[B-Greek] Imperfect and Aorist Tense-Aspects
Rolf Furuli
furuli at online.no
Thu Sep 21 03:07:20 EDT 2006
Dear Con,
I still have reservations for the expression "summary viw," but if its
meaning is explained to the reader as you do below that will be of some
help.
----- Original Message -----
From: "Con R. Campbell" <con.campbell at moore.edu.au>
To: "Rolf Furuli" <furuli at online.no>; "B-Greek at Lists. Org"
<b-greek at lists.ibiblio.org>
Sent: Wednesday, September 20, 2006 10:22 AM
Subject: Re: [B-Greek] Imperfect and Aorist Tense-Aspects
CC:
Dear Rolf,
As I understand it, a summary view is one that does not take into account
the unfolding or development of the action. It normally has the beginning
and end of the action in view, but I don't like to draw that too strongly,
as some actions may be presented in summary, even though they are not
technically completed at the time of writing/speaking.
For example, Romans 5:14 'Yet death reigned [EBASILEUSEN] from Adam to
Moses'. Obviously this action spans a great period of time, but it is
PRESENTED in summary. The way this action unfolded in history is not in
view being a summary tense-form. This is also why the aorist is the default
tense-form in the mainline of narrative. Because of the summary view of the
aorist, mainline is capable of depicting a series of actions in quick
succession: he went...they said...she ran etc.
RF:
Your example above is interesting. You refer to actions: people have died.
That is correct, because this is our experience with the actual world.
However, the verb BASILEUW is stative rather than fientive (cf Rom 5:17,21:
sin
reigns and righteousness reigns). Paul therefore portrays the *state* of
death´s reign from Adam to Moses, and this is expressed by an aorist.
However, this state did not end with Moses, but it continued in Paul´s time,
yes, it still continues. This means that the aorist in 5:17 makes visible
the beginning of this state and a great part of it, but the end of the state
is yet to come.
In the examples previously given (SIGAW in Luke 9:36; ANAKLINW in Luke 2:7;
QUMOW in Matt 2:16) the entrance into the state and a part of the state were
made visible, but in Rom 5:17 the beginning of the state and an arbitrary
end (Moses) is made visible, but the real end of the state is not visible. I
do not see that "summary view" is informative in these situations,
particularly not since states have no inner constituency, no details.
CC:
Having said all that, I prefer to say that the aorist presents action as a
'whole', rather than in summary, but they are pretty close ideas.
Yours,
Con Campbell
Moore College
Best regards,
Rolf Furuli
University of Oslo
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