[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/




More information about the B-Greek mailing list