[B-Greek] Aorist imperative

Elizabeth Kline kline_dekooning at earthlink.net
Fri Mar 23 12:44:57 EST 2007


On Mar 23, 2007, at 12:36 AM, Melvin Bradford wrote:

> Can someone give the information concerning a good modern day Greek  
> Grammar book to define the Aorist imperative and it's usage. The  
> statment "imperative mood is regularly mishandled by exegetes"  
> refers to me because I learned early in my studies the the aorist  
> imperative meant "start/don't start doing" an action.

With certain reservations (see R.Buth's comments on future aorist),  
one could say that S.Porter Idioms of NT Greek is a good place to start.

Take a look at how the present imperative is use with the aorist  
imperative in the same immediate context. The question probably  
should be framed "why is the present imperative used" since the  
aorist is the unmarked aspect.

One very common combination is a present (imperfective aspect)  
imperative of motion (e.g. go, get up) followed by an aorist imperative.

JOHN 4:16 LEGEI AUTHi: hUPAGE FWNHSON TON ANDRA SOU KAI ELQE ENQADE.

Here we have the present (imperfective) hUPAGE followed by two  
aorists FWNHSON and ELQE. The now somewhat standard approach would  
say that hUPAGE is presented as a process whereas FWNHSON and ELQE  
are simple undefined events viewed as a whole. That's ok as far as it  
goes but it seems that the present (imperfective) is also being used  
as a means to demote the significance of the action "going" in  
relation to the actions in the aorist imperative. I would suggest  
that the imperfective here is used somewhat like a participle of  
motion before a finite verb. However, the participle is not used  
since there is a need to express in hUPAGE the imperatival idea  
unambiguously.

This is just one use of the aorist/present imperative.



Elizabeth Kline






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