[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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