Acerca del autor

Constantine R. Campbell (PhD, Macquarie University) is a New Testament scholar, author, musician, and documentary host, and lives in Canberra, Australia. He was formerly professor of New Testament at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School and is the author of several books, including Paul and Union with Christ, Advances in the Study of Greek, Basics of Verbal Aspect in Biblical Greek, Keep Your Greek, Outreach and the Artist, and 1, 2 & 3 John in The Story of God Bible Commentary series.

De la contraportada

Verbal aspect in the Greek language has been a topic of significant debate in recent scholarship. The majority of scholars now believe that an understanding of verbal aspect is even more important than verb tense (past, present, etc.). Until now, however, there have been no accessible textbooks, both in terms of level and price (most titles on the topic retail for more than $100).

In this book, Constantine Campbell investigates the function of verbal aspect within the New Testament Greek narrative. He has done a marvelous job in this book of simplifying the concept without getting caught up using terms of linguistics that no one except those schooled in that field can understand. The book includes exercises, an answer key, glossary of key concepts, an appendix covering space and time, and an index to Scripture cited.

Professors and students, at both the undergraduate and graduate levels, will use this is as a supplemental text in both beginning and advanced Greek courses. Pastors that study the Greek text will also appreciate this resource as a supplement to their preaching and teaching.

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Basics of Verbal Aspect in Biblical Greek

Zondervan

Contents

Preface......................................................9Introduction: Verbal Aspect and Exegesis.....................11Verbal Aspect Theory1. What is Verbal Aspect?....................................192. The History of Verbal Aspect..............................263. Perfective Aspect.........................................344. Imperfective Aspect.......................................405. The Problem of the Perfect................................46Verbal Aspect and New Testament Text6. Verbal Lexeme Basics......................................557. Present and Imperfect Tense-forms.........................608. Aorist and Future Tense-Forms.............................839. Perfect and Pluperfect Tense-Forms........................10310. More Participles.........................................118A Concluding Postscript: Space and Time......................129Verbal Glossary..............................................134Answers to Exercises.........................................138Indexes......................................................155

Chapter One

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The semantic nature of the perfect and pluperfect tense-forms is one of the great puzzles in Greek linguistics. There are several suggested options, ranging from the traditional analysis, to perfective aspect, stative aspect, and imperfective aspect. In this chapter we will briefly canvas most of these options before concluding that the perfect is imperfective in aspect.

The Perfect Tense-Form

Traditionally the perfect tense-form was understood as indicating a past action with ongoing consequences. To use the Aktionsart descriptions of an earlier period, the perfect was like a dot and a line. In this way, the perfect was almost a combination of aorist and present tenses - an aoristic action followed by a present state. The great problem with this analysis is that it doesn't work. It yields far too many exceptions, reflected in the multiplicity of categories of perfects listed by grammars. The following examples illustrate the problem.

Many perfects don't express a past action, but only envisage the ongoing consequences:

John 1:26 [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII].

John answered them, "I baptize with water, but among you stands one you do not know."

Another example are those perfects that don't express any ongoing consequences, but only the past action:

Revelation 8:5 [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII].

Then the angel took the censer and filled it.

These examples provide just two of the symptoms that indicate the problems faced by the traditional explanation of the perfect. See the grammars for variations on this theme.

Unfortunately, verbal aspect has not so quickly resolved the matter. We will now briefly survey the attempts that have been made to analyze the perfect in terms of aspect.

Stative Aspect

An aspect not mentioned before this point is called stative aspect. According to McKay, stative aspect views the state, or state of being, of the subject of a verb.

Luke 20:21 [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII].

So they asked him, "Teacher, we know that you speak and teach rightly, and show no partiality, but truly teach the way of God."

By McKay's approach, this perfect is indicating that the disciples ("we") are in a state of knowing that Jesus speaks and teaches rightly. The force of the perfect is to communicate that they are in this state of knowing. So far so good.

