Perfects in John 12:29f.

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Stephen Carlson
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Perfects in John 12:29f.

Post by Stephen Carlson »

John 12:28b-30 wrote:28b ἦλθεν οὖν φωνὴ ἐκ τοῦ οὐρανοῦ, Καὶ ἐδόξασα καὶ πάλιν δοξάσω. 29 ὁ οὖν ὄχλος ὁ ἑστὼς καὶ ἀκούσας ἔλεγεν βροντὴν γεγονέναι· ἄλλοι ἔλεγον, Ἄγγελος αὐτῷ λελάληκεν. 30 ἀπεκρίθη καὶ εἶπεν Ἰησοῦς, Οὐ δι’ ἐμὲ ἡ φωνὴ αὕτη γέγονεν ἀλλὰ δι’ ὑμᾶς.
I am fascinated by the use of the perfect in John generally and in this passage specifically. The perfects in the passage quoted about in various ways refer to a sound that's come and gone. If there is a continuing state, it exists only in the memory of the observers. The text tells us that some thought it was thunder, and some thought it was an angel speaking. And these inferences are articulated by the evangelist with verbs in the perfect rather than the aorist. I wonder what effect or "feel" is meant to be achieved by this choice of tense form.
Stephen C. Carlson, Ph.D.
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cwconrad
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Re: Perfects in John 12:29f.

Post by cwconrad »

Stephen, I assume you're aware that Raymond Brown has an appendix -- I think it was in the second volume of his commentary on John's gospel -- on usage of the perfect tense in John's gospel.
οὔτοι ἀπ’ ἀρχῆς πάντα θεοὶ θνητοῖς ὑπέδειξαν,
ἀλλὰ χρόνῳ ζητέοντες ἐφευρίσκουσιν ἄμεινον. (Xenophanes, Fragment 16)

Carl W. Conrad
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Stephen Carlson
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Re: Perfects in John 12:29f.

Post by Stephen Carlson »

I wasn't and I'll take a look at that. Thanks.
Stephen C. Carlson, Ph.D.
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Re: Perfects in John 12:29f.

Post by Stephen Carlson »

OK. Having checked now Brown commentary, such an appendix was not to be. (There was one on Johannine vocabulary, though, and his use of synonyms.)

Interestingly, in this passage Brown translates the aorist ἐδόξασα with an English perfect and the Greek perfects with English preterites. Entirely defensible and a good feel for the English. This is perhaps a great example where one should not simply calque the tenses when translating from Greek to English.
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Re: Perfects in John 12:29f.

Post by cwconrad »

Stephen Carlson wrote:OK. Having checked now Brown commentary, such an appendix was not to be. (There was one on Johannine vocabulary, though, and his use of synonyms.).
It's been years since I looked at that. I do remember the appendix on Johannine vocabulary, but I also remember a discussion of Johannine use of the perfect; it may have been within the commentary itself with regard to some particular interesting usage of perfect tense.
οὔτοι ἀπ’ ἀρχῆς πάντα θεοὶ θνητοῖς ὑπέδειξαν,
ἀλλὰ χρόνῳ ζητέοντες ἐφευρίσκουσιν ἄμεινον. (Xenophanes, Fragment 16)

Carl W. Conrad
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Stephen Carlson
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Re: Perfects in John 12:29f.

Post by Stephen Carlson »

cwconrad wrote:
Stephen Carlson wrote:OK. Having checked now Brown commentary, such an appendix was not to be. (There was one on Johannine vocabulary, though, and his use of synonyms.).
It's been years since I looked at that. I do remember the appendix on Johannine vocabulary, but I also remember a discussion of Johannine use of the perfect; it may have been within the commentary itself with regard to some particular interesting usage of perfect tense.
There may be scattered discussion of various perfects in Brown's commentary, but not here. While I have not done a full study of John's perfect, isolated examples such as this indicate to me that John's use of the perfect may well be broader than that of other writers.
Stephen C. Carlson, Ph.D.
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Jonathan Robie
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Re: Perfects in John 12:29f.

Post by Jonathan Robie »

Stephen Carlson wrote:
John 12:28b-30 wrote:28b ἦλθεν οὖν φωνὴ ἐκ τοῦ οὐρανοῦ, Καὶ ἐδόξασα καὶ πάλιν δοξάσω. 29 ὁ οὖν ὄχλος ὁ ἑστὼς καὶ ἀκούσας ἔλεγεν βροντὴν γεγονέναι· ἄλλοι ἔλεγον, Ἄγγελος αὐτῷ λελάληκεν. 30 ἀπεκρίθη καὶ εἶπεν Ἰησοῦς, Οὐ δι’ ἐμὲ ἡ φωνὴ αὕτη γέγονεν ἀλλὰ δι’ ὑμᾶς.
I am fascinated by the use of the perfect in John generally and in this passage specifically. The perfects in the passage quoted about in various ways refer to a sound that's come and gone. If there is a continuing state, it exists only in the memory of the observers. The text tells us that some thought it was thunder, and some thought it was an angel speaking. And these inferences are articulated by the evangelist with verbs in the perfect rather than the aorist. I wonder what effect or "feel" is meant to be achieved by this choice of tense form.
If I translate this woodenly into English perfects, without thinking too hard, it works pretty well: they said it had thundered, others were saying an Angel has spoken to him. You see this reflected in some of the more literal English and German translations of the passage, e.g.
Lexham wrote:Now the crowd that stood there and heard it said it had thundered. Others were saying, “An angel has spoken to him!”
Schlachter wrote:Das Volk nun, das dabeistand und solches hörte, sagte, es habe gedonnert. Andere sagten: Ein Engel hat mit ihm geredet.
In English or German, I can use the perfect to say I have had an experience - I have been to Nicaragua, I have caught a firefly, I haven't seen a purple cow. It does seem to signal a different state. Our language indicates that people who have run a marathon are somehow different from people who have not.

