[B-Greek] Initial oversimplified rules (was "Aspect of the Aorist!")
Carl Conrad
cwconrad2 at mac.com
Fri Feb 12 09:29:58 EST 2010
On Feb 11, 2010, at 3:47 PM, Mark Lightman wrote:
> Paul wrote:
>
> <When I first took NT Greek in college 30 years
> ago, we used Machen as a text. I remember the aspect of the aorist being
> taught rather categorically as defined, specifically punctilliar. However,
> modern grammars, Bill Mounce (excellent text book for beginning Greekers)
> comes to mind, teach the aspect of the aorist as "undefined." Has there
> been a shift in viewpoints in scholarship?>
>
> Hi, Paul.
>
> No, there has been no shift. Telling introductory students that
> the aorist is punctiliar or once-and-for-all is what Plato would
> call a "noble lie." It is not going to cause a beginner to
> fundamentally misunderstand a made up sentence. It's not
> even exactly untrue. It's an okay way for beginners to
> distinguish the aorist from the imperfect until they
> get into lots of reading Greek. By then they will have long forgotten
> what they read about the aorist in a first year text book
I'm not sure that this is what Plato originally meant by a GENNAION YEUDOS
(I think it had something to do with teaching human brotherhood by means of a
myth of common birth from Mother Earth). The Wikipedia article, FWIW, says,
"In politics a noble lie is a myth or untruth, often, but not invariably, of a religious
nature, knowingly told by an elite to maintain social harmony, or the social position
of that elite." I think what we're really talking about is "well-meaning oversimpli-
fications).
I won't stick up for Machen (which I think is one of the most wretched textbooks
for beginning Biblical Greek ever put together), but I know that many good
students have started out with it (the primer I used in Fall of 1952 was even
worse than Machen!). I must say, however, that, when one first encounters a
usage that really doesn't correspond to what is familiar in one's native tongue,
there's an initial oversimplified rule that will later have to be augmented or
clarified and nuanced. Probably the distinction between imperfect and aorist
is one of the first encountered in learning ancient Greek. Later on there are
the gross oversimplifications about the middle and passive verb forms. The
first introduction to conditional constructions must seem mystifying, the more
so the more it's oversimplified. One trouble with many of these pedagogical
first explanations is that they are accompanied by made-up illustrative sentences
that leave students in a lurch when they start encountering the real thing in
real texts and speech.
But I think that Mark is right on target in saying that one learns how these
constructions that aren't the same as those of one's native language not through
memorization of rules and made-up textbook examples but by encountering
them in lots and lots reading and (if one has that option) speech.
>
> <...in NT studies older commentaries often hinge their views on a supposed once
> and-for-all aspect in the aorist.>
>
> The problem with using Greek grammar to make theological
> points is not that the underlying grammar is wrong. The problem
> with using Greek grammar to make theological points is...well,
> we all know what it is. It's just not I think, ever a good idea.
Just read the Greek; listen to what it says. Don't pay TOO much attention to
citations of grammatical rules. What good grammatical reference works do is
tell you what "standard" usage is; the better grammatical reference works will
also give you some sense of deviations from what's "standard" (e.g. BDF's
alphabetical notes following on topical sections, Smyth's notes on dialectal
forms of standard Attic morphology). For my part, I would be suspicious
of those who seek to prove their interpretations strictly on the basis of
grammatical "rules."
> --- On Thu, 2/11/10, Paul F. Evans <PastorPaul1957 at bellsouth.net> wrote:
>
> In spite of my fear of raising objections of being tiresome and redundant, I
> have a question about the aorist and aspect. It is basically about the
> "history" of the grammar. When I first took NT Greek in college 30 years
> ago, we used Machen as a text. I remember the aspect of the aorist being
> taught rather categorically as defined, specifically punctilliar. However,
> modern grammars, Bill Mounce (excellent text book for beginning Greekers)
> comes to mind, teach the aspect of the aorist as "undefined." Has there
> been a shift in viewpoints in scholarship? I know from intermediate
> grammars that there always what appear to be "exceptions" in the aorist
> aspect if you take Machen's view seriously. Or maybe I have misread or
> misunderstood Machen.
>
> I am curious, because (and I am not raising a theological question), in NT
> studies older commentaries often hinge their views on a supposed once-
> and-for-all aspect in the aorist.
>
> If the aorist aspect is undefined, how did the notion of a once-for-all
> aspect arise in the first place? (assuming the answer to this question is a
> grammatical one, albeit with historical overview!)
It is true that AORISTOS means "undefined" (and the French even call
their primary past tense a "passé indéfini" -- but AORISTOS also means
"undefinable." Perhaps the aspectologists who have muddied the waters
of Koine Greek studies over the last half-century should have taken a clue
from that. It was enough to have laid the ghost (if they did) of the "once-
for-all-time aorist."
Carl W. Conrad
Department of Classics, Washington University (Retired)
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