Re: Matt 5:28 blepwn

Carl W. Conrad (cwconrad@artsci.wustl.edu)
Wed, 4 Sep 1996 07:57:40 -0500

At 8:52 PM -0500 9/3/96, Tom Launder wrote:
>Hello all,
>
>I have a question about the present participle blepwn.
>
>In Matt 5:28 Jesus speaks about an individual who looks at a woman to lust.
>
>"PAS hO BLEPWN GUNAIKA PROS TO EPIQUMHSAI AUTHN HDH EMOIXEUSEN AUTHN EN THi
>KARDIAi AUTOU."
>
>Is there any exegetical significance to the present tense (ex. the one who
>is continually looking at a woman to lust). Or is this just a general
>present participle denoting a certain class of people.
>
>Is there the idea here of repeated action, thus the looking is tending
>toward a habitual sinful pattern?

I thought someone would take up this one quickly, but I see no one has.
Personally I DON'T think there's any special significance to the "presence"
of a Present tense here. The phrasing strikes me as Semitic, although I'm
not really the best judge of that; if the Greek DOES represent an original
Semitic formulation, then I would suspect that PAS hO BLEPWN is equivalent
to KOL HA ROEH or the like--the Hebrew present participle used as a present
tense--so that what we have here is a generalizing construction: "Everyone"
means "anyone who ..." If, on the other hand, there isn't any Semitic
formulation underlying Mt's Greek, I think that PAS hO BLEPWN GUNAIKA PROS
TO EPIQUMHSAI AUTHN is equivalent to a standard present general condition
in Greek, e.g.,

hOSTIS AN GUNAIKA TINA BLEPHi hINA EPIQUMHSHi AUTHN ...

The present tense is quite common in such a construction in classical Attic
Greek, and I'm not sure an aorist BLEPSHi would make any significant
difference.

Any other opinions?

Carl W. Conrad
Department of Classics, Washington University
One Brookings Drive, St. Louis, MO, USA 63130
(314) 935-4018
cwconrad@artsci.wustl.edu OR cwc@oui.com
WWW: http://www.artsci.wustl.edu/~cwconrad/