Problems start to arise for McKay's conception of the perfect, however, with cases where it seems difficult to attribute the state to the subject rather than the object of the verb. This problem has plagued traditional analyses of the perfect also, but whereas Wackernagel suggested that the stativity should be understood as applying to the object of the verb (i.e., the resultative perfect), McKay suggests something else. He is right to insist that we cannot just transfer the meaning of the perfect onto the object of the verb, and the apparent need to do so flags a problem with our understanding of the perfect. In such cases, McKay argues that the subject is to be seen as the one responsible for the action. This appears to work in many cases, but there are some significantly problematic cases also, such as we see in the example below.

John 7:22 [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII].

Moses gave you circumcision (not that it is from Moses, but from the fathers), and you circumcise a man upon the Sabbath.

This is a good example demonstrating that it is not the responsibility of the subject in view here. According to McKay's approach, Moses as the subject must be viewed as responsible for the giving of circumcision, yet the verse itself explicitly tells us that it was not Moses who gave it, but "the fathers." Thus to conclude that the emphasis of the perfect is to stress the responsibility of the subject, when in the same breath we are told that that is not the point, is surely an illegitimate outcome. There are other such problems with which McKay's version of stative aspect suffers.

A different version of stative aspect is offered by Porter. Stative aspect, according to him, refers to a general state of affairs. This conception's strength is that it removes focus from the subject of the verb, which is so problematic with stative conceptions of the perfect, and creates a general state.

John 12:23 [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII].

And Jesus answered them, "The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified."

According to Porter, the perfect in this verse indicates a new state of affairs: the hour has come, and now things are different. Porter's stative aspect seems to work well here, as indeed it does with many other examples.

There are, nevertheless, significant problems with this version of stative aspect too. To begin with, Porter's stative aspect is difficult to define and does not parallel any kind of aspect in other languages. Furthermore, it is difficult to apply and sometimes results in quite forced exegesis, as the following example illustrates.

John 5:33 [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII].

You sent to John, and he has borne witness to the truth.

The question is: how do these two perfects indicate a new state of affairs? Are we to understand by the first perfect that there is a state of having-sent-to-John-ness? Does the second perfect refer to a state of John-having-witnessed-to-Jesus-ness? Again, there are several such difficulties with this version of stative aspect.

Perhaps most serious of all, however, is the fact that stativity is not normally regarded as an aspectual value. Across all languages and in linguistic theory, stativity is an Aktionsart value, not an aspect.

Perfective Aspect

Fanning concludes as much about stative aspect-stativity is an Aktionsart, not an aspect. His, and Olsen's, solution is to label the perfect tense-form as perfective in aspect, which at least works on the level of nomenclature. One of the reasons for regarding the perfect as perfective in aspect is because it is believed in academia that over the history of the Greek language the perfect eventually merged with the aorist in meaning.

Olsen regards the perfect as perfective in aspect and present in tense. A fairly significant problem here is that there are many perfects that are not present referring, such as the ones in John 5:33 above. If present temporal reference is regarded as a semantic value of the perfect, many instances of usage of the perfect must go unaccounted.

Fanning, however, suggests a more complicated schema. He regards the perfect tense-form as perfective in aspect, present in temporal reference, and stative in Aktionsart. In other words, Fanning posits three distinct semantic values: perfective aspect, present tense, and stative Aktionsart. Aside from the question of whether an Aktionsart value can be semantic, this conception raises other questions: what about perfects that are not stative? What about perfects that are not present in temporal reference?

A further problem with these models is that perfective aspect itself does not work well in explaining usage of the perfect tense-form. For example, perfective aspect does not accommodate stative lexemes well. Lexemes such as [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] are not accounted for under this model, and Fanning calls lexemes like this exceptions. It is worth noting that this means that approximately two-thirds of perfect usage in the New Testament is exceptional. On the contrary, this means that perfective aspect does not demonstrate enough power of explanation when it comes to the perfect tense-form.

