Re: APOKTEINW

From: Dale M. Wheeler (dalemw@teleport.com)
Date: Fri Mar 01 1996 - 12:05:00 EST


>Carlton L. Winbery wrote:
>Of the 12 forms of the subjunctive of APOKTEINWSIN or APOKTEINWMEN,
>Guillemette locates all as present; Mounce locates 1 present and 11 aorist;
>Zerwick-Grosvenor 8 aorist and 2 present and 2 as subjunctive w/out
>indicating the tense;
>I could see all of these as aorist. One or two could with a little twisting
>be seen as present.

Your list of disagreements is why I raised the question; the most troubling
one to me was Zerwick, whom I personally hold in high regard because his
grammatical analysis tends to reflect someone who read the text rather than
other grammars and was thus more sensitive to the nuances of Koine (which of
course makes him a bit quirky at times). I have no idea what Guillemette
was thinking, unless he was under the impression that since APOKTEINW is a
liquid stem that the aorist should have an accent shift to over the omega to
compensate for the loss of the sigma of the aorist ??

My feeling on all of these is that they are all clearly aorist. My
approach, as I've mentioned before, is to follow the Fanning idea that you
first identify the verbal meaning (in this case killing someone is normally
conceived of as a punctual, unless there are clear contextual clues to the
contrary...slow torture, slow poison, figuratively by damning with faint
praise, etc.), then one is in a position to ask why a certain aspect is
applied to a given usage. Thus the aorist is the most appropriate aspect
choice for the punctual verb "to kill." Moreover, in all of these cases its
seems clear that there is no concern on the part of the killers to torture
or prolong the death experience of their victims; they just wanted them
dead, period.

Thanks Carlton and Carl. I hope you are having as much fun with these as I
am (no smiley face...I'm serious...which of course to a large number of
people means I'm very ill and in serious need of help, so you guys may not
want to admit that this is interesting and fun !!).
***********************************************************************
Dale M. Wheeler, Th.D.
Chair, Biblical Languages Dept Multnomah Bible College
8435 NE Glisan Street Portland, OR 97220
Voice: 503-251-6416 FAX:503-254-1268 E-Mail: dalemw@teleport.com
***********************************************************************



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