Future Aorist Rev 21:3

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Stirling Bartholomew
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Future Aorist Rev 21:3

Post by Stirling Bartholomew »

Revelation 21:3

the received text (NA/UBS) reads:
και ηκουσα φωνης μεγαλης εκ του θρονου λεγουσης ιδου η σκηνη του θεου μετα των ανθρωπων και σκηνωσει μετ αυτων και αυτοι λαοι αυτου εσονται και αυτος ο θεος μετ αυτων εσται αυτων θεος

for σκηνωσει 01* reads ἐσκήνωσεν (along with 1611 2050 pc gig vg(ms) syr(ph)

this looks like a future use of the aorist (?) context appears to demand a future.


Juan Hernandez suggests this may be an allusion to ἐσκήνωσεν in John 1:14

John 1:14 Καὶ ὁ λόγος σὰρξ ἐγένετο καὶ ἐσκήνωσεν ἐν ἡμῖν, καὶ ἐθεασάμεθα τὴν δόξαν αὐτοῦ, δόξαν ὡς μονογενοῦς παρὰ πατρός, πλήρης χάριτος καὶ ἀληθείας.

However, in that context ἐσκήνωσεν ἐν ἡμῖν is a reference to something in the past.
C. Stirling Bartholomew
Stephen Hughes
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The "past" and future are both references to events that one

Post by Stephen Hughes »

I don't think the indicative tenses of the aorist refer to the past. I think they refer to an imagined time - memory is an imagination of something that has happened. A future that is envisioned - imagination of what is thought will happen - based on what is imagined of something that has happened - would fit the usage that you have here.

The "past" and future are both references to events that one cannot gain sensory input for.
Γελᾷ δ' ὁ μωρός, κἄν τι μὴ γέλοιον ᾖ
(Menander, Γνῶμαι μονόστιχοι 108)
Stephen Carlson
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Re: The "past" and future are both references to events that

Post by Stephen Carlson »

Stephen Hughes wrote:I don't think the indicative tenses of the aorist refer to the past.
I disagree. I think indicative aorists do refer to the past ... except when they don't.
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Stephen Hughes
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Linearity or cyclic reoccurances.

Post by Stephen Hughes »

Stephen Carlson wrote: I disagree. I think indicative aorists do refer to the past ... except when they don't.
What I'm essentially saying is that I don't agree with the construct of "past". The aorist is a timeless unchangable way of looking at things which - from the point of view of the present - exists only in its being imagined or being retolled.

Gnomic aorists are true for all conditions, places and times - more or less. The majority of imagined / remembered events have happened in the past, so it has a strong association with that way of thinking about time. Past reference aorists are not tied to any present sensory input, so they are similar to the timelessness (lack of willful changeablity).

But this is as much a philosophical as it is a linguistic question. Either of us will just read his own conception of the nature of time onto the verbal system. As a linearity time can have a "past" which is gone and can't come back, as a series of cyclic reoccurences, "past" and "future" merge.
Γελᾷ δ' ὁ μωρός, κἄν τι μὴ γέλοιον ᾖ
(Menander, Γνῶμαι μονόστιχοι 108)
MAubrey
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Re: Linearity or cyclic reoccurances.

Post by MAubrey »

Stephen Hughes wrote:What I'm essentially saying is that I don't agree with the construct of "past". The aorist is a timeless unchangable way of looking at things which - from the point of view of the present - exists only in its being imagined or being retolled.

Gnomic aorists are true for all conditions, places and times - more or less. The majority of imagined / remembered events have happened in the past, so it has a strong association with that way of thinking about time. Past reference aorists are not tied to any present sensory input, so they are similar to the timelessness (lack of willful changeablity).

But this is as much a philosophical as it is a linguistic question. Either of us will just read his own conception of the nature of time onto the verbal system. As a linearity time can have a "past" which is gone and can't come back, as a series of cyclic reoccurences, "past" and "future" merge.
Do you have any evidence to ground this approach? Other than gnomics?
Stirling Bartholomew wrote:the received text (NA/UBS) reads:
for σκηνωσει 01* reads ἐσκήνωσεν (along with 1611 2050 pc gig vg(ms) syr(ph)

this looks like a future use of the aorist (?) context appears to demand a future.
I'd say the scribe misheard what he was transcribing. the καὶ would have been pronounced as κε and it wouldn't be difficult to extend the sound a bit to the verb, particularly if καὶ's orthotonic accent was merely that: orthotonic.
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Stephen Hughes
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Let's call it an a priori assumption to make things more sim

Post by Stephen Hughes »

Rather than discuss the temporalisation of our perception of reality on a forum devoted to Greek, it might be slicing the Gorgon's knot to say that I am working from an a priori assumption that the "past" does not exist as a category in Greek grammar. I assume that past and future are variations on the same concept of imagination, with the future being controlable and the augment etc. marking that it is not controlable. I hold the same assumption of distance - the inability to move, warn or change - that we perhaps know from some dreams, to be true in the other augmented tenses too.

I am aware of course, that is not the only way that philosophers have thought about how memory and imagination interplay with our senses to give us the concepts of tense.
Last edited by Stephen Hughes on March 12th, 2014, 9:31 am, edited 1 time in total.
Γελᾷ δ' ὁ μωρός, κἄν τι μὴ γέλοιον ᾖ
(Menander, Γνῶμαι μονόστιχοι 108)
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Re: Let's call it an a priori assumption to make things more

Post by cwconrad »

Stephen Hughes wrote:... the temporalisation of our perception of reality on a forum devoted to Greek ... how memory and imagination interplay with our senses to give us the concepts of tense.
Faust Part 2;
Vorbei! Ein dummes Wort. Warum vorbei?
Vorbei und reines Nichts: Vollkommnes Einerlei!
Was soll uns denn das ewge Schaffen?
Geschaffenes zu Nichts hinwegzuraffen?
"Da ists vorbei!" Was ist daran zu lesen?
Es ist so gut, als wär’ es nicht gewesen.
οὔτοι ἀπ’ ἀρχῆς πάντα θεοὶ θνητοῖς ὑπέδειξαν,
ἀλλὰ χρόνῳ ζητέοντες ἐφευρίσκουσιν ἄμεινον. (Xenophanes, Fragment 16)

Carl W. Conrad
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MAubrey
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Re: Future Aorist Rev 21:3

Post by MAubrey »

Surely your assumption is grounded in some kind of reasoning at some level. It sounds like you're making claims about the nature of the brain, cognition and our experience of time. Is there a particular set of secondary literature in say, cognitive psychology, that would lead you in this direction?

I'm open to novel points of view, assuming that there's good reason to adopt them.

Otherwise, it leaves us in an awkward position where your own ideas about tense cannot really play a part in larger discussions since they're grounded in assumptions that nobody else accepts. That isn't a criticism. I'm sure you have your own reasons. I'm simply worried that if our perspectives are so dramatically difference, we might actually be able to converse meaningfully about grammatical analysis...which is what this particular subforum is (in theory) supposed to be about. That is, unless we can simply treat your approach as a kind of equivocation, but wouldn't really be fair to you. So I'm a little at a loss here.
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Stephen Carlson
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Re: Future Aorist Rev 21:3

Post by Stephen Carlson »

Stirling Bartholomew wrote:for σκηνωσει 01* reads ἐσκήνωσεν (along with 1611 2050 pc gig vg(ms) syr(ph)

this looks like a future use of the aorist (?) context appears to demand a future.
Context demanding a particular interpretation works best for the what the author of the context composed. This is a scribal variant, however, and this affects the hermeneutics. Also we can say is that the scribe changed it from a future to an aorist. If the change is meaningful and not a brain-fade, I would say that the effect of this change is to put the statement into the past, perhaps along the lines of alluding to John 1:14 as J. Hernandez suggested and you pointed out.
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Stephen Hughes
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Re: Future Aorist Rev 21:3

Post by Stephen Hughes »

MAubrey wrote:Surely your assumption is grounded in some kind of reasoning at some level. It sounds like you're making claims about the nature of the brain, cognition and our experience of time. Is there a particular set of secondary literature in say, cognitive psychology, that would lead you in this direction?
Yes, there is literature and I'm sure you could find it better than I could. It is not my own day-to-day view about the nature of time, but when looking at other people's languages it is useful to have extra dimensions of flexibility in understanding.
MAubrey wrote:I'm open to novel points of view, assuming that there's good reason to adopt them.
You should have the skills to work from as many points of view as possible. You don't need to adopt a view point as your own to use it for analysing something.

My basic starting point is that people have a way that they use to analyse the Greek, to a large degree it works and for the points at which it doesn't work, they construct a list of exceptions. No need to fix what isn't broken or leaking.
MAubrey wrote:Otherwise, it leaves us in an awkward position where your own ideas about tense cannot really play a part in larger discussions since they're grounded in assumptions that nobody else accepts. That isn't a criticism. I'm sure you have your own reasons. I'm simply worried that if our perspectives are so dramatically difference, we might {??not??} actually be able to converse meaningfully about grammatical analysis...which is what this particular subforum is (in theory) supposed to be about. That is, unless we can simply treat your approach as a kind of equivocation, but wouldn't really be fair to you. So I'm a little at a loss here.
Since the time at which things become distant and unchangeable, devoid of sensory input and only reconstructed / imaginary is in the "past", for the most part an equivocation works just fine. Fairness appears to be about balancing life's inequlaities, but I think it is about standardising life's equilibria, I'm content to be unheard and un-standardised, rolling little vocabulary Jaffas down the aisles.
MAubrey wrote:your own ideas about tense cannot really play a part in larger discussions since they're grounded in assumptions that nobody else accepts.
If nobody else accepts what I have say, there is no use in saying it, if others have already said it, then there is also no use in saying it. Either way let's move on.
Γελᾷ δ' ὁ μωρός, κἄν τι μὴ γέλοιον ᾖ
(Menander, Γνῶμαι μονόστιχοι 108)
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