[B-Greek] Periphrastic construction in Jn 3:28
Carl W. Conrad
cwconrad at artsci.wustl.edu
Sun Feb 26 09:15:04 EST 2006
I hesitate to attempt a response to this question, but nobody has yet
attempted a response and my experience has been that when I attempt a
belated response to an unanswered query, it usually evokes -- or is
the occasion for -- alternative responses.
On Feb 24, 2006, at 8:17 PM, RRedden604 at aol.com wrote:
> Considering the nature of the question, I think Robb was hoping
> for more.
> What is the significance of the perfect tense in John 3:28?
> Turner (83)
> sees the abundance of perfects in John intentional. "We may
> ascribe this to the
> peculiar style of the Fourth Gospel, its love of emphasis and
> solemnity, its
> stress on the abiding significance of everything." To say as
> Morris ( 240)
> that John's use of the perfect in John 3:28 "may be meant to
> indicate that
> his permanent character was that of a man of God sent from God
> (1:6) to be the
> forerunner of the Messiah" seems to be squeezing more out of the
> perfect than
> is there!
Yes, I think so -- and it also ignores the adverbial addition.
According to the text John (the B) says, "OUK EIMI hO CRISTOS, ALL'
hOTI APESTALMENOS EIMI EMPROSQEN EKEINOU" I don't think this says
anything more than that John's status is the antecessor of the
Messiah. This is, of course, what John affirms in both Synoptic and
Johannine gospels. I don't really think there's anything about
"permanent character" other than what Whitehead (I think) once called
"the permanence of past objective fact" -- and I doubt that an aorist
APESTALHN EMPROSQEN EKEINOU would indicate more or less than the
periphrastic perfect that meets our eye in this text.
> I would like someone who is much more advanced than I am to point
> out the
> meaning of the perfect tense in the GNT compared with the
> Classical use. Has
> the perfect infringed upon the Aorist domain, and lost some of its
> resultant
> punch by the first century? Have some of the elementary Greek
> grammars done
> more harm than good in defining the perfect tense simply as
> denoting the
> present state resultant upon a past action? (Machen)
Well, I've said before that I think Machen oversimplifies grammatical
accounts as well as offers sentences for translation that are
questionable Greek. I think that the NT Koine perfect tense TENDS to
overlap the aorist in usage (one reason we can so frequently
translate an aorist as an English present passive or French "past
indefinite"), but that it does often underscore the sense of
eventuality as something complete, as in John's account of Jesus'
final TETELESTAI (Jn 19:28) or Mark's formulation of Jesus' prophecy
about the arrival of the K of G: THN BASILEIAN TOU QEOU ELHLUQUIAN EN
DUNAMEI (Mk 9:1) in comparison with the formulation in Matthew (TON
hUION TOU ANQRWPOU ERCOMENON EN THi BASILEIAi AUTOU Mt 16:28) or the
formulation in Luke (THN BASILEIAN TOU QEOU Lk 9:27). It seems to me
that ELHLUQUIAN in Mk 9:1 is about as forceful a word-choice as we
could find. Then there's the text frequently mentioned for a pefect
periphrastic, Eph 2:8 THi GAR CARITI ESTE SESWiSMENOI DIA PISTEWS --
where the emphasis surely lies upon present reality (and would also,
I think, if the form were SESWiSQE).
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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