Campbell, Basics of Verbal Aspect, 2nd edition

[James Spinti]

Seems Con Campbell is doing a second edition of his (somewhat flawed) Basics of Verbal Aspect in Biblical Greek:
https://faithgateway.com/products/basic ... 0622374024

Available March 2024, $29.99, but $20.99 at the link above. If you use the coupon code ZA40SP24, you can get it for $17.99.

I'm looking forward to seeing if he's modified his position any based on feedback, but for my money, a better view of verbal aspect is found in Runge and Fresch, The Greek Verb Revisited (Lexham Press).

(By the way, this is from the new Zondervan Academic Catalog that just dropped: https://harpercollins-my.sharepoint.com ... 5FWeb&ga=1. Sorry about the monster url.)
James

[Devenios Doulenios]

James, thanks for the link. I am currently reading the first edition of Campbell's work. Would you care to summarize what you see as the differences between his and Runge's views, and in what ways R. is better? I am just getting started learning about the current linguistics views on this subject. So, any pointers would be welcome. Or, if there is something freely accessible online that would provide such a summary, if you could point us to that, that would be great also.

[James Spinti]

It's been a while since I read it, but the biggest thing that I remember is that his view of the perfect is off. For a good understanding of the perfect, I suggest chapters 13–15 in Runge & Fresch, The Greek Verb.

Steve Runge is on this forum occasionally, as is Randall Buth. They would be able to address it in more detail, but again, those three chapters are a good start.

Hope that helps.

James

[MAubrey]

Campbell is in the small camp of people who think Ancient Greek does not mark past tense on the verb for the aorist and imperfect. He also, as James notes, has a novel view of the perfect, where it denotes what he calls, "heightened proximity" (perfect) and "heightened remoteness" (pluperfect). Not many have found his proposals convincing.

I'll be curious if/how he interacts with my paper on the perfect published in Merkle & Black (2020) Linguistics and New Testament Greek.

[Mitch Tulloch]

Let me offer a few comments from the perspective of someone who is certainly not (yet) an expert

Back in 2016 when I began trying to (re)learn NT Greek in my old age, I bought several books including Campbell's Basics Of Verbal Aspect In Bible Greek. After I read it I thought, "Ah, he makes verbal aspect and the perfect tense very easy to understand!" and continued stumbling along with my GNT interlinear.

But then I found this forum and read some negative comments in it concerning Campbell's ideas, so I decided to buy The Greek Verb Revisited. As I began reading this I quickly concluded that Campbell's views were probably not correct, so I threw out Campbell's book. But then after plowing through Revisted for several months I realized it was mostly over my head, so I threw that book out as well (I try to keep a pretty lean bookshelf) and decided I better get (re)grounded in basic Greek grammar first before I try to understand the finer points of tense/aspect in NT Greek.

So now having finally worked through Dr. Shirley's fun online textbook (and throwing out my interlinear) I've finally reached the point where the chapter on tense/aspect in The Cambridge Grammar of Classical Greek (the book I decided to use as my "intermediate" Greek grammar) actually makes (some) sense to me. I figured that I should probably get grounded in (the contemporary concensus view of) tense/aspect in classical Greek before I try to understand the finer points of how tense/aspect may have changed in Koine.

But having decided upon this route I now very much regret having thrown out Revisted as now I'll have to buy another copy when I'm ready to tackle it again