Re: Aorist Use of EIMI
DWILKINS@ucrac1.ucr.edu
Wed, 14 Aug 1996 14:05:32 -0700 (PDT)
The Mitchell Andrews post is (perhaps unintentionally) misleading, if it
seems to suggest that AT Robertson was arguing for an aoristic sense of HN
in Jo 1:1. In this section, at least, it appears that Robertson was saying
that the verb could be aoristic elsewhere, not that he was commenting on
Jo 1:1 (someone else may be able to check other ATR works and clarify his
position on the verse). Moveover, in the same section from which Andrews
quotes, Robertson cautions that the Greeks usually distinguished carefully
between the aorist and the imperfect. I doubt very much that John would have
used the imperfect HN in 1:1 had he wished to say that the logos was created
at some pre-temporal moment. One more point: though ATR has earned great res-
pect from most of us (myself included), he was not always right.
Don Wilkins
UC Riverside