In using my Greek for teaching and preaching, I always want to say as much as I can, but not too much (e.g. "the aorist here means once-for-all"). When I first learned Greek, I learned that the perfect tense indicates "completed action with abiding results." As I've studied further, I find Stanley Porter saying, "the action is conceived of by the language user as reflecting a given (often complex) state of affairs" (_Idioms of the Greek New Testament_ p. 22). My question--what can I say about the occurence of a perfect tense (e.g. "the perfect tense here indicates . . ."), and what would be going to far? I've been reading through John, so here's an example: John 5:24 AMHN AMHN LEGW hUMIN hOTI hO TON LOGON MOU AKOUWN KAI PISTEUWN TWi PEMYANTI ME ECEI ZWHN AIWNION KAI EIS KRISIN OUK ERCETAI, ALLA *METABEBHKEN* EK TOU QANATOU EIS THN ZWHN. What could I legitimately say about the *tense* of METABEBHKEN (so that the average church attender would understand)? Thanks much, Jonathan Boyd Ankeny, IA ________________________________________________________________ GET INTERNET ACCESS FROM JUNO! Juno offers FREE or PREMIUM Internet access for less! Join Juno today! For your FREE software, visit: http://dl.www.juno.com/get/tagj. --- B-Greek home page: http://metalab.unc.edu/bgreek You are currently subscribed to b-greek as: [jwrobie@mindspring.com] To unsubscribe, forward this message to leave-b-greek-327Q@franklin.oit.unc.edu To subscribe, send a message to subscribe-b-greek@franklin.oit.unc.edu