a footnote.)

I welcome any and all critique.

=====
Waldo Slusher
Calgary, AB

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