[B-Greek] Is understanding Greek verbal aspect crucial for understanding the Greek of the New Testament?
Stephen Baldwin
stbaldwi at hotmail.com
Mon Nov 22 14:30:21 EST 2010
Hello Leonard, Ed, eveyone:
Ed Walkwitz: Thanks for the link to the book review. Very good IMHO
I am a 100% non-specialist in these matters. Just a layman seeking understanding.
I too have the book and have tried to study it carefully, doing all the exercises etc.
I also commented on this book on b-greek a while ago. Doubtless you can find that thread in the archives.
The book drew fire from several on b-greek, being attacked on arguments that, I must confess from my reading of the book, the book was not even making!
So I carried on reading and studying anyway.
The great strength of the book is that it is written for ignorant people [like me] and, regardless of Campbell's stance on the subject, it gets us into a position to begin to understand some of the issues (since it seems that the vast majority of published work in this area is of a specialist [and very expensive] nature.)
Clearly, the heart of the issue is "what is communicated by verbs and their forms?" and thus I would say that this is a non-trivial question that does indeed matter when we read the GNT. You commented [amongst other things] on the large areas of agreement in translations and thus tended to minimalise the "so what?" question of verbal aspect. But I think that is to miss what aspect theory is aiming at; what the verbal forms "encode" to use Campbell's terminology.
It is not in the the texts so much as to our interpretations of those texts and what we will read in commentaries or hear in sermons. Campbell cites the favourite old chestnut of Romans 5:6 and the use of XRISTOS...APEQANEN where whole doctrines/arguments are built on the use of the aorist (e.g. that the aorist here means that the death of Christ is a one-time event etc. etc, and thus the Catholic Mass is disproved in this verse...) and our understanding of how the aorist functions here. How many times as a native English reader do I read my GNT and find a verbal form that I was not expecting? All the time [pending my attendance of Dr. Buth's courses!!] because I am looking at Greek verbs and what they communicate the same way I look at English verbs...and it ain't necessarily so.
One of the more intriguing statements in the book comes right at the end -- almost a throw-away comment Campbell talks about the temporal semantics of verbs and says that in ancient languages, verbs did not [necessarily] encode a temporal component and that this came as a later development in many languages (Aboriginal languages apparently exhibit this behaviour). Personally, I'd like to read more on that subject.
Rgds
Steve
Stephen Baldwin
stbaldwi at hotmail.com
"Why do we do Greek? Because it is fun" (c) Mark Lightman
----------------------------------------
> Date: Sun, 21 Nov 2010 21:14:59 -0800
> From: edwalkwitz at yahoo.com
> To: b-greek at lists.ibiblio.org
> Subject: Re: [B-Greek] Is understanding Greek verbal aspect crucial for understanding the Greek of the New Testament?
>
> I haven't kept up on the verbal aspect issue for some years, tho I have really
> wondered about the question you ask, and would be interested in what others
> think; in any case, Craig Blomberg has an interesting review of Campbell's book
> at:
> http://www.denverseminary.edu/article/basics-of-verbal-aspect-in-biblical-greek/
>
> Ed Walkwitz, Des Moines, Iowa
>
>
>
>
> ________________________________
> From: Leonard Jayawardena
> To: b-greek at lists.ibiblio.org
> Sent: Sun, November 21, 2010 10:17:28 PM
> Subject: [B-Greek] Is understanding Greek verbal aspect crucial for
> understanding the Greek of the New Testament?
>
>
> 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:
>
> Quote
>
> 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. ...
>
> Unquote
>
>
> 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 agr
> eement 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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