[B-Greek] Is understanding Greek verbal aspect crucial for understanding the Greek of the New Testament?

Leonard Jayawardena leonardj at live.com
Sun Nov 21 23:17:28 EST 2010


I finished reading Constantine R. Campbell's "Basics of Verbal Aspect in Biblical Greek" a few days ago. One of the endorsements of the book that appears on the back cover is by Stanley E. Porter:

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Campbell and I agree on at least one major point regarding verbal aspect--understanding Greek verbal aspect is crucial for understanding the Greek of the New Testament. For too long such knowledge has been woefully lacking among commentators and other students. One cannot exegete the text responsibly without applying an accurate understanding of Greek verbal aspect. ...

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LJ: This is the first book I have read on this subject--I have also read some chapters from Porter's "Idioms of the Greek New Testament," in which he touches on verbal aspect--so I am not sure whether I am qualified to express an opinion on it yet, but the impression I have got is that there still so much substantial disagreement among those who work in this area that the value of verbal aspect, at least in its present state of development, to the exegesis of the Greek New Testament seems questionable. At any rate the claim that "[o]ne cannot exegete the text responsibly without applying an accurate understanding of Greek verbal aspect" seems to be an overstatement. Whose verbal aspect? Porter's or Campbell's or any other's? Even Porter's statement that "Campbell and I agree on at least one major point regarding verbal aspect--understanding Greek verbal aspect is crucial for understanding the Greek of the New Testament" seems to imply that basically the only major area of agreement between Porter and Campbell is that "understanding Greek verbal aspect is crucial for understanding the Greek of the New Testament"!

There are many good translations of the NT available and the agreement between them far exceeds the differences. There are many verses in which the translations differ in the way they render them. Some of these are doctrinally important verses, but differences in understanding verbal aspect between translators are not the reason for these differences.

I am not saying that the study of verbal aspect is not important. Any study, even if its contribution to exegesis of a Greek text is minimal, is profitable, but is there really any basis to the claim "that understanding Greek verbal aspect is crucial for understanding the Greek of the New Testament"? 


Leonard Jayawardena 		 	   		  


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