Imperfective Aspect

An overlooked fact in this debate is that the perfect parallels the present in its usage far more than it seems to do with the aorist. In fact, the patterns of perfect usage in narrative texts is virtually identical to those of the present. Nearly all perfect indicatives in narrative texts occur within discourse, just like the present. More than this, when the perfect does not occur within discourse, it demonstrates the same patterns as does the present when it is not within discourse. Just as the present forms historical presents with verbs of propulsion and introducers of discourse, so too does the perfect. Such evidence must provoke the question: does the perfect share the aspect of the present? Does the sharing of the same aspect account for these parallel patterns of usage?

I have argued extensively that the answer is "yes." Along with Evans, I argue that the perfect tense-form is imperfective in aspect, which is why it and the present tense-form behave so similarly.

Not only does imperfective aspect explain the parallel usage of the perfect and present tense-forms, but it very nicely accommodates the many stative lexemes that are found in perfect usage. In most languages, imperfective aspect is the natural home of stativity. As such, this model of the perfect fits with what has always been observed-that the perfect often communicates stativity.

But imperfective aspect also is able to explain those perfects that are not stative; imperfective aspect can accommodate other types of lexemes too. It also explains past referring perfects that might seem to behave like aorists. Just as the present tense-form can be used to refer to the past (the historical present), so too can the perfect (the historical perfect). Consequently, imperfective aspect demonstrates the greatest power of explanation when it comes to the semantic meaning of the perfect tense-form.

Heightened Proximity

If, then, the perfect tense-form is imperfective in aspect, we must ask what it is that distinguishes it from the present and imperfect tense-forms. I argue that the perfect semantically encodes imperfective aspect and the spatial value of heightened proximity. In this way, the perfect is proximate like the present, but more so. This may be represented through the diagrams below.

Using again the illustration of the reporter and the street parade, the second diagram represents his taking a step closer to the parade. The parade is unfolding immediately before his eyes, as before, but now is even more proximate; he is viewing the action close up. The effect of this close-up view is that it concentrates the action by zooming in on it.

Heightened proximity, like proximity, is regarded as a semantic value alongside imperfective aspect. The perfect, therefore, semantically encodes imperfective aspect and the spatial value of heightened proximity. As such, it might be appropriate to think of the perfect as a super-present.

The Pluperfect Tense-Form

All agree that whatever aspect the perfect tense-form encodes, the pluperfect shares it. Typically the pluperfect is treated this way-as piggy-backing on the perfect-and therefore does not often receive due consideration on its own merit. By taking a close look at pluperfect usage, we discover that it is even harder to justify stative or perfective aspect than it is with the perfect. But it seems all the more clear that imperfective aspect has great power of explanation.

Just as the perfect parallels the usage of the present, so the pluperfect parallels the usage of the imperfect. It demonstrates the same functions within narrative, providing supplemental information that describes, explains, and gives background. This all fits well with imperfective aspect. It also fits well with the spatial value of remoteness. But if the pluperfect is distinct to the imperfect in its usage, it can function as providing information that is even more in the background than that provided by the imperfect. In other words, the pluperfect sometimes provides information that supplements information that is already supplemental, as the following example illustrates.

Mark 1:34 [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII].

And he healed many who were sick with various diseases, and cast out many demons. And he would not permit the demons to speak, because they knew him.

Here we see that the imperfect tense-form (bold and underlined) provides supplementary material; further description of the scene is given as we are told that Jesus did not permit the demons to speak. However, the pluperfect (bold) provides information that is supplemental to that supplemental information; we are told why Jesus did not allow the demons to speak-because they knew him.

Accordingly, the pluperfect is regarded as being more remote than the imperfect. Just as the perfect encodes heightened proximity in parallel to the proximity of the present, so the pluperfect encodes heightened remoteness in parallel to the remoteness of the imperfect. Thus, the pluperfect indicative semantically encodes imperfective aspect and the spatial value of heightened remoteness.

(Continues...)

Excerpted from Basics of Verbal Aspect in Biblical Greekby Constantine R. Campbell Copyright © 2008 by Constantine R. Campbell. Excerpted by permission.
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