Elementary New Testament Greek, 2014a

2: Introduction to Verbs in the Present Active Indicative
The upshot of this is twofold:
1) If we want to express the full sense of the Greek Perfect Aspect, we must
resort to English paraphrases. Unfortunately, those paraphrases will
often be bulky and awkward, unt for (for example) the public reading
of Scripture. But careful Bible instruction (whether in church or the
academy) must often resort to such.
2) If we want to avoid bulky and awkward paraphrases when translating
Greek verbs with Perfect Aspect, we may use English perfects (forms
using have, has, or had), so long as we realize that this is a convention, a
“trick” we agree upon for convenience.
To see this at work, let’s look at four examples from the NT. We have underlined the
English perfects used conventionally to represent actual Perfects in the Greek text.
Matthew 4:4 It has been written, ‘Man shall not live by bread alone…’
John 1:34 I have seen and have borne witness that this man is the Son of
God.
Romans 5:5 “…the love of God has been poured out in our hearts…”
Acts 5:28 “You have lled Jerusalem with your teaching.”
The Paraphrases below are designed to take into account the full sense of the Greek
Perfect aspect (together with various factors supplied from context, theology, and
semantics), and might read as follows:
To summarize: In the Greek verb, the seven tenses of the Indicative mood stand
in the intersections of three “times” (past, present, and future) and three “aspects”
(internal, external, and perfect). The Greek Present Tense stands in the intersection
of:
Present Time and
Internal Aspect.
Two Vital Notes Regarding Aspect:
1) We need to make it clear that verbal Aspect is a perspective chosen by
speaker or writer, not a property of an action itself. Take, for example,
the event of the resurrection of Jesus. What sort of an event was it? Was
it a simple event, perhaps accomplished in a single moment? Or was
there a process to it, with progressive stages? Or was it an event having
enduring consequences? If expressed as a verb, in what Aspect should the
resurrection of Jesus be placed (internal, external, perfect)?
But such questions are misguided. The genius of the verbal Aspect is not that it
somehow depicts the nature of events themselves, but that it offers speakers and
writers important options for how they depict, express, or envision those events. We
can all agree that the resurrection of Jesus stands as a single, unrepeatable,
unchangeable event in history. Yet NT writers were free to choose any verbal Aspect
they wished when speaking of the resurrection, depending on their communicative
purposes. As a mental exercise, imagine nding these three sentences in the NT:
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Matthew 4:4 Scripture was written in antiquity, but still remains valid in
the present (to Jesus), ‘Man shall not live by bread alone…’
John 1:34 What I once saw still transxes me, and what I once testied
still rings in your ears, that this man is the Son of God.
Romans 5:5 The love of God was poured out into our hearts, so that even
now (at the time of Paul’s writing) our hearts remain full of love…
Acts 5:5 You lled Jerusalem with your teaching, and even now the city
remains saturated with it.
“As God was raising Jesus, the disciples sat huddled in fear and despair.”
[assume a Greek verb with internal aspect]
“God raised Jesus and seated him far above all powers.” [assume a Greek
verb with external aspect]
“God has raised Jesus from the dead, giving us the victory!” [assume a
Greek verb with perfect aspect]