[B-Greek] Fwd: Imperfect and Aorist, for Bert

Randall Buth randallbuth at gmail.com
Thu Sep 21 06:57:51 EDT 2006


Thank you for bringing back these questions.

Rolf egrapse:
> Dear Randall,
>
> Two days ago I sent you a post with several questions in the thread you see
> below. I have not. seen any answer. Have I overlooked your answer
> or have you overlooked this post?
>
> Are you saying that aorist in all cases aignals *completed* action or state?

RB: I tend to say 'complete' but complete implies an included
endpoint. I haven't seen the book, but I understand that A Rijksbaron,
Syntax and Semantics of the Verb in Ancient Greek would be close to
such a view.
And of course there are fuzzy edges.
I don't believe in "allcases" as
a heuristic tool. It is/was a language used by humans.

For example:
Frequently in the LXX a movement verb describes something
"perfectively" but in the following context one realizes that
'arrival, full completed movement' was not included, or at least
ignored. E.g., Judges 14:1 and 5. In the first case Samson arrived in
Timna, in the second case we later find Samson still on the road
fighting a lion. Now this happens alot. Cf. Yaakov's taking off from
BeerSheva  where he "went to PadanAram", with a chapter or so
intervening.
Your word 'all' always makes me nervous.
(Yes, intended pun, because it doesn't ALWAYS make me nervous.)
You are free to look for 'non-cancellable' meanings and construct a
theoretical network based
only on it, but real language is not constrained by such methodologies. It
is not an axiom that fits with any language that I know.

> > [RB] Bert deHaan EGRAPSE
> > " If the aorist is meant to give a summary view ( or is the unmarked or
> > the
> > default tense) of a past action, how am I to  understand the Ingressive
> > aorist.
> > Would the Imperfect not be the more logical tense for that?">
> >
> > [RB]
> > Picture something that 'was heavy', how would you describe the entry
> > into that state, when it 'became heavy?' Many a language will use a
> > simple past to refer to a full, completed process of 'becoming heavy.
> > For Greek, that is a natural way of using the aorist. If the focus is
> > on the completed process. The 'summary' view as you call it normally
> > includes the end of the process, too. Hence, the simple past marks the
> > entrance into a state.
>
> > [[If you are interested, note 1Sm (=LXX Kindoms) 5:11
> > καὶ ἐβαρύνθη χεὶρ κυρίου KAI EBARUNQH XEIR KURIOU
> > and the hand of the Lord 'became heavy'.
> > (Granted, this is simply translating vattixbad [equally perfective and
> > past with the aorist here], but the Greek verb is both normal and
> > clear. [PS: I am not presuming Hebrew in order to understand the
> > Greek, simply acknowledging that the Greek is a translation.])]]
>
> [Rolf]
> Since the example above implies *action* (became heavy =inflicted them), it
> does not illustrate ingressive states.

Sounds like half dozen versus six. The metaphor is an ingressive state.

> [Rolf]
> But my example to Con (SIGAW in Luke
> 9:36) does. If you claim that the aorist always signals completed action or
> state, please show how SIGAW is completed? Is the meaning that they "had
> kept quiet," which would signal a completed state? Or is the beginning of
> the state of being quiet somehow separated from the state of being silent,
> to the effect that the beginning is completed but it has nothing to do with
> the holding state?. In other words, is the lexical meaning of SIGAW blotted
> out by the aorist? Is no SIGAW made visible to the readers, only the
> entrance into SIGAW, which is completed? I am very much confused here.

RB:
Lk 9.36 raises another issue. It is not necessarily ingressive.  An
aorist of a state is not of a necessity decribing the crossing of the
boundary. "They were quiet" (=they didn't say a word)  covers the
'whole, complete' event of being quiet at that point in the story.
Nothing needs to have changed during the whole period. And the end of
that period is included by the aorist, as opposed to referring to an
open-ended continuity beyond the period in focus. (see below **)
[[Another item as a spin off to this thread is the relative frequency
of 'begin' in Hebrew storytelling versus Greek storytelling. both
languages use the lexical specification, of course, but Hebrew is an
aspect-poor language [you will note the increase in composite
imperfectives after long, close contact with Greek. See imperatives in
"hve + participle" in Mishna, for example] and apparently Hebrew feels
the need to use 'begin' more
often in storytelling. I have an excursus on this in my article in
"Vineyard, Tenants and Son..." in Jesus Last Week, ed Notley, et al,
Brill, 2006.]]

[Rolf]
> Two similar examples:
> Luke 2:7. "She placed (aorist) him in a manger" (NIV). Is only the movement
> down to the manger focussed upon, and there is no ANAKLINW? Or, if there is
> ANAKLONW, then we must also accept that at least a short time while the
> state is holding is included in the aorist. And that would imply that the
> state is not completed.

RB:
'she put him into a state of lying in an animal feeding trough'
The entrance into that state was complete. You get as much of a
picture of the baby lying down as is necessary to signal that the
transfer was complete.
There is no problem here unless you ask a question that the language
and the author were not prepared to answer.

>
> Matt 2:16 "He was furious.." (NIV); "He bacame furious." (NAB). Is only the
> start of Herod´s reaction focussed upon, and there is no state of QUMOW? Or,
> if there is QUMOW, then at least for a short while the state was holding.

This is a classic 'ingressive'. And yes, the entrance into the state
of anger is pictured as complete.
The aorist says nothing about how long the state remained, whether for
a flash-moment (cf. 'he became angry, red in the face, and then
immediately burst out laughing') or a noticiable period of time. The
story is expected to fill that in.

[Rolf]
> I do not understand what kind of linguistic thinking is behind a view saying
> that the aorist only relates to the completed entrance into a state, and the
> kind of state expressed by the lexical meaning of the word is not at all
> entailed in the aorist. But perhaps I misunderstand your model completely.

As I mentioned, an aorist indicative with a stative may refer to a
whole period of that state, or it may focus on the completed entrance
into that state, whichever fits the context best.

**adding an unaswered point from that same email last week:
[RB]
An imperfect (PARATATIKOS 'continuative, extending, open-ended' in
ancient Greek) could/would imply that something at the end is not
being seen. This can even be true as a literary effect.
E.g. καὶ οἱ ἄγγελοι διηκόνουν αὐτῷ Mk 1:13b
KAI OI AGGELOI DIHKONOUN AUTW
"and the angels were ministering to him" (end not in focus, a virtual
"fadeout". Since this is the end of the scene the imperfect has a
literary effect rather than a logical-semantic relationship to other
events.) Mark could have said DIHKONHSAN. the semantics might have fit
better as including an end (cf 2Tim 1:18 for an aorist DIAKONHSAI
covering many activities), but the PARATATIKOS was more fun.

I would think that the aspect-only people might even agree on this
literary reading, since they agree that choice of aspect is subjective
and Mark has signalled the reader to make an 'imperfective read' here.

Mark could have used an aorist there: DIHKONHSAN. The physical events
would have been the same. For sake of example, let's say that the
angels brought Jesus five cheese pizzas (pepperoni pizza is forbidden
to Jews, already in Jesus' day). In this case, both "they were ministering to
him" includes the five pizzas and "they ministered to him" includes
the five pizzas. the difference is in the aspect and in its effect
within the story.
The imperfect purposefully leaves the end of the 'ministering' open. I
read that as a literary fadeout. a purposefully blurred edge.
[[To pre-empt the inevitable on this list: I (and presumably you) would
think it a mistake if someone were to make theology out of language
and say that Mark is saying that the ministering never stopped. That
would be an unnatural use of language and would not work whenever a
scene closeout imperfect had a flesh-and-blood subject.]]

Anyway, I thought that we might agree or at least be 'in the ballpark'
on Mk 1:13.

ERRWSO
Randall Buth
--
Randall Buth, PhD
www.biblicalulpan.org
χάρις ὑμῖν καὶ εἰρήνη πληθυνθείη
שלום לכם וברכות
ybitan at mscc.huji.ac.il
randallbuth at gmail.com


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