From: Jonathan Robie (jonathan@texcel.no)
Date: Wed Jan 07 1998 - 08:35:41 EST
At 12:02 PM 1/7/98, Mark O'Brien wrote:
>we compared the use of the HP in the
>synoptic gospels with that found in the parallel passages in the other
>gospels and found that most of the time the HP is replacing the aorist
>form found in the parallel passages, and usually appears to be functioning
>in the same way as the aorist in the narrative.
We now seem to be in that swamp I mentioned...just about anything that
anybody says about tense or aspect will be disputed by somebody else.
For the sake of Dr. Ted, who asked the first question in this thread, let
me point out that the view I expressed is what Fanning calls "the commonly
accepted explanation":
"The commonly accepted explanation of the Greek historical present (as for
similar presents in other languages) is that the present is used to bring a
past occurence into immediate view, portaying the event as though it occurs
before the reader's eyes. Although the historical present appears in
different specific patterns of usage through ancient Greek literature, it
does appear that vivid or dramatic narration of past events is the common
characteristic of the use". Fanning, _Verbal Aspect_, p.226.
He cites 12 grammars to support his statement that this is the commonly
accepted explanation, including Robertson, Moulton-Turner, Smyth,
Blass-Debrunner-Funk...
There are, of course, other views. Kiparsky, for instance, has argued that
the historical present has zero tense and zero aspect, and serves primarily
as a way of avoiding needless repetition of the past tense, much as a
careful writer may choose to avoid repeating words repeatedly. I don't buy
this view, largely because careful writers do, in fact, use the aorist
tense repeatedly in narration of past events, and this is the most common
way to describe such events.
So now that I've framed this discussion a little, back to Mark (who knows
all this):
I'm not sure what you mean by "the other gospels"; I thought that the
synoptics were Matthew, Mark, and Luke, and that John was the other gospel.
But more to the point: are you saying that your main evidence is that the
historical present is used in the synoptics, but other writers use the
aorist to describe the same event? Suppose I tell you the joke that I used
as an illustration:
"So yesterday I was sitting in the bar* (footnote 1) and this woman comes
in wearing a duck costume and walks up to the bartender..."
*footnote 1: is this an attributive or referential use of "the bar"?
Now you go and tell your wife the same joke:
"Yesterday a man was sitting in the bar, and a woman walked in and went up
to the bartender..."
When describing the same event, one speaker chose to use the past tense,
the other chose to use the present tense. However, that does not mean that
there is no difference in nuance between the two narrations, or that the
present tense is completely equivalent to the past tense in this case. The
difference is this: when using the present tense, the speaker is portraying
it from the time of the event; when using the past tense, the speaker is
portraying it from a time after the event. This lends greater vividness to
the present tense.
So EMOI, parallel uses in the aorist vs. the historical present would not
be much evidence. Unless there is more that I am missing?
Jonathan
jonathan@texcel.no
Texcel Research
http://www.texcel.no
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