[B-Greek] Re.. Imperfect and Aorist Aspects!
Elizabeth Kline
kline_dekooning at earthlink.net
Wed Sep 6 10:30:41 EDT 2006
On Sep 6, 2006, at 6:12 AM, Paul F. Evans wrote:
> I have known (theological and hermeneutical) arguments to be made
> to hang
> on the aspectual weight of the aorist (specifically the idea of non-
> continuous action in the past0. Some of these have been made by
> popular
> preachers, but others have come from reputable scholars.
Examples of this kind of exegesis are legion, not just in pulpit
greek but in commentaries by reputable NT scholars prior to the early
1990s when an inordinate amount of scholarly and not so scholarly
attention was focused on the question of aspect in Ancient Greek.
Aside from correcting blatant abuses like the arguments based on
"punctiliar" and "once for all" readings of the aorist this tsunami
of publications on Greek verb aspect served to hopelessly befuddle
the issue for the student who just wants to read and understand the
language.
RE: Randall Buth's comment on Mounce, it is hard to understand why a
textbook published in the last decade would simply translate the word
AORISTOS. I don't have Mounce. I would assume that he goes on to
treat the topic of verb aspect from the perspective of modern
linguistics. If not then perhaps a discussion like this is beyond the
focus of his book.
When I see an aorist I assume the author did not choose to focus
attention on the aspect of the verb. When I see a pluperfect,
perfect, imperfect, present I assume the author did intend to focus
attention on the aspect of the verb. The level of aspectual
markedness for the pluperfect and perfect is probably greater than
for the imperfect and present. The aorist is not marked at all. The
future is a whole different ball game.
The semantic significance of imperfect would vary greatly according
to how it is used by a particular author in a particular context.
Some authors my use the imperfect repeatedly in narrative contexts so
that markedness diminishes significantly.
I have said too much and too little. The archives are full of
discussions on this back in the mid to late 1990s.
Elizabeth Kline
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