Re: Aorist Aspect

From: Carl W. Conrad (cwconrad@artsci.wustl.edu)
Date: Tue Jan 06 1998 - 06:40:01 EST


At 10:43 PM -0600 1/5/98, David S Mann wrote:
>B-Greekers:
>
> Mounce (Basics of Biblical Greek) says that the aorist is "undefined;"
>however, other texts indicate that it is punctiliar. Which is true?
>Thanks for your help.

You'll probably get a dozen different responses to this, since aorist
aspect has drawn more verbiage on this list than anything else within the
last two years. A simple answer may still be useful, however: the aorist
indicates an action externally as a whole, normally in the past (if in
indicative mood at least) although a "gnomic" (proverbial) aorist may refer
to an action that has occurred repeatedly and regularly occurs. One ought
to understand the basic sense of the aorist in contradistinction from the
focus of the present & imperfect focus upon continuing, enduring, or
repetititive (i.e. imperfective, uncompleted action) and the focus of the
perfect and pluperfect upon completion or fulfillment (perfective action).
Outside the indicative, i.e., in participle, infinitive, and in the
subjunctive, imperative, and optative moods, it is the nature of the action
rather than the time of the action that the aorist chiefly indicates.
Personally I think one needs to learn much of this from experience and that
one is likely to get very confused quickly by trying to read complex
accounts of the aorist aspect PRIOR to extensive reading in Greek: the
context of any aorist is more useful for clarifying its function than most
of what grammarians will tell you (IMHO).

Carl W. Conrad
Department of Classics/Washington University
One Brookings Drive/St. Louis, MO, USA 63130/(314) 935-4018
Home: 7222 Colgate Ave./St. Louis, MO 63130/(314) 726-5649
cwconrad@artsci.wustl.edu OR cconrad@yancey.main.nc.us
WWW: http://www.artsci.wustl.edu/~cwconrad/



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