MAubrey wrote:Looks like a bogus category to me.
Yeah. Digging further, it looks like Brooks and Winberry are following Robertson to some extent. There are two places:
Robertson p. 893 wrote:(c) The Extensive Perfect. This comes to be the usual force of the tense, Gildersleeve2 has put the thing finely: "The perfect looks at both ends of an action." It "unites in itself as it were present and aorist, since it expresses the continuance of completed action."[n.3] That is to say, the perfect is both punctiliar and durative. The aorist (punctiliar) represents an action as finished, the linear present as durative, but the perfect presents a completed state or condition. When the action was completed the perfect tense does not say. It is still complete at the time of the use of the tense by speaker or writer. In Jo. 1:32 τεθέαμαι in the mouth of John the Baptist refers to the baptism of Jesus some week before, but he still has the vision. Cf. 1:34, ἑώρακα καὶ μεμαρτύρηκα, where there is a difference of time between the two words. When Andrew said to Peter εὑρήκαμεν (1:41) his discovery is recent and vivid. No single graph for the perfect can therefore be made. In some cases the line of connection from the act (punctiliar) to the time of speaking would be very short, in others very long. This line of connection is just the contribution of the perfect tense as distinct from aorist and present. As a matter of fact, in the combination of punctiliar and durative in the perfect it begins with the punctiliar and goes on with the durative thus (•-----), but the emphasis may be now on the punctiliar, now on the durative. In others the two are drawn almost to a point, but not quite. In still others there is a broken continuity thus (A • • • • > • • • • B).[n.4] It is the perfect of repeated action. Cf. Jo. 1:18; 5:37; 2 Cor. 12:17.
And:
Robertson p. 896 wrote:(γ) The Present Perfect of Broken Continuity.[n.1] As already explained, we here have a series of links rather than a line, a broken graph (• • • • > • • • •). Perhaps πέπραχα in Ac. 25:11 is to be so understood. But certainly it is true of άπέσταλκα (2 Cor. 12:17) where Paul refers to various missions to the Corinthians. In particular Moulton[n.2] notes the examples with πώποτε, as οὐδεὶς ἑώρακεν πώποτε (Jo. 1:18). Cf. further μεμαρτήρηκεν (5:37); δεδουλεύκαμεν (8:33).
(Νote 4 of p. 893 and notes 1 and 2 of p. 896 all cite Moulton, Prol., p. 144.)
The combination of the notion of "broken continuity" and the compatibility of repetition suggests to me what Robertson is trying to describe what might be called today an experiential perfect. Further research should follow the cite to Moulton.
There is an ambiguity in Robertson's formulation "Is the perfect of repeated action," and it seems to have been taken to mean (wrongly) that repetition is a defining feature of this kind of perfect.
Stephen C. Carlson, Ph.D. (Duke)
Post-Doctoral Fellow, Faculty of Theology, Uppsala