Wo, not so fast. I didn't mean to suggest, in my quoting of Wallace,
that participles should always be taken as attendant circumstantials.
Please not Wallace's above guide. Those were five structural "clues,"
not "rules." My point was simply that I was impressed in my studies at
Dallas how prevalent the attendant circumstantial participle was, a lot
more so than I would have imagined. And, this was the apparent way the KJ
translators saw it in Mt 29:19a.
>In this case, MAQHTEUSATE, BAPTIZONTES, and DIDASKONTES express >the
mission in a threefold sense. The mission is to make disciples, baptize
and
>to teach. What if anything is the effect of the present tense of the
>participles, other than linking their action as contemporaneous to that
of
>the finite verb? In other words is there anything inherently durative
>about the action expressed by the participles that is not expressed in
>the aorist verb (a suggestion made by someone on the list earlier)? Or
>are we to understand the action of the particples in light of the tense
of
>the main verb, since the present simply links the participles to the
verb
>in a particular way but says nothing about whether the action is
durative
>or punctiliar? If these are attendant circumstance participles, exactly
>what does that mean? That the action of the participles supports the
main
>verb (close to instrumental), or that the action of the participles is
>simply connected with the verb but "independent" of it in all practical
>senses.
I like what Carl said here. In sum, in Mt 28:19 the aorist imperative
gives the command in simple, undefined language, while the present tense
participles amplify and denote how this is to be carried out: by the
continued practice of baptizing and teaching.
>
>I am trying to grasp to what extent participles depend upon the main
>verb, and if there is any independent character about them. This may be
a
>naive suggestion, but I have heard many arguments for the dependence of
>participles which then went on to make wild assertions about them as
though
>they expressed a great deal of independent quality. (I am asking about
>participles in general not only this particular case.) It seems to me
>that one cannot have it both ways!
Normally, the present tense participles are construed as action
simultaneous with the action of the main verb. Aorist participles, as
Carl has been advocating, often denote action prior to the action of the
main verb. I sense this was believed more strongly in the past (cf KJ
translations with modern day translations), and that nowadays a greater
appreciation for the coincidental aorist seems to exist.
Paul Dixon