[B-Greek] Revelation 11:3 (Verb Tense)
George F Somsel
gfsomsel at juno.com
Mon Nov 28 09:17:59 EST 2005
On Mon, 28 Nov 2005 07:24:22 -0600 Juan Stam <juanstam at racsa.co.cr>
writes:
>
> Greetings from Costa Rica!
>
> Los tiempos verbales in Rev 11 seem chaotic, switching constantly
> with no
> apparent reason I can find. 11:3 is futuro but 4-6 switches to past,
> the
> 11:7 back to future, 11:8-10b in present, 11:10c in future,
> 11:10d-14a om
> aorist and 11:14b in present. (Hope I recorded these correctly; at
> any rate,
> there seems to be no consistency or logic in the tenses)
>
> Or can someone explain all those shifts?
> If not, the future tense of 11:3 tells us little or nothing about
> the
> narrative of 11:3-13, that I can discover.
>
> Juan Stam, Costa Rica
____________
It would seem to me that vv. 4 ff constitute a kind of parenthesis in
which a description of the nature of the two witnesses is given (thus in
the present). The narrative resumes in v. 7 with the future more
probable statement that when they have completed (aor subj) their
testimony the beast "will conduct war against them and will conquer"
(future) them. The shift in tenses is thus due to the descriptive nature
of the parenthetical material.
george
gfsomsel
___________
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