> George, (and the rest)
> I hate to sound like a harpie in the midst of the forest, always singing the
> same horrid tune-
Jim ~
You will NEVER be a 'harpie' to me, my friend!!
> but CONTEXT alone determines whether a verb is imperative,
> indicative, etc whenever the form is the same. As we all know, there are
> several verbal forms in greek that are ambiguous. This ambiguity cannot be
> clarified by mere form. Thus, again, CONTEXT is everything.
Well, 'twas context that caused me to read the 'pim' code in Zodhiates
as 'present indicative middle' instead of 'present imperative', which
is what it actually signifies. This one was, to me, a no brainer,
hence my negligence. It is obviously, to me, indicative first, and
then, by implication, imperative as well, for reasons that I
enumerated in that previous post, and having to do with John's ARCH
focus, which Peter is having a lot of trouble with even when Jesus has
him 'in' it under His tuteledge.
>
> Concerning the call narratives, I suppose that they are, indeed,
> imperatives. Why? Because, on the analogy of the call of the Hebrew
> prophets, one would expect God to call in the imperative rather than the
> indicative. In Hebrew, the call narratives are imperative. In Greek, they
> are imperative or indicative- but should most likely be taken as imperative.
My difficulty with this approach is that to my thinking, Peter does
not NEED to be told to follow Jesus ~ He wants nothing less or else
than to follow Him. His problem is in knowing THAT and WHEN he IS
following Him, and his distractibility when he is doing so, as
evidenced by his seeing the 'beloved disciple' also following and
wanting to know 'What about him?'
Hence the context, to me, dictates the indicative AND the imperative,
and the Greek morphological ambiguity is exactly on point...
George Blaisdell