[B-Greek] Gnomic Subjunctive Aorist? (was Aorist Subjunctive in 1 Jn 1:9)
=)
p1234567891 at gmail.com
Tue Apr 5 20:19:35 EDT 2011
Dear Alastair,
It is true that the definite article would not in general exclude the
possibility of a statement being gnomic. However an article usually means
one of three things. We would first expect it to refer to an antecedent,
which is usually the closest in grammatical proximity. If there is none in
the expected places, we would then expect the articular noun to be specified
by one or more adjectival clauses, which may include prepositional clauses
or participles. If neither of the two are present then it usually refers to
a known entity in the wider current scope, which may end up being the common
frame of reference. This is meant mostly for ordinary nouns and names are
not included. "pneumati qeou" therefore falls into the third category,
referring to "[the] spirit of God" in the Jewish frame of reference. "h
basileia tou qeou" is in the second category, referring to "the kingdom
which is of God". The second "the strong man" is of course in the first
category, referring to the previously-mentioned "strong man". Within that
sentence alone it is impossible to decide for the first, however Matt
12:24-28 indicates that Jesus had a specific "strong man" in mind, therefore
it must be non-gnomic, although of course anyone may disagree with this
analysis. The point is that it is most probably non-gnomic. =)
Regards,
David Lim
On 6 April 2011 00:48, Alastair Haines <afhaines at tpg.com.au> wrote:
> Hi David
>
> Great! I think we agree. Yes, of course, gnomic use of the aorist is
> certainly not intrinsic to the tense. The vast majority of NT indicative
> aorists are not gnomic, for a start. I also like your example of ambiguity
> in English, dependent on context for resolution. Better still (imo) is your
> comment regarding NHPIOS. Fanning offers two characteristics observable
> in contexts that suggest gnomic use:
> 1. semantic--[the verb] "refers ... not to a single occurrence in the past
> but to universal occurrences of the event"; and
> 2. lexical--"nouns with generic articles, indefinite noun or pronoun
> references".
> NHPIOS is an indefinite noun in the context from the *Iliad*, just as you
> say, and as Fanning notes is the sort of clue we often find correlated with
> gnomic usage of the aorist.
>
> I believe I commented that the subjunctive marking of aorist verbs in Mt
> 6:14-15 seemed to arise from the conditional context. I'd still hold to
> that. Since the future conditional requires the subjunctive anyway, it would
> be hard to prove Matthew had some other (or additional) reason for chosing
> it. Anyway, I agree with your final point wholeheartedly: recognising gnomic
> use of the aorist is decided by cues in the context.
>
> I'm not sure I agree with the analysis in your last paragraph. I hope
> you'll forgive me being a little cute and asking you to clarify how you
> think a DEFINITE article is evidence for an "indefinite possibility" rather
> than the "generic truth". I'm not sure the two are so very different,
> though, nor that a definite article is out of place with either. However, a
> gnomic aorist imperative sounds a little off to me. There's a binary
> opposition in that mood, where I'd have thought the present imperative would
> be used for commands expecting timeless, omnitemporal or habitual
> fulfilment. Like English, Greek does also express gnomic ideas in the
> present. Gnomic does not imply aorist, just like aorist does not imply
> gnomic. They are just possibilities, ruled out or reinforced by context, as
> we have already agreed, which seems like a nice kind of place to end this
> post.
>
> alastair
>
>
> *From:* *David Lim*
> *Subject:* Re: Gnomic Subjunctive Aorist?
> Dear Alastair,
> I do consider "gnomic" to refer to generic meaning, however there does not
> seem to be evidence that this generic meaning is intrinsic to the verb or,
> for that matter, even a whole complete clause, just as in English the
> statement "I will get what I want" is ambiguous, either meaning "I will get
> later what I want at the present" or the gnomic "I will get what I want in
> general", so whether some statement is gnomic in English depends completely
> upon the wider context, not even the immediate context and certainly not the
> verbs. I do believe the same is true in Greek.
>
> For example, that which you quoted from Iliad is:
> [Iliad II:17:30-32] "but you having retreated, I urge [you] to go into [a]
> crowd, not even standing opposite me, before [you] suffer something evil.
> moreover [it] having been done, even [a] fool shall know [it]."
> Yes, in this context the gnomic meaning is intended, but it is dependent on
> the context and independent of the verb tense. The anarthous "nhpios" is
> part of it, because it has no referrent and therefore implies a "general"
> fool.
>
> And I cannot agree that we should assume that "ean" only influences the
> choice of mood and does not affect the semantic meaning. As far as I have
> seen, the usage reflects not only the choice of the subjunctive mood but
> also the range of semantic meaning that can be expressed. Also the
> subjunctive does not exist in certain "tenses" and therefore cannot have a
> one-to-one correspondence with its indicative counterpart. So all my
> examples were meant to prove is that the gnomic meaning is determined solely
> by the context and not by the verb tense.
>
> As for those which I listed, you might dispute Matt 12:29, but it means
> "how can anyone enter into the house of the strong man unless [he] first
> binds the strong man?". If it said "[a] strong man" I agree that it can be
> gnomic, but because it refers to "the strong man", and the context has Jesus
> saying "if I cast out the demons in [the] spirit of God, then the kingdom of
> God came upon you" before and "and then [he] will plunder his house" after,
> the context indicates the intended meaning to be association between Jesus
> and the one who binds the strong man, the strong man having been referred to
> earlier. Other examples similarly refer to an indefinite possibility rather
> than a generic truth. Matt 18:13 uses both present imperative "go" and
> aorist imperative "reprove" as well, if we consider imperatives also in our
> study.
>
>
> Regards,
>
> David Lim
>
>
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