[B-Greek] Fwd: Fwd: Imperfect and Aorist Aspects

Dr. Don Wilkins drdwilkins at sbcglobal.net
Fri Sep 8 20:24:13 EDT 2006


Cindy's description of her own discipline is undoubtedly accurate. I  
hope it is helpful to point out that the same approach has also been  
used by traditional grammarians since the days of Adolf Deissmann  
(early 1900's), who established that NT Greek was koine, similar to  
secular prose papyri of the period. I'm sure Cindy's reference to  
burlesque Greek is hyperbolic; the writer's option is very limited  
due to meter and the poetic vocabulary differs as well, but as she  
indicates, it's not a difference between "inspired" and non-inspired.  
That was the point Deissmann made. So IMO the differences linguists  
have with traditionalists (please forgive my generalizations) are  
matters of theory and philosophy, rather than the material covered or  
the approach.

Don Wilkins

On Sep 8, 2006, at 10:23 AM, cwestf5155 at aol.com wrote:

>
>  -----Original Message-----
>  From: cwestf5155 at aol.com
>  To: mwinzer at pap.com.au
>  Sent: Fri, 8 Sep 2006 11:05 AM
>  Subject: Re: [B-Greek] Fwd: Imperfect and Aorist Aspects
>
>   OK Matthew,
>
>  Aspect is regarded as the author's choice among tense options to  
> depict an action in a certain way--the choice is motivated by the  
> meaning that the author wishes to convey and the status of the  
> "information" rather than the nature of the action as it occured in  
> space and time.
>
>  Now, I'm not sure by "tense" if you mean the label or the  
> traditional association of tense with time. Aspect associated with  
> tense is based on formal features in the same way that the  
> traditional association of tense with time. We still call it  
> "tense" and therefore don't equate the label tense with a temporal  
> element
>
>  The linguistic-based study of the New Testament treats the  
> language the same as one would treat non-inspired literature such  
> as Iraeneus, Josephus, contemporary writers apart from the Jewish  
> and Christian communities, and even more to the point, the papyrii-- 
> meaning that the language is read and understood synchronically in  
> the context of hellenistic communication--but saying that, it  
> understands intertextuality within the faith communities, dialects,  
> religious registers, the use of technical terms, etc. Therefore,  
> the grammatical systems, the syntax and the lexical choices that an  
> NT writer utizes and selects from are no different in nature or  
> have no more inspiration on one level than the options utilized by  
> a Hellenistic Greek burlesque play. It the the choices from the  
> system and from the lexis together in context that make meaning-- 
> and the meaning presumably/hopefully would be the goal, no matter  
> what the faith commitment of the interpreter. But from a faith  
> perspective, I'm particularly comfortable with Systemic Functional  
> Linguistics--its battle cry is "Trust the text!" and I find that  
> completely compatable with a high view of Scripture.
>
>  So in interpreting Paul, a linguistic approach can "change the  
> lens" through which a passage has been viewed and yield  
> significantly different results when a certain view has been  
> framed, say, by associating an aorist with punctilliar action in  
> the past. The linguistic discussion and relevance theory has also  
> been enlightening in how the context and shared information  
> interfaces with the meaning--it opens the eyes to how people  
> naturally "infer" or read information into the text to interpret  
> it. It helps explain how we can come up with sometimes dramatically  
> different interpretations of the same text--and all parties think  
> they are being compleletly literal in the reading.
>
>  Cindy Westfall
>  Associate Professor
>  McMaster Divinity College



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