[B-Greek] Imperfect and Aorist Aspects

Rolf Furuli furuli at online.no
Sat Sep 9 17:50:01 EDT 2006


Dear Randall,

I would like to make some comments on your reference to Jude 14.

snip

> and I don't think that aorist refers to the future either. As a
> literary convention I can write a story about 2050 and use the past
> tense. but such past tenses do not neutralize the time component.
> the celebrated case of Jude 14 is a quotation anyway. Just another
> past tense. (sort of a cavalier approach, right? I don't even care
> how some might want to translate it into another language.)

snip


> ERRWSO
> Randall Buth


It is commonly believed that Jude 1:14, 15 is a quote from the
Pseudepigraphic book Enoch 1:9, but that is just a guess. A late  Greek
manuscript of Enoch has words that resemble Jude´s words, but the Hebrew 
Dead
Sea manuscript of Enoch is unintligible at the place where 1:9 is supposed
to be (21 Hebrew letters on three lines). Thus, we cannot know whether Jude
quoted Enoch, whether both quoted an older manuscript, or whether Jude wrote
his words on the basis of what he had been told by others. On the basis of 
the age of the manuscripts we cannot even
exclude the possibility that the words in 1:9 of the Greek text of Enoch are
quoted from Jude.

In the Ethiopic (Ge´ez) text of Enoch 1:9 we find a perfect with future
reference where Jude has aorist. The most common way to express the future 
in Ethiopic is by using
imperfect. I have worked with the details of the text when I translated
Enoch into Norwegian, and I can tell you that the percentage of Ethiopic
perfects used with future reference in Enoch is about the same as in the 
Hebrew
Bible. The 965 Hebrew perfects (without prefixed WAW) with future reference
that I mentioned represent 6,9% of all perfects.

When I use my parameters to distinguish between time and tense, the 
perfective and imperfective aspect, I accept exceptions. But each of them 
must be shown to a special case. Jude 14 is hardly a special case. We do not 
know whether the verse is a quote, and even if it were a quote (from another 
language than Greek), Jude was the one who chose  the aorist. Therefore, in 
Jude´s mind an aorist with future reference would be perfectly acceptable.

I find the following uses of aorist indicative in Jude:

1:4, resultative, with the stress on the present state. The men have 
secretly slipped in and ARE HERE.

1:5, both have past reference.

1:9, both have past reference.

1:11, all three are possibly resultative.

1:14, future reference.

1:15 both have future perfect reference, if the verse refers to those living 
on the earth when the Lord comes.

This is quite a spread of meanings, indicating that aorist does not always 
have past reference.


Best regards,

Rolf Furuli
University of Oslo 


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