[B-Greek] Re.. Imperfect and Aorist Aspects!
Paul F. Evans
pastorpaul1957 at bellsouth.net
Wed Sep 6 11:39:17 EDT 2006
Elizabeth,
This is helpful... to much or too little notwithstanding. Yes you are
correct about the "once for all" connotations to which I alluded, being
careful not to go beyond the bounds of this list.
What I hear you saying then is that there has been some shift in opinion
with respect to aorist aspect. In that case Machen may well have some of
the "old school" attitudes. He certainly seems to consider the aorist to be
more marked than Mounce or yourself, in my opinion.
Thanks for the discussion.
I do have one further observation... might not the "confusion" or difference
of opinion over the aorist aspect in the indicative be the result of
confounding other uses of the aorist where it stands grammatically with the
present tense precisely because both have aspectual significance (duration
or lack of it); for example infinitives, subjunctives, imperatives, etc. Or
am I over simplifying (over complicating even) things. Maybe I should ask,
what is the (aspectual?) significance of the use of the aorist and present
with respect to such things as infinitives, subjunctives and imperatives?
In other syntactical contexts does the aorist have a "native" aspectual
significance (which some have carried over to the indicative maybe)?
Indeed, I think there are times in the NT when the use of the aorist and
present in some syntactical contexts is very significant (ultimately to
theology and hermeneutics, whereas it may be overreaching to argue for such
significance with respect to indicatives. I have recently been introduced
to the idea of importance of mood as an aspect of nuanced communication in
the NT, which is why all of these questions (cf. Grace in Galatians - Ben
Witherington)
Forgive me for beating this horse when he is down, but I am shifting the
discussion slightly in an effort to more perfectly grasp this. If I am
prolonging this too much just cut me off... I have been cut off before (:-))
Paul F. Evans
Pastor
Wilmington First Pentecostal Holiness Church
http://www.wilmingtonfirst.org
PastorPaul1957 at bellsouth.net
-----Original Message-----
From: Elizabeth Kline [mailto:kline_dekooning at earthlink.net]
Sent: Wednesday, September 06, 2006 10:31 AM
To: pastorpaul1957 at bellsouth.net
Cc: 'B-Greek'
Subject: Re: [B-Greek] Re.. Imperfect and Aorist Aspects!
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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