[B-Greek] MH PEPISTEUKEN in John 3:18
Carl W. Conrad
cwconrad at ioa.com
Tue Sep 20 16:50:26 EDT 2005
You're digging pretty far back in the archives -- to 1998. I
personally think this exegesis, whether Blackwelder's or someone
else's, is leaning too heavily on the aspectual force of these verbs
PISTEUWN, PEPISTEUKEN, etc. to read meanings into the text that are
not necessarily present.
On Sep 20, 2005, at 1:37 PM, Marty Cauley wrote:
> Hey everyone
>
> In consulting arichives for PEPISTEUKEN in John 3:18, I found a
> discussion
> (http://www.ibiblio.org/bgreek/test-archives/html4/1998-03/24055.html)
> stimulated by Blackwelder's comments, with these braketted insertions:
> -----------------
> "The one who continues trusting [PISTEUWN, pres. part.] in him
> is not condemned; the one who does not continue trusting [same
> construction
> but with negative particle] is already condemned [KRISIN, perf.
> pass., is in
> a
> state of condemnation] because he has not believed with abiding
> results
> [PEPISTEUKEN, perf. tense, indicating permanent attitude of
> unbelief] in the
> name of the only Son of God."
> -----------------
>
> I do not know if the brakets are original with Blackwelder in the
> above, or
> added by the poster. I assume the latter. But it appears to be rather
> inconsistent in its intent in defining the perfect in this verse as,
> "indicating permanent attitude of unbelief." This statement would
> seem to
> indicate that the judment associated with the perfect in v. 18 is
> due to the
> fact that one never believed rather than failed to continue to
> believe. My
> inquirey is regarding how valid is the insert in the above archive
> as a
> grammatical option that the perfect in this verse indicates a
> "permanent
> attitude of unbelief"?
>
> If MH PISTEUW could be equivelent to APISTEW, then it would appear
> that one
> grammatical option would be that those who disbelieved, and as a
> result
> continued to disbelieve, would be condemned and a "permanent
> attitude of
> unbelief" may be in view.
>
>
> So my questions regarding the perfect in Jn 3:18 are:
>
> (1) Could MH PEPISTEUKEN be grammatically equivilent to an alpha
> privative +
> PEPISTEUKEN?
I think that you mean "semantically" equivalent; it might well be,
but the fact is that APISTEW is not a Johannine word.
> (2) Does APISTEW have a perfect form ?
Not in the GNT, although it's easy enough to conceive an HPISTHKA.
> (3) For sake of curosity, why is the from APISTEW rather than
> APISTEUW?
I think the reason would be that PISTEUW is a primary verb taken
directly from the nominal root/stem PISTEf-, while APISTEW is a
secondary form derived from the noun adjective APISTOS.
> (4) Also, for classificaiton purposes, Wallace says that the
> perfect of
> stative would be an "Aoristic Perfect and Perfect with Present
> Force" (pp.
> 579-580). Would this classification be generally applicable to the
> perfect
> of PISTEUW? (I would think so in Jn 11:27?)
The question in my mind would be whether we ought to consider this
PEPISTEUKEN as a stative at all, especially as it is negatived by MH
and is hypothetical. I can conceive of a stative OU PEPISTEUKEN --
theoretically -- although even that seems somewhat odd: "he does not
stand in a state of belief" ??? I really think that there's little
difference in John 3:18 between PEPISTEUKEN and EPISTEUSEN. While
KEKRITAI does seem to have stative force ("he stands condemned"), I
don't think that PEPISTEUKEN does; rather I think it simply has the
force of an aorist EPISTEUSEN: "he stands condemned on grounds that
he didn't believe."
Moreover, I really think that too much is being read into a durative
aspect of these present participles (PISTEUWN, MH PISTEUWN); they
are, after all, alternative formulations of a present general
condition = hOSTIS AN PISTEUHi OU KRINETAI, hOSTIS D' AN MH PISTEUHi
HDH KEKRITAI.
Text: hO PISTEUWN EIS AUTON OU KRINETAI; hO DE MH PISTEUWN HDH
KEKRITAI, hOTI MH PEPISTEUKEN EIS TO ONOMA TOU MONOGENOUS hUIOU TOU
QEOU.
Carl W. Conrad
Department of Classics, Washington University (Emeritus)
1989 Grindstaff Road/Burnsville, NC 28714/(828) 675-4243
cwconrad2 at mac.com
WWW: http://www.ioa.com/~cwconrad/
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