[B-Greek] Re.. Imperfect and Aorist Aspects!
Paul F. Evans
pastorpaul1957 at bellsouth.net
Tue Sep 5 11:09:35 EDT 2006
List,
I have what I am confident is an elementary question, but which refuses to
resolve itself in my mind. I lay awake at night thinking about these things.
I am currently working my way through Mounce’s Basics of Biblical Greek. I
originally learned NT Greek using the Machen text. The approaches are so
different and I like aspects of both. I like Mounce’s “identify the pattern
approach as compared to Machen’s memorize every paradigm approach!
Machen describes the imperfect tense as past, continuous action, and the
aorist as normally past, punctiliar action. Mounce describes the imperfect
as normally past, continuous action, and the aorist as normally past,
undefined action (of course I am referring to the indicative). My question
is what does Mounce know that the rest of us don’t or some of us don’t, that
he describes the aspect of the aorist as undefined? Clearly Machen favor a
defined aspect to the Aorist indicative. What is the exact definition of
undefined… I don’t really remember seeing a good explanation of this in
Mounce.
Mounce also describes the present indicative as continuous and undefined,
and I think that is a clue to what he means, but I would like to hear from
some of the list members.
Paul F. Evans
Pastor
Wilmington First Pentecostal Holiness Church
HYPERLINK "http://www.wilmingtonfirst.org/"http://www.wilmingtonfirst.org
HYPERLINK "mailto:PastorPaul1957 at highstream.net"PastorPaul1957 at bellsouth.net
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