ἐξέστημεν/σωφρονοῦμεν 2 Corinthians 5.13

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Stirling Bartholomew
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Re: ἐξέστημεν/σωφρονοῦμεν 2 Corinthians 5.13

Post by Stirling Bartholomew »

Andrew Chapman wrote: The framework that Robert Funk presents in his Intermediate Grammar, (which is what I happen to have been reading) is that the present tense can be either aoristic or durative, whereas the aorist and imperfect are distinguished by aspect. So aoristic presents such as Acts 16.18 are to be expected (this verse is cited at BDF 320, under 'aoristic present').

Under that section 320, Blass/D/F explain:
In those few cases where a punctiliar act taking place at the moment of speaking is to be denoted, the present is usually used since the punctiliar aorist stems form no present..
As I understand it, the point is that whereas the present stem has both an augmented (past tense ie the imperfect) form and an unaugmented form (the present tense); the aorist stem only has the augmented form. It is the augment which signifies past time.

Andrew
I agree that is what Funk is saying. After 1990 does anyone publishing on NT linguistics with regard to verb aspect accept Funk's framework at this point? There are people here who can answer that. I am not one of them.
C. Stirling Bartholomew
Stephen Carlson
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Re: ἐξέστημεν/σωφρονοῦμεν 2 Corinthians 5.13

Post by Stephen Carlson »

There's a hole in the Greek aspect-tense system in which there is no form that is a present perfective. (The regular future has the right form for this, however, but that is a different story.) This is ordinarily not a problem since it is pretty rare. As a result, either the present or the aorist can be pressed into service for present, perfective usages. Koine usually chooses the former option; the latter option is called the "tragic aorist" or some such.
Stephen C. Carlson, Ph.D.
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Andrew Chapman
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Re: ἐξέστημεν/σωφρονοῦμεν 2 Corinthians 5.13

Post by Andrew Chapman »

Iver Larsen wrote:Maybe the idea of the following verse is: You see (γάρ - Let me explain), when I (we?) had great spiritual revelations, I was concentrating on God, but when I (we?) am ministering to you, I am using my wisdom.
Yes, I agree, I think it might be a bit like that. Or again, perhaps they (the apostolic team) had behaved in an out of the ordinary ecstatic way on a few occasions on a previous visit; then I think a complexive/constative (summary) aorist might be used to convey that. In English, we can use the past tense if there is some distance between now and these previous occasions: if we were ecstatic, it was towards God. If we are sober, it is towards you.

Andrew
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