Biblical Hebrew Forum

["Dave Washburn" <dwashbur AT nyx.net>]

> 
> Dear Dave,
> 
> There is evidence that the aorist does not signal pasttense, but only the 
> perfective aspect, even 
> though it has in most cases past reference. Two recent dissertations have 
> argued for that. One 
> example of an aorist with future reference is Jude 1:14 in the NT. As far 
> as I am aware, there is 
> no example of Greek imperfect with non-past reference, so I conclude that 
> it signals both past 
> tense and the imperfective aspect.
> 
> 
Rolf,
I'm not going to pursue this any further because it's taking us too far 
away from Hebrew.  However, I will say that a) there is evidence to 
the contrary, as well; b) details of these "two recent dissertations" 
would be nice; c) Jude 14 (this is the correct way of referring to it, 
since Jude has only one chapter) is clearly a "prophetic past," a 
common phenomenon in biblical and related literature and thus a 
special case that doesn't tell us much about the actual force of the 
aorist, and d) I think we all agree that Ian's notion about the aorist in 
Gen 1:1 is unlikely from a grammatical POV.

Dave Washburn
http://www.nyx.net/~dwashbur
You know you're a lousy artist when you can't
draw a straight line on an Etch-a-Sketch.