[B-Greek] Semantic Features and Rhetorical Use of the Greek Perfect
Mark Lightman
lightmanmark at yahoo.com
Tue Mar 9 07:03:07 EST 2010
<Randall said:
There is a present implication to be interpreted.
YWS: That is the perfect way of framing the issue. Simply marvelous.>
Except, if I understand what Elizabeth, Carl, and even you, Yancy, are
saying, you would have to modify Randall's "perfect" statement to
"There is a present implication to be interpreted except when there isn't."
Let's get back to what started all this 1 John 4:2. Don't all three (four?)
of you guys agree that you can NOT state that John intends to emphasize
the present status of Jesus being arrived, period, let alone arrived in the flesh?
And what about 2 John 7 where the same thing is said, but this time
with the progressive, not the perfect
οι μη ομολογουντες Ιησουν Χριστον ερχομενον εν σαρκι
hOI MH hOMOLOGOUNTES IHSOUN CRISTON ERCOMENON EN SARKI
Does John mean here NOT to stress the present implication? What is
the point of having a rule about the perfect if you can never apply it?
I've gone a complete circle on this passage several times and I now
don't know what to think. I think if you asked John what he had in
mind he would not put it in terms of any grammatical or linguistic
understanding of the perfect that we could come up with,
although I also think what Randall (and you) said about the perfect
is marvelous (although you are saying two
different things, are you not?)
I sometimes think that all Greek NT writers, if you laid before them
our grammatical and linguistic formulations and said, "what do
you think?" they would all say what Pilate said on a different occasion:
ο γεγραφα γεγραφα hO GEGRAFA GEGRAFA "What I have written,
I have written." (John 19:22)
But wait, why did Pilate use the perfect here?
Mark L
FWSFOROS MARKOS
--- On Tue, 3/9/10, yancywsmith at sbcglobal.net <yancywsmith at sbcglobal.net> wrote:
From: yancywsmith at sbcglobal.net <yancywsmith at sbcglobal.net>
Subject: Re: [B-Greek] Semantic Features and Rhetorical Use of the Greek Perfect
To: "B Greek" <b-greek at lists.ibiblio.org>
Date: Tuesday, March 9, 2010, 4:04 AM
Randall said:
There is a present implication to be interpreted.
YWS: That is the perfect way of framing the issue. Simply marvelous.
Yancy Smith
---
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