Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Peter Kirk <peterkirk AT qaya.org>]

On 14/03/2004 20:46, CS Bartholomew wrote:

> On 3/14/04 2:26 PM, "Peter Kirk" <peterkirk AT qaya.org> wrote:
>
>  
>
> > On the other hand, the aorist indicative
> > is unambiguously past.
> >    
>
> A better way to say this is the aorist indicative is unambiguously aorist.
>
> S.Porter buried the notion that the "aorist indicative is unambiguously
> past" 15 years ago (1989).
>
> This is off topic, so I will desist.
>
>  
Well, it is not really off topic as this is a key point in my criticism 
of Rolf's work.

I haven't looked into Porter's work in detail, but from a brief survey 
it seems to suffer from the same misunderstandings as Rolf's work in 
WAYYIQTOL. Undeniably the aorist indicative (I deliberately rule out 
other moods and non-finite forms) was the form most commonly used in 
Greek to express a simple action in past time, just as the same is true 
of WAYYIQTOL in biblical Hebrew. There may be exceptional circumstances 
in which either aorist indicative or WAYYIQTOL is used in non-past 
contexts (although many of these can be understood as relative past). 
But these exceptions do not disprove the rule.

If you wish to dispute my conclusion that the aorists in Deu 10:3 and 
Ezk 12:7, 20:9,14,22, 24:18 are unambiguously past, you need to look at 
ancient translations of the LXX and see if any of them are non-past.

--
Peter Kirk
peter AT qaya.org (personal)
peterkirk AT qaya.org (work)
http://www.qaya.org/