[B-Greek] 1 Cor 14:5: present infinitive aspect

Dave Smith (REL110, 211,212) rel21x at charter.net
Sun May 14 19:21:37 EDT 2006


Folks,

Let me add one other piece of information that we all know, but have somehow
overlooked. Both infinitives and participles are substantives in grammar and
nature, and being so, "both are indefinite in their bearing upon the limits
of action..." (Dana and Mantey, 222). The infinitive in I Corinthians 14:5
cannot dictate the action. The only action that can even be considered
continuous, in the sense of on-going, would be the wishing, not the
speaking. I actually think the reason Paul is using so many presents in this
whole section is that the condition, or problem, was on-going, as he wrote.
We also need to be careful in Corinthians, realizing that Paul sometimes
quotes his opponents and sometimes speaks tongue-in-cheek. Anyway, as one
post has already mentioned, the actually wish is that they would all
prophesy, not all speak in tongues, and we know that the prophets were only
to speak one at a time.

Dave Smith
Hudson, NC

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Iver Larsen" <iver at larsen.dk>
To: "b-greek" <b-greek at lists.ibiblio.org>
Sent: Sunday, May 14, 2006 05:36
Subject: Re: [B-Greek] 1 Cor 14:5: present infinitive aspect


> > 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
>
> ---
> B-Greek home page: http://metalab.unc.edu/bgreek
> B-Greek mailing list
> B-Greek at lists.ibiblio.org
> http://lists.ibiblio.org/mailman/listinfo/b-greek
>



More information about the B-Greek mailing list