Aorist - past, present, or future?

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Mitch Tulloch
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Aorist - past, present, or future?

Post by Mitch Tulloch »

Psalm 10:7 LXX says:

ὅτι δίκαιος κύριος καὶ δικαιοσύνας ἠγάπησεν,
εὐθύτητα εἶδεν τὸ πρόσωπον αὐτοῦ.

NETS translates the second line as "His face beheld uprightness" taking the aorist εἶδεν as past tense.

But in the Wikipedia article https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aorist_(Ancient_Greek) it says that "The aorist usually implies a past event in the indicative, but it does not assert pastness, and can be used of present or future events."

So I'm wondering if εὐθύτητα εἶδεν τὸ πρόσωπον αὐτοῦ could be translated either as:

"His face sees the upright" i.e. "His favor is upon the upright"

or as:

"His face will look upon the upright" i.e. "The upright will receive his favor"

Thanks!
Cheers,
Mitch Tulloch
MAubrey
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Re: Aorist - past, present, or future?

Post by MAubrey »

Wikipedia is wrong. Or at least, overly simplistic. Note the example cited is a conditional construction. Conditionals, especially counter-factual conditionals, involve more complex issues for time reference because of their complicated relation to real-world events. There is a good chapter on non-past aorists in The Greek Verb Revisited that's worth reading.

The NETS translation is correct.
Mike Aubrey, Linguist
SIL International
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Mitch Tulloch
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Joined: November 4th, 2017, 2:52 pm
Location: Winnipeg, Canada
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Re: Aorist - past, present, or future?

Post by Mitch Tulloch »

Hi Michael,

Which chapter in The Greek Verb Revisited covers this topic?

Thanks!
Cheers,
Mitch Tulloch
MAubrey
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Re: Aorist - past, present, or future?

Post by MAubrey »

Mitch Tulloch wrote: July 17th, 2023, 7:25 pm Hi Michael,

Which chapter in The Greek Verb Revisited covers this topic?

Thanks!
Chapte 12! Typology, Polysemy, and Prototypes: Situating
Nonpast Aorist Indicatives by Chris Fresch.
Mike Aubrey, Linguist
SIL International
Koine-Greek.com
Mitch Tulloch
Posts: 59
Joined: November 4th, 2017, 2:52 pm
Location: Winnipeg, Canada
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Re: Aorist - past, present, or future?

Post by Mitch Tulloch »

Michael,

I very much appreciate your suggestion to read ch12 of The Greek Verb Revisited for more insight into nonpast aorists, but after reading what Chris Fresch said in https://exegeticaltools.com/2017/04/19/ ... t-aorists/ I'm afraid his language is beyond my technical understanding at this point. And I did buy that book back in 2017 and struggled through about half of it -- and even posted some questions to this list about matters that were actually way beyond the understanding of someone like me who was still relying heavily upon using an interlinear at that point.

What have done however is I've just ordered The Cambridge Grammar of Classical Greek as my next learning challenge after finishing working thru Dr. Rollinson's online Greek textbook. I figure it'll take me about a year to work thru the Cambridge Grammar, and once I've done that, perhaps I'll be ready to revisit The Greek Verb Revisisted again :-) and if so I'll return to this thread for further discussion.

In the meantime I'll try to keep my questions simple in this Beginer's section of the b-greek forum :-)

Thanks again!
Cheers,
Mitch Tulloch
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