From: Steven Craig Miller (scmiller@www.plantnet.com)
Date: Sat Dec 25 1999 - 11:33:55 EST
<x-flowed>To: Mark Taylor,
<< I have noticed that quite often when the NT is speaking of Christ's
sacrifice at the same time it speaks of His love, it places AGAPAW in the
aorist, instead of the present or imperfect. For instance, in John 3:16...
hOUTWS GAR HGAPHSEN hO THEOS TON KOSMON... Is this intended to speak of the
crucifixion as a loving-act? >>
In my third semester of Greek, we were reading John's Gospel. And each
student was given a chance to translate a verse as we went around the
table. It came my turn to translate a verse, and I was struggling to make
sense out of the Greek, and I wasn't doing a very good job. My professor
had to step in and help me out, it was then that I finally realized that I
was translating John 3:16, a passage I had memorized as a child. Was I ever
red faced! <grin>
Commenting on John 3:16, Father Raymond E. Brown writes: "The aorist
implies a supreme 'act' of love" (AB 29:133). Although Father Brown was IMO
one of our truly great scholars, I think his statement here is simply
pseudo-grammatical nonsense. There is nothing about putting the verb AGAPAW
into the aorist which could imply some sort of superlative force. This
verse might refer to a "supreme act of love," but putting the verb in the
aorist tense doesn't tell us that.
For many verbs (but not AGAPAW), the aorist form is closer to the stem of
the verb. I sometimes wonder if we have learned things backwards. For many
verbs it seems it would make more sense to learn the aorist form first, and
only later learn the present. In addition, the aorist indicative tense is
used more often than any of the other tenses. The present indicative tense
comes in a close second place. And all other tenses are much rarer than
these two. Finally, it appears that the aorist is the normal tense for
narrative, while the present tense is the normal one for non-narrative
discourse.
Instead of think of the aorist tense as a special tense, one might be
better off thinking of the aorist as the plain vanilla of tenses. It is the
change from the aorist to some other tense which should make one set up and
take some notice.
As to whether or not John 3:16 refers to Jesus' crucifixion, although most
commentators which I've consulted would tend to support such a notion, I
would note that this verse purports to be a saying of Jesus which he made
before his crucifixion, and undoubtedly if one thinks of this passage as
historical, it is impossible for his audience to have understood his words
in such a light.
-Steven Craig Miller
Alton, Illinois (USA)
scmiller@www.plantnet.com
Disclaimer: "I'm just a simple house-husband (with no post-grad degree),
what do I know?"
--- B-Greek home page: http://sunsite.unc.edu/bgreek You are currently subscribed to b-greek as: [cwconrad@artsci.wustl.edu] To unsubscribe, forward this message to leave-b-greek-329W@franklin.oit.unc.edu To subscribe, send a message to subscribe-b-greek@franklin.oit.unc.edu</x-flowed>
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.4 : Sat Apr 20 2002 - 15:40:52 EDT