[B-Greek] Tense of participles
John Sanders
jfs at jfsanders.com
Wed Jun 6 07:49:16 EDT 2007
>From the Iliad, I.331,332
TW MEN TARBHSANTE KAI AIDOMENW BASILHASTHTHN, OUDE TI MIN PROSEQWNEON OUD' EREONTO
I do not believe that Clyde Pharr is commenting on the encoding of the subjunctive aorist, but rather is commenting on the application of the subjunctive aorist. That is, it is not the aorist that is giving tense here, but context that is defining the initial state of events, and the aorist is quite often used in this location. I suspect that the aorist followed by a present tense is not that uncommon.
The form TARBHSANTE is a problem in English, since English has neither a subjunctive form nor an aorist form. So no matter how we translate this form, we will have to use other types of forms to convey the encoding of this participle. The question then becomes what is more important in translating this concept, the "participleness" or the "subjuntiveness". I opt for the subjunctive and would put this in an adverbial form:
The two with trepidation and being in awe of the king
stood, neither did they speak nor question him.
or perhaps
The two, fearing yet being in awe of the king
stood, neither speaking nor questioning him.
John Sanders
Suzhou, China
I have come to the understanding that the Greek verb tenses do not indicate time outside of the indicative.Years ago there was a discussion on B-Greek about the error on thinking that an aorist subjunctive could indicate an inceptive aorist.For review I was going through a book about Homeric Greek by Clyde Pharr (I know there is quite a difference between Homeric and Koine but I think that this is still relevant.)There I found a comment about two participles in Iliad 1:331. I will quote lines 331 and 332;TW MEN TARBHSANTE KAI AIDOMENW BASILHASTHTHN, OUDE TI MIN PROSEQWNEON OUD' EREONTOPharr added a footnote about the aorist participle TARBHSANTE and the present participle AIDOMENW. He wrote; "Observe the difference in tense of the two participles; the first denotes the confusion into which they were thrown (1081) at the sight of Achilles; the other indicates their customary feeling of reverence toward him."The (1081) refers to a paragraph in this book about the ingressive aorist. Is this a valid observation (or was it valid for Greed of that era?) When I first went through this I translated this as follows;"Those two became frightened and they revered the chief and stood still (or, and stood in reverence to the chief)They neither spoke a thing nor questioned him." Without this footnote, now I would probably take it to mean something like; "Those two, being frightened/having become frightened , and revering the chief, stood still...." (maybe better; "and in reverence to the chief they stood still...) There is little difference in the meaning of the two "versions" but I am wondering about the validity of Pharr's reasoning.Thank you.Bert de Haan.
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