From: Jonathan Robie (jonathan@texcel.no)
Date: Sat Nov 14 1998 - 06:24:56 EST
I cited Mark 11:24 in a paper on tense and aspect that I have not yet made
public. I am enclosing a section that discusses this particular point,
using Mark 11:24 as one of the examples that explores it. I'm very
interested in seeing how people respond to this.
I have to apologize for the garbled Greek in the quotes - I used fonts in
the original, and I just don't have time to edit the quotes, so you may
need to look the quotes up in your own Bibles to make them intelligible.
[Here it is!]
Traditionally, the aorist has been considered a past tense, and most
scholars today probably see it as such. Recently, some scholars have
claimed that the aorist is not a true tense, and can also be used with
present or future reference. One example cited by Stan Porter occurs in the
Septuagint:
Gene 17:20 periV deV Ismahl ijdouV ejphvkousav sou ijdouV eujlovghsa
aujtoVn kaiV aujxanw' aujtoVn kaiV plhqunw' aujtoVn sfovdra dwvdeka e[qnh
gennhvsei kaiV dwvsw aujtoVn eij" e[qno" mevga
Some scholars argue that this should be translated with the English future
tense:
Gene 17:20 "As for Ishmael, I have heard you; behold, I will bless him, and
will make him fruitful and will multiply him exceedingly. He shall become
the father of twelve princes, and I will make him a great nation.
The Septuagint is a Greek translation of the Hebrew Old Testament, but the
explanation of this usage may simply be that the Greek translated the verb
with a past reference that makes perfect sense in this context:
Gene 17:20 "As for Ishmael, I have heard you; behold, I have blessed him,
and will make him fruitful and will multiply him exceedingly. He shall
become the father of twelve princes, and I will make him a great nation.
The same scholars who say that the aorist may be used for future reference
tend to say that it may be used for present reference in passages like this
one:
Mark 11:24 pisteuvete o{ti ejlavbete
Mark 11:24 believe that you will receive
However, there are simple explanations that do not require a radical
revision of our understanding of the aorist tense, e.g. it may be that the
aorist here views the action as though it has already occurred:
Mark 11:24 believe that you've got it
Luke contains another widely cited example:
Luke 16:4 e[gnwn tiv poihvsw,
Luke 16:4 Now I know what I shall do.
It is quite likely that e[gnwn has the meaning "now I have realized":
Luke 16:4 Now I have realized what I shall do.
This has been the subject of much debate in the scholarly Greek community.
Mari Olsen has suggested that the Aorist implies past reference, but that
this can be overridden by other aspects of the context. The Little Greek is
fairly convinced that the aorist is generally used for past reference, but
he isn't quite sure whether it is really a past tense.
Whether or not it is a past tense, the aorist "tense" always denotes
perfective aspect; i.e. the action or state is viewed from the outside,
without reference to its internal makeup. In most cases, events that are
viewed this way have already occurred, so even if the aorist were not a
true tense, we would expect that the vast majority of aorists do refer to
past events. In the vast majority of cases, the aorist certainly looks and
acts like a past tense in the indicative. When we discuss verb morphology
in future chapters, we will see other reasons to believe that the aorist
operates as a past tense. However, this is controversial, and the Little
Greek still hasn't made up his mind.
Jonathan
___________________________________________________________________________
Jonathan Robie jwrobie@mindspring.com
Little Greek Home Page: http://sunsite.unc.edu/koine
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