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Re: An Aoristic Perfect Tense?
A.T. Robertson is AWFULLY--I dare say AWESOMELY good on quite a number of
issues; it is remarkable how a work produced so relatively long ago can still
be so valuable (well, I guess that's not SO remarkable, but it is pleasantly
surprising). One can come to learn a lot about the history of the Greek
language from the large edition of his grammar.
It's interesting that the grammatical writers are hesitant to generalize on
this matter of the approximation of aorist and perfect to each other, although
they do seem to think that it is happening in Koine Greek. I am speculating
off the top of my head, but I wonder whether the actual fusion of the two
tenses in Latin has any secondary influence on this. It's worth noting also
that even in classical Greek the Aorist frequently has the sense of a perfect
tense, particularly in the participle and in the use of the aorist for a plu-
perfect in a secondary subordinate sequence.
I don't know if it's still in print, but Robert Funk's _Beginning-Intermediate
Grammar of Hellenistic Greek_ is rather nice on the range of senses of the
aorist (##786-788, vol.2, pp.619-21); he speaks of an "effective or resultative
aorist" and cites Mt 9:22 as an example: *kai eswthE hE gunE apo tEs wras
ekeinEs.He deals nicely with perfect and aorist also (##794-799) and in #789
speaks of an "Aoristic perfect", citing Jn 12:29: *alloi elegon, angelos
autwi lelalEken.
CARL W. CONRAD, C25001CC@WUVMD.BITNET OR C25001CC@WUVMD.WUSTL.EDU
Classics, Washington University, One Brookings Dr., St. Louis, MO 63130
Phone: (314) 935-4018