[B-Greek] English vs Greek Perfect

Suedaleg at aol.com Suedaleg at aol.com
Tue Nov 15 03:32:25 EST 2005


Bert,
 
Concerning the meaning of the perfect tense, I think that what the  
instructors and writers generally ahve shown is that it indicates a look at the  
action's result.  I think you will find this use in the NT most  often.  A common 
example is the perfect participle Ephesians 2:8 where  Paul's emphasis is not on 
the event of salvation but on its result.
 
I tend to think that the English use of the perfect also has the same  
purpose.  The difference between "I came to town" and "I  have come to town" is that 
the second carries the idea of what came as a  result of the coming, the 
speaker's new position in the town while the first  speaks only of the action of 
coming.
 
The difficulty with defining these two concepts is that languages offer  both 
these ways of saying what may seem to be the same thing, and sometimes the  
speaker truly uses them apparently indiscriminately so that exchanging these  
tenses makes no significant difference.  The context, the paragraph  and 
section, can help us determine whether the intended implication is  consistant with 
the "definition" of the tense or whether it is not  significant.
 
Dale Greenlee



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