In this passage, something had happened that needed explanation. Things were not the same afterward as they were before. Perhaps it had thundered, perhaps an angel had spoken to him, but something changed ...
ἐξίσταντο δὲ πάντες καὶ διηποροῦντο, ἄλλος πρὸς ἄλλον λέγοντες, τί θέλει τοῦτο εἶναι;
http://jonathanrobie.biblicalhumanities.org/
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Re: Perfects in John 12:29f.

Post by Stephen Carlson »

Let's unpack the issue a bit. The text is: Ἄγγελος αὐτῷ λελάληκεν. How do grammatical descriptions of the perfect stack up to this?
BDF § 340 wrote:The perfect combines in itself, so to speak, the present and the aorist in that it denotes the continuance of completed action.
We have a completed action (an angel's speaking). What's the continuance of it? The speaking has come and gone.
Smyth § 1945 wrote:The perfect denotes a completed action the effects of which still continue to the present.
Completed action, yes, but what are the effects that continue into the present?
Fanning, Verbal Aspect, 290-291 wrote:The general meaning of the perfect involves three elements which combine to produce the basic sense: there is an Aktionsart-feature of stative situation, an internal tense-feature of anteriority, and an aspect-feature of summary viewpoint concerning an occurrence.
Fanning lays out three elements to a perfect: (1) a state, (2) anteriority, and (3) perfective occurrence. Numbers (2) and (3) fit the text, but what is the "stative situation"?
McKay, New Syntax, 49, § 4.5.1 wrote:The perfect tense expresses the state or condition of the subject of the verb, mostly in present-time contexts and those without specific time reference to, and in some circumstances (§4.5.2) it has an added strong reference to an event which is already past.
Well, then, what's the state or condition of the subject of the verb (here, some angel)? If it is the trivial state of having happened, then how is λελάληκεν different from the aorist ἐλάλησεν? (Porter tends to follow McKay on the perfect.)

In English and other Germanic languages, there is an experiential perfect, where the experience is usually relevant to some current point at issue. "I've been to Nicaragua" (so I can tell you something about it). But the text isn't really about the angel's experience, is it?

In the English translations, I don't think the perfect is an experiential perfect. Out of the usual sub-categories of the English perfect, "an angel has spoken to him" would fall under the hot-news perfect. (We've just had this recently with the headline, "Robin Williams has died.") But just because the perfect works in English in a certain sub-category does not (necessarily) mean that what's the Greek perfect. I don't think grammarians have identified a hot-news perfect for Greek.
Stephen C. Carlson, Ph.D.
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Tony Pope
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Re: Perfects in John 12:29f.

Post by Tony Pope »

An article that may be of interest is:
David Pastorelli, «La Formule Johannique τα̃υτα λαλ́αληκα ὐμ̃ιν (Jn 14,25; 15,11; 16,1.4.6.25.33). Un Exemple de Parfait Transitif.» Filología Neotestamentaria Vol. 19 (2006) 73-88 http://www.bsw.org/filologia-neotestame ... l-19-2006/
The author mentions John 12.29 on p. 79, claiming that the perfect tense underlines the supernatural phenomenon, as also in 9.29.

McKay might perhaps have regarded this example as in the category "that which expresses an activity as significantly on record" (p. 318 in his article 'On the Perfect and Other Aspects in New Testament Greek' Novum Testamentum Vol. 23 (1981) 289-329.) Is that what you mean by "hot news perfect"? The event of speaking has indeed come and gone, but if a speech event was a significant one the world is never the same again.
Bengt Ödman
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Re: Perfects in John 12:29f.

Post by Bengt Ödman »

I was just thinking - If John (for some reason) wanted to use an infinitive construct in ἔλεγεν βροντὴν γεγονέναι· did he really have any option but the perfect? Would not the aorist - ἔλεγεν βροντὴν γενέσθαι - have a future sense, as in e g εἶπεν δοθῆναι αὐτῇ φαγεῖν (Mk 5:43)? In that case, maybe the perfects following are just for keeping the same tense?

(BTW, I now realize that this is my first post since 1994, sorry for being away so long).

Bengt
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