The Perfect Storm (Studies in Biblical Greek) 9781433183744, 9781433168161, 9781433168178, 9781433183751, 1433183749

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Studies in Biblical Greek

The Perfect Storm Critical Discussion of the Semantics of the Greek Perfect Tense Under Aspect Theory

Constantine R. Campbell, Buist M. Fanning, and Stanley E. Porter Edited and with an introduction by D. A. Carson

PETER LANG

Nowhere are the chaotic debates surrounding contemporary aspect theory more heated than in discussions of the theory’s application to Hellenistic Greek, and especially its understanding of the semantics of the Greek perfect tense. This book is a distilled academic debate among three of the best-known scholars on the subject, each defending his own unique interpretation while engaging the other two. The Perfect Storm will prove an indispensable resource for any scholar seeking to write convincingly on the Greek perfect in the future.

Constantine R. Campbell is Senior Vice-President for Global Content and Bible Teaching for Our Daily Bread. He is formerly Professor of New Testament at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School. Buist M. Fanning is Senior Professor Emeritus of New Testament Studies at Dallas Theological Seminary. Stanley E. Porter is President and Dean, Professor of New Testament, and Roy A. Hope Chair of Christian Worldview at McMaster Divinity College. D. A. Carson is Emeritus Professor of New Testament at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School.

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The Perfect Storm

Studies in Biblical Greek D. A. Carson General Editor Vol. 21

The Studies in Biblical Greek series is part of the Peter Lang Humanities list. Every volume is peer