Can the Perfect and the Aorist be synonymous at times?

Post Reply
klitwak
Posts: 30
Joined: November 6th, 2011, 2:03 am
Location: Rancho Cucamonga, CA 91730

Can the Perfect and the Aorist be synonymous at times?

Post by klitwak »

I've been looking closely at 1 John 1:1-3 lately in preparation for teaching an exegesis class. When I took first-year Greek, my prof emphasized the presence and significance of verbs in the perfect mood, such as in 1:1, (O AKHKOAMEN. To take the perfect tense seriously as depicting an event in the past that has significance into the present, this verb might suggest something like, that which we have heard and still rings in our ears." That aside, and noting that I am not the first person by any means to notice the interesting grammatical features of these verses, it occurred to me while looking at them that, rather than distinguishing between the events or perspective on events of the perfect tense verbs vs. the aorist tense verbs, that maybe John only used variation in tense for variety but saw both tenses as having the same significance. I have not seen any commentator suggest that and in fact, they seem to suggest otherwise, but I wonder if all the verbs have, say, a perfective aspect. Any thoughts?

Ken Litwak
Azusa Pacific University
Kenneth D. Litwak, Ph.D.
Reference and Instruction Librarian
Golden Gate Baptist Theological Seminary
Mill Valley, CA 94941
kennethlitwak@ggbts.edu
Adjunct Professor of New Testament in ExL
Asbury Theological Seminary
Wilmore, KY
Stephen Carlson
Posts: 3351
Joined: May 11th, 2011, 10:51 am
Location: Melbourne
Contact:

Re: Can the Perfect and the Aorist be synonymous at times?

Post by Stephen Carlson »

We had a discussion about the perfects in 1 John 1:1 recently here: http://www.ibiblio.org/bgreek/forum/vie ... =46&t=1704
Stephen C. Carlson, Ph.D.
Melbourne, Australia
Post Reply

Return to “Syntax and Grammar”