[B-Greek] 1 Cor 14:5: present infinitive aspect
Iver Larsen
iver at larsen.dk
Sun May 14 05:36:57 EDT 2006
> Along the lines of Iver's suggestion, Scott's and my friend was in fact given all
> the occurrences in the New Testament and the LXX of the present infinitive
> LALEIN to look up and see if they require or expect the translation "to speak
> CONTINUALLY." This apparently was not convincing.
>
> So, to be even more specific, this is what Scott's and my friend wrote (on
> another forum) that caused us both to question him on his insistence that
> LALEIN in 1 Cor 14:5 means to continually speak in tongues 24/7. I only quote
> it all to show that this "interpretation" is also being laid at the feet of Greek Profs
> Jay and Blaiklock:
>
>> 1 Cor 14:5 -- "QELW DE PANTAS hUMAS LALEIN GKWSSAIS" -- "I wish, I
>> want, I desire ALL of you to speak CONTINUALLY in tongues."
>> "I want" -- Behind Paul's words is the Holy Spirit. PAUL'S DESIRE IS GOD'S
>> DESIRE TOO.
>> "all of you" -- every Xtian without exception, because 1 Cor is addressed to
>> "ALL that in EVERY place call upon the name of Jesus Christ our Lord" (1:2)
>> "CONTINUALLY" -- because LALEIN is a present infinitive, which, says Dr.
>> Eric G. Jay in his "NT Greek" (p.101) "The present infinitive is used of an
>> action which is prolonged or repeated ... IT IS ONLY EMPLOYED WHEN
>> ATTENTION IS BEING DRAWN TO THE PROLONGING OR REPETITION OF
>> THE ACTION."
>> He cites "hUPAGW hALIEUEIN" -- "I'm going back to the fishing trade" (as
>> opposed to a nice afternoon's one-off fishing) by Peter in John 21:3. And one
>> sleepless night I discovered my old Bible College lecturer Prof E. M. Blaiklock
>> made the same point in "The Bible and I" p.124 where he translates John the
>> Baptist's "He must increase, I must decrease" as "He must CONTINUALLY
>> INCREASE, I must CONTINUALLY DECREASE."
But isn't your friend then guilty of misquoting Dr. Eric Jay?
The quote specifically mentions two of the subsets of the imperfective aspect:
1. Prolonging (continuous)
2. Iterative (repeated)
In the case of 1 Cor 14:5, the intended aspect is clearly iterative, not continuous, and that agrees with Dr. Jay's
general statement.
I mentioned the third one which I called general (I can see from Dave Smith that others call it customary, unless
customary is intended to cover both general and iterative, like going back to fishing, not 24/7, but repeatedly. I don't
have a copy of Dana and Mantey.)
The quote from Blaiklock indicates that we really need to look at both grammatical aspect and lexical aspect. Certain
lexical items lend themselves naturally to be used with one aspect rather than another. Some words stand for a process
like "increase", and those are naturally used with an imperfective aspect, at least if the process is in focus. Whether
the increase is in the form of a gradual slope or individual steps doesn't really matter. If you study the usage of the
word AUXANW (grow, increase), you will notice that it normally occurs in the imperfective aspect, either present or
imperfect "tense". When it is used in the aorist, the focus is on the growth event as a whole. One helpful way of
looking at the perfective versus imperfective aspect is to note that with the perfective aspect the event is generally
looked at from the outside as a whole unit. In the imperfective aspect, it is as if you are standing inside together
with the actor. Your focus is on the continued, iterative or timeless/general aspect of the event rather than the
completed event.
To give a brief comment to Eddie, I am not saying that the aorist aspect is always best explained as a one-time event. I
said that in the case of this particular verb in the aorist infinitive, that is a reasonable description. I suggest you
take the time to look up the Greek data yourself.
As the imperfective aspect can be described as normally employing one of the following:
1. Continuous aspect
2. Iterative aspect
3. General aspect (used in general, timeless statements)
so the perfective aspect can be differentiated into:
1. Non-continuous
2. Non-iterative
3. Specific
The first two of these (or maybe all three) have traditionally been called punctiliar in Greek grammar, and the
imperfective durative, but I prefer to use words that are used more generally in modern descriptive linguistics.
Iver Larsen
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