Now I'm going to address the second passage in this gauntlet. As you recall,
here is the gauntlet:
> >"The aorist views an action from the time of its completion. In most
> >cases, the action is in the past, but it can also depict a future
> >action, a present action, or an action not fixed in time, always
> >viewing it from the time of its completion."
>
> YET! Here's my gauntlet: No simple definition of the aorist is really
> possible. It means different things in different situations and in the
> different moods.
I set up a framework for answering this in yesterday's message. Now let's
apply it to the second message:
> KATA TON NOMON hUMWN *KRINATE* AUTON (John 18:31).
Aorist imperatives are pretty common in the GNT (Gramcord shows 618 verses
containing them). Smyth says (1864) that the imperative always implies
future time, that the present portrays continuance, and the aorist portrays
simple occurence. To translate this into aspect terminology, I would say
that the present portrays a future act from within the action, and the
aorist looks back on a future act from the time of its completion.
So I would say that the focus here is on the end result of judging, not on
the process of judging.
Jonathan
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Jonathan Robie
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