[B-Greek] historical present tense in romans

bitan buth ybitan at mscc.huji.ac.il
Sun Oct 9 17:52:52 EDT 2005


>> AS THOUGH they were in-progress also means
>> AS THOUGH they were present. 
>> (i.e., the historic present momentarily changes the
>> deictic center. That is
>> what gives it its rhetorical effect, beyond semantic
>> aspect or semantic
>> tense.)

Mishoe EGRAPSEN
>To equate Aspect (in-progress) with Tense (present) is
>a bit strange to my way of thinking (am I
>misunderstanding you?), but this I think is the
>default starting position of some. It is my contention
>that such an assumption is linguistically
>indefensible. 
>
>Take for example Porter. He began with this starting
>point (although I doubt he ever really held it) and
>abandoned the temporal nature of the Greek verbal
>system altogether!! But I think he was consistent in
>doing so IF his starting point were legitimate (there
>are too many exceptions to the "rules")

Trust me, I do not equate Aspect with Tense. But ENESTWS XRONOS
ORISTIKH EGKLISIS (present time, indicative mood) does indeed 
carry tense -- not because of its ancient name or its modern 
name, but because of its semantic signification.

First, for perspective, the majority of Greek scholars do not 
embrace a tenseless indicative system. They defend tense in the 
Greek indicatives. Some of them are linguists.
I think they are right. Last month I wrote a short email here 
pointing out that most of the 'historic present's occur in contexts
where they do not naturally want or need 'imperfective' marking. 
They encode events that are complete before the next event. 
That means that are are being used for a special function, not for 
simple semantic marking. These special cases would negate an 
'aspect' theory as much as a 'tense' theory. In truth they simply 
show that Greek can use forms 'against' their semantic significance. 
They are "exceptions" that do not invalidate the norms. They don't 
invalidate tense any more than they invalidate aspect. 

 ERRWSO
Randall Buth


Randall Buth, PhD
Biblical Language Center
www.biblicalulpan.org
c/o margbuth at gmail.com
also, Director, Biblical Studies in Israel
under Rothberg International School,
Hebrew University
ybitan at mscc.huji.ac.il





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