[B-Greek] Relative time

Mike Holmes holmic at bethel.edu
Mon Mar 16 09:52:47 EDT 2009


Colleagues,
A bit fuller statement by Zerwick is found on p. 77 of his Biblical Greek:
"In fact, 'aspect' is an essential element of the Greek 'tenses' (leaving out of account the future) and hence is always distinguished by the form, whereas the time of the actions is expressed in the indicative only, and in the other moods is either lacking or secondary. Moreover the time expressed is only 'absolute' time and not 'relative' time, i.e., the relationship of simultaneity or anteriority with respect to (e.g.) the principal verb's time: 'relative' time is never expressed in Greek by the verbal form itself, but can be gathered only from the sense in the context." 

One clarification: Biblical Greek was published in 1963, a translation of the 4th ed. of Graecitas Biblica (1960), whose first ed. appeared in 1944--hence it is unlikely that Zerwick is following Porter in this regard.
Mike Holmes

-----Original Message-----
From: b-greek-bounces at lists.ibiblio.org [mailto:b-greek-bounces at lists.ibiblio.org] On Behalf Of Carl Conrad
Sent: Monday, March 16, 2009 5:08 AM
To: Jerry Austin Reimer
Cc: B-Greek B-Greek
Subject: Re: [B-Greek] Relative time


On Mar 13, 2009, at 5:19 PM, Jerry Reimer wrote:

> Another that slipped between the cracks and wound up in B-Greek 
> Bounces; please note that messages intended for distribution to the 
> list should be sent to
> <b-greek at lists.ibiblio.org>:
>
> From: "Jerry Austin Reimer" <jerry.a.reimer at gmail.com>
> Date: March 13, 2009 12:48:15 PM EDT
> To: <b-greek-bounces at lists.ibiblio.org>
> Subject: Relative time
>
> Zerwick says that " . . . Greek does not express relative time as such 
> . . . " Out of context (Biblical Greek, p. 98), yes, but seems to be a 
> general statement. If this is true, could someone please explain what 
> is meant by this. It seems to me that, for example, verbals derive 
> their time relative to a finite verb. If that is not relative time 
> then I do not know what relative time is. Even if aspect is largely 
> determinative of tense choice, it seems that there is still relative 
> time somewhere in there. I am out of my depth with this so if anyone 
> could give me a lesson on this I would appreciate it. Of course, if 
> the statement of Zerwick is not true then that is the end of it. Or is 
> it?


I hesitate to say anything about this, but the original message, which I forwarded myself from a BG-Bounce, has gone without response thus far; if I do say something that the people who claim to know about aspect don't like or that they think they could better explain, then maybe something will emerge from their objections to what I say.

And what I say is simply this: it would appear that Zerwick has bought the argument of the Porter camp, that the Greek tense-forms don't indicate time at all but only aspect and that time and relative time are indicated by contextual indicators apart from the verb-form itself. I think that there are quite a few of us who believe that the indicative tense forms do indeed indicate time relative to a "deictic center" that is indicated somehow in the main clause. It is certainly commonly held that aorist participles preceding the main verb indicate action or process anterior to the time of the main verb, but there appear to be instances of aorist participles that indicate action contemporaneous or simultaneous to the time of the main verb or, occasionally even subsequent to that of the main verb. Future participles certainly indicate expectation or intention to act posterior to the time of the main verb. One quasi-heretical conviction that I hold is that, if one reads or has read a great deal of Greek (not the same texts over and over), one becomes sufficiently habituated to the way temporal relationship are expressed in ancient Greek that one can afford to ignore the controversies between aspect theorists over whether the ancient Greek verb expresses absolute or relative time apart from contextual indicators. There is considerable disagreement between individual verbal aspect theorists and the "camps" to which they belong. I'd say that, although verbal aspect theories have illuminated how we understand the workings of the tense- forms of Greek verb, it is also true that Greek has been spoken and read (and generally understood) for two or three millennia without recourse to verbal aspect theory.

One of the more recent threads on B-Greek that have focused on these matters was generated last November by the publication of Con Campbell's new book, _Basics of Verbal Aspect in Biblical Greek_, a work that has been praised by some and faulted by others. That thread, entitled "[B-Greek] Verbal aspect theory -- misgivings" ran on Nov.  
15, 2008 and was succeeded by a collateral thread entitled, "[B-Greek] Is Greek Present a tense? Was Verbal Aspect theory -- misgivings"  
running on Nov. 17, 2008. These are accessible in the B-Greek archives at http://lists.ibiblio.org/pipermail/b-greek/2008-November/
047955.html (= http://tinyurl.com/c7tksa) continuing to http://lists.ibiblio.org/pipermail/b-greek/2008-November/047980.html
  (= http://tinyurl.com/cs5tu2). Several of our list-members who are academic linguists had some input in those threads.

All of which leaves the way open for anyone who does not think that "relative time" means fundamentally "time that one spends with one's relatives" (I once heard Maurice Sendak explain in a lecture that his marvelous children's book, "Where the Wild Things Are," was inspired by obligatory Sunday afternoons spent with aunts and uncles and cousins during his own childhood).

Carl W. Conrad
Department of Classics, Washington University (Retired)



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