Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Randall Buth <ButhFam AT compuserve.com>]

shalom y'all
>Your discussion of the aorist in LXX seems to presuppose that the
>commonest meaning of the aorist, as a punctiliar past, cannot apply
>here, and so you search out other meanings, as inceptive or overview,
>which are possible but relatively rare. For you write "It certainly is
>not a punctiliar aorist -- as it's not a punctiliar action." But you
>have no linguistic argument that it is not a punctiliar action (at least
>as the LXX translators understood the Hebrew),<

The phrase "as it's not a punctiliar action" bothered me.
I suppose I am supporting Peter here against I don't know what 
since I haven't followed the thread.

"punctiliar aorist" is one traditional way of referring to 
what is called the "perfective aspect" in linguistics:
viewing a whole event "from outside the event". 

That is, not looking at the event, open-endedly, 
imperfectively, from within the event itself. 
And none of this has anything to 
do with how long an event takes or how often it occurs/
occurred. "He ran the boston marathon 30 times during his 
lifetime" is very perfective and would appropriately be an
aorist in Greek.

The aorist makes good sense in the LXX, and as an 
indicative with the augment, it is of course past, as well.

ERRWSO
Randall Buth
Jerusalem