Parsing of ἐμεγάλυνεν in Lk 1:58

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John M Tait
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Joined: February 14th, 2025, 11:44 am

Parsing of ἐμεγάλυνεν in Lk 1:58

Post by John M Tait »

Hello. I've just bought a copy of the Guided Annotating edition of the Tyndale Greek New Testament. In addition to space for notes, this has a glossary with parsing at the foot of each page, and I was puzzled to find the following note on the form ἐμεγάλυνεν in Lk 1:58

μεγαλύνω - vb 3rd sg, aor act indic

I would have assumed that ἐμεγάλυνεν was an imperfect rather than a second aorist, based on its having the same stem as the present. However, my Greek is undoubtedly rusty - I’m old enough to have learned it at school, which is why I wanted bigger print than my old pocket-sized GNTs - so I wondered if I was missing something. But BADG gives the form ἐμεγάλυνον as the imperfect, and the Middle Liddell states ‘only in pres. and impf.’ The Android app I mostly use - BART - also parses it as aorist, but translates it as ‘was magnifying’ which seems contradictory. The Word desktop software, on the other hand, parses it as imperfect, as I would have expected. Is this just a mistake, or am I still missing something?
Jason Hare
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Re: Parsing of ἐμεγάλυνεν in Lk 1:58

Post by Jason Hare »

Hi, John, and welcome back to B-Greek! ἀσπάζομαί σε.

The form that you’ve asked about is ambiguous. If you think about it, the imperfect is built on the present stem. In this case, the stem is μεγαλυν-, which receives an augment (ἐ-) and takes the endings -ον -ες -ε(ν) -ομεν -ετε -ον. You can see that ἐμεγάλυνε(ν) fits the 3s form. However, this verb has an asigmatic first aorist that simply takes the of the aorist -σα ending, which results in the following aorist forms, which you can compare to the imperfect below and see that 3s is ambiguous:

AORIST
ἐμεγάλυνα (-σα)
ἐμεγάλυνας (-σας)
ἐμεγάλυνε(ν) (-σε(ν))
ἐμεγαλύναμεν (-σαμεν)
ἐμεγαλύνατε (-σατε)
ἐμεγάλυναν (-σαν)


IMPERFECT
ἐμεγάλυνον (-ον)
ἐμεγάλυνες (-ες)
ἐμεγάλυνε(ν) (-ε(ν))
ἐμεγαλύνομεν (-ομεν)
ἐμεγαλύνετε (-ετε)
ἐμεγάλυνον (-ον)


Hope that helps!

[ I code my posts to be displayed with the fonts EB Garamond for English and GFS Porson for Greek. You may choose to install them for their beauty, if you like. ]
Jason A. Hare
The Hebrew Café
Tel Aviv, Israel
Jason Hare
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Joined: June 2nd, 2011, 5:28 pm
Location: Tel Aviv, Israel
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Re: Parsing of ἐμεγάλυνεν in Lk 1:58

Post by Jason Hare »

By the way, if you throw it into the parsing machine on Diogenes, you get the following:
1. ἐμεγάλῡνεν, μεγαλύνω (make great): aor ind act 3rd sg
2. ἐμεγάλῡνεν, μεγαλύνω (make great): imperf ind act 3rd sg
This correctly shows that the form can be either tense.
Jason A. Hare
The Hebrew Café
Tel Aviv, Israel
John M Tait
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Joined: February 14th, 2025, 11:44 am

Re: Parsing of ἐμεγάλυνεν in Lk 1:58

Post by John M Tait »

Ah - thanks Jason. So I was missing something. Stems ending in liquids/nasals. I've probably got into the habit of recognising any such verbs that don't have different aorist stems by their endings - e.g. ἐκρινα, although I don't know if that form actually occurs in the NT - and forgotten about the reason they don't have a sigma - which obviously falls down in the third singular. I assume this ambiguity doesn't occur very often in the NT?
Jason Hare
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Joined: June 2nd, 2011, 5:28 pm
Location: Tel Aviv, Israel
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Re: Parsing of ἐμεγάλυνεν in Lk 1:58

Post by Jason Hare »

John M Tait wrote: February 17th, 2025, 1:30 pm Ah - thanks Jason. So I was missing something. Stems ending in liquids/nasals. I've probably got into the habit of recognising any such verbs that don't have different aorist stems by their endings - e.g. ἐκρινα, although I don't know if that form actually occurs in the NT - and forgotten about the reason they don't have a sigma - which obviously falls down in the third singular. I assume this ambiguity doesn't occur very often in the NT?
You assume correctly. The difference between imperfect and aorist is almost always visible.
Jason A. Hare
The Hebrew Café
Tel Aviv, Israel
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