Re: Tense and mood about John 20:27

From: DWILKINS@ucrac1.ucr.edu
Date: Fri Sep 20 1996 - 17:34:35 EDT


In response to Carl's remarks on FERW: Jonathan and I have been discussing
this off-list and I commented that as a rule, a Greek writer would not use
a tense he didn't mean (to put it crudely) in order to use a verb that did
not have the desired tense; but I also commented that it was hard to be
certain about the verb in question because ENEGKE does not occur in the NT. Since then I did a quick search for the form in my TLG program and discovered that this form is used, albeit somewhat sparingly, in some writers of the first and
second century, as well as in the LXX. That is significant evidence favoring
the present tense imperative in Jo 20:27 being intentional, and not merely
used in absence of the aorist, supporting Carl's contention (and my prefer-
ence).

Don Wilkins
UC Riverside



This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.4 : Sat Apr 20 2002 - 15:37:52 EDT