From: dalmatia@eburg.com
Date: Mon Apr 06 1998 - 22:11:49 EDT
List members ~
This will be my last posting on this matter unless someone wishes
further discussion.
There are only three 'times' known to us ~ The Past, The Present, and
the Future. These are indicated in the Greek by the use of the
Augment [E] (or its equivalent) for the Past, the Root [____-] plus
person endings for the present, and the sigma [S], popularly called
the punctiliar morph, following the root, for the future.
Thus we have:
E____- ____- ____S- E____SA-
Past Present Future Aorist
The elements of the Aorist comprise of ALL 3 TENSES, followed by -A-
Privative, which removes the time element from the verb. It's that
dirt simple.
So the aorist is indeed timeless, but not in some hairy-fairy New Age
sense of 'eternal timelessness', but in the direct, simple and
practical ABSENCE of specifying any particular time. So it is not
really a tense at all, in terms of time specificity. When I tell you
I eat banannas, as the simple statement of what I do, I MUST do so, as
a GNT Greek, in the aorist, or go banannas trying to otherwise say
what I mean!! Could I say, as a Greek, that I used to eat banannas??
Perhaps the 2nd aorist might work ~ I really don't know...
Assigning greater time specificity to the aorist then becomes a matter
of context. [I eat banannas on TUESDAYS, for instance.]
There ~ I've finally got this thing 'berthed', thank God! I could use
a little 'berth' time myself! :-)
Blessings ~
George
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