Re: 'default' aorist

John Baima (jbaima@silvermnt.com)
Thu, 07 Nov 1996 11:06:46 -0600

At 11:28 PM 11/6/96 -0500, Edgar M. Krentz wrote:
>On October 25 Don Wilkins wrote the following:
>>That brings me to the question:
>>do any of you (Carl, Ed, Carlton, or others) have any solid definitions of
>>the aorist from antiquity?
. . .
>The oldest surviving Greek grammar is that by Dionysius Thrax, who wrote in
>the first century before Christ.

How ancients understood the aorist, etc, is an interesting question which
can be researched via the TLG. I did a quick search of AORIST* through all
grammatical works on the TLG and I got 402 hits, the earliest being
Aristotle's _Problemata_. The TLG also includes a number of grammatical
papyri. Looking at the TLG word index showed that AORIST* occurs 3,738
times. That could keep someone busy for awhile :-)

John Baima
Silver Mountain Software 1029 Tanglewood Dr, Cedar Hill TX 75104-3019
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