[B-Greek] Fwd: Imperfect and Aorist Tense-Aspects and the Future Tense
yancywsmith
yancywsmith at sbcglobal.net
Sat Sep 16 14:08:05 EDT 2006
Con,
All in all, I think that the future and the aorists are very
different animals and that aorist indicatives have a -future/+past
component in the indicative. I want to say at the outset that it
seems Porter is right in saying that any attempt to read a non-
cancelable notion of verbal aspect into Hellenistic verbal future
forms is bound to frustration. I.e., aspect is NOT grammaticalized in
the future form but must be deduced from the context and the lexeme.
(I am not at all averse to the idea of a future tense as perfective;
this is the case in Modern Georgian where pre-verbs add perfective
and +future to present stems.) As regards aspect, it is better to see
it as anlogous to the situation with the present, which does not have
a separate form for presents that are progressive, habitual, gnomic,
etc.
So, in the case of:
PEPOIHQWS AUTO TOUTO, hOTI hO ENARXAMENOS EN hUMIN ERGON AGAQON
EPITELESEI hHEMERAS CRISTOU IHSOU.
Given what Rolf implied before about futures being perfective, and
Con's coming out with futures as a kind of "future aorist," I would
presume Con and Rolf would read EPITELESEI ACRI, as perfective, i.e.
considered as unit and not imperfective, considered as a process. I
would appreciate your comments on this case. Now, I admit it is
possible, as some do, to take this phrase to mean "will have
completed or will complete (both perfective) it by the day of
Christ." My contention is that the event in mind is an ongoing
process, the future here is imperfective, but the end of the process
is expressed by the adverbial phrase "until the day of Christ Jesus."
Further, I suggest that the case of Phil 1:6, we may have a
collocational clash because the verbal lexeme might seem to suggest a
perfective event while the adverb can suggest an ongoing process,
leading readers to wonder whether they are understanding the aspect
of the verb correctly. Any number of factors, including interference
from Paul's other linguistic contexts, could have led Paul to create
this apparenlty malformed phrase. As I take it, "Continue to finish
until," says nothing about whether the action will be successfully
completed, although it possible to assume as much on other grounds.
The future EPITELESEI followed by ACRI(S) is not found in Greek
literature before this instance and only found in passages dependent
upon this text after the 1st century. Theodoret (5th century)
paraphrases what he considers to be the meaning of the clause in the
following way:
PISTEUW DE, hWS hO TAUTHN hUMIN DWRHSAMENOS THN AGAQHN PROQUMIAN,
ASULON DIATHRHSEI AUTHN, MEXRI THS TOU SWTHROS hHMWN EPIFANEIAS.
In a way that seems reasonable, Theodoret takes the "good work" begun
in the Philippians as their "readiness, willingness, eagerness, or
zeal" which Christ/God who granted it to them "will keep/
maintain" (DIATHRHSEI) it inviolate until the appearing of the
Saviour. Thus for him TELESEI=ASULON DIATHRESEI. Now this seems to be
readable either as perfective or imperfective. The only way to
exclude imperfective aspect from Theodoret's paraphrase, however, it
seems to me, would be the a priori assumption that Greek futures
grammaticalize perfective aspect.
>
> Yancy Smith
> yancywsmith at sbcglobal.net
> 5636 Wedgworth Rd.
> Fort Worth, TX 76133
> 817-361-7565
>
>
>
>
> On Sep 12, 2006, at 1:41 AM, Rolf Furuli wrote:
>
>> Dear Yancy,
>>
>> Your question regarding the combination of future reference and the
>> imperfective aspect seems to be based on the English definition of
>> aspect
>> (incomplete/completed). Please see my recent post to Con, where I
>> argue that
>> this opposition is neither found in ancient Greek nor in Classical
>> Hebrew.
>> The writers of the NT reasoned on the basis of Hebrew (or possibly
>> Aramaic),
>> and their choice of verbs is often colored by their mother tongue.
>> One
>> problem in connection with this is that we do not know whether their
>> reasoning was based on Classical Hebrew, which I view as
>> tenseless, or on a
>> language that resembled the later Mischnaic Hebrew (Rabbinic
>> Hebrew), which
>> has tenses. In any case, classical Hebrew uses both the
>> imperefective and
>> perfective aspect with future reference, and any semantic
>> difference is
>> difficult to detect. In Mischnaic Hebrew imperfect (the
>> imperfective aspect)
>> had turned into future tense, and any imperfectivity is impossible to
>> detect. So I do not think that aspectual considerations will be of
>> much help
>> when we consider the English meaning (translation) of a Greek verb
>> having
>> future reference.
>>
>>
>> Best regards,
>>
>> Rolf Furuli
>> University of Oslo
>>
>> ----- Original Message -----
>> From: "yancywsmith" <yancywsmith at sbcglobal.net>
>> To: <b-greek at lists.ibiblio.org>
>> Sent: Monday, September 11, 2006 2:38 PM
>> Subject: [B-Greek] Future Tense and Imperfective Aspect?
>>
>>
>>> This is a side track from the discussion of Imperfect and Aorist
>>> aspects.
>>>
>>> Ron said:
>>>> Broman Olsen defines future perfect as a
>>>> combination of future tense and the perfective aspect and
>>>> pluperfect as a
>>>> combination of past tense and the perfective aspect.
>>>
>>> I am wondering whether sometimes, with Semitic speakers of Greek
>>> during the NT period, we wouldn't get a future tense with an
>>> imperfective aspect. Consider, for example, the verb EPITELEW in
>>> Phil
>>> 1:6: πεποιθὼς αὐτὸ τοῦτο, ὅτι ὁ
>>> ἐναρξάμενος ἐν ὑμῖν ἔργον ἀγαθὸν
>>> ἐπιτελέσει ἄχρι ἡμέρας Χριστοῦ
>>> Ἰησοῦ·
>>> PEPOIHQWS AUTO TOUT, hOTI hO ENARXAMENOS EN hUMIN ERGON AGAQON
>>> EPITELESEI ACRI hHMERAS CRISTOU IHSOU.
>>>
>>> I notice that the NRSV editors were insistent upon giving it a
>>> perfective translation "bring it to completion by the day of
>>> Christ."
>>> But Louw and Nida suggest the following translation, "‘(God), who
>>> began (this) good work in you, will carry it on until it is finished
>>> in the day of Christ Jesus’" in keeping with their appartent
>>> understanding of the use of ACRI here and EPITELESEI as
>>> imperfective.
>>> What is striking about this example is that the "verbal
>>> semantics" of
>>> the action, in English at least, would seem to demand a "perfective"
>>> aspect. Nevertheless, imperfective seems to fit the context better.
>>>
>>> I notice that the translation of the Society for the Distribution of
>>> Hebrew Scriptures uses an imperfective form and not vav with the
>>> perfect:
>>> גמ הוא יכלנו
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> Yancy Smith
>>> yancywsmith at sbcglobal.net
>>> 5636 Wedgworth Rd.
>>> Fort Worth, TX 76133
>>> 817-361-7565
>>
>>
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