[B-Greek] Understanding tense of participles?

craig newsgroupstuff at people.net.au
Fri Nov 11 16:44:17 EST 2005


> About the perfect passive participle in Rev 20:4, even though 
> this is  a substantival participle, it still retains its aspectual 
> force. And, since it refers to an action previous to the main verb,
> EDOQH, it translates into English as a pluperfect, "those who had
> been beheaded." But it does not say anything about the appearance
> of the souls/people who had been beheaded, of course. It only
> suggests that the action of "were given judgement" is restricted
> to the group of those who had been beheaded and those who did not
> worship the beast. In this way it functions like a restrictive
> relative embed or clause.
> 
> Yancy Smith
> Y.W.Smith at tcu.edu
> Brite Divinity School
> Texas Christian University

Thanks for the reply Yancy!

I think I agree if I understand you correctly.

I think if one is talking about 'be-heading' it is fitting to talk about
completed action. And it is not talking about what the souls looked like,
but whom the souls belonged to ('the souls of the beheaded ones').

I think also it doesn't necessarily say anything about the time
relationships between when they "were given judgement" or when they "lived
and reigned". I think these are interpretive and contextual questions, not
enforced by technicalities of the Greek. I suspect all the aorist verbs are
not in a time sequence, but sequenced for literary effect. And the 'lived
and reigned' says nothing explicitly about when the living and reigning
began. Again, these are questions of interpretation I think. (The order of
words is interesting, one wonders if it is designed to get climactic or
surprise effect: what thrones? Who is given judgements? Those beheaded!? ..
But I won't get too interpretive here...)

Anyhow, this is the main point I am trying to establish: Do I understand
tense and participles correctly, and am I correct in distinguishing between
what is in the realms of interpretation and what is required by the
Greek...?

--
Craig Johnson
Brisbane, Australia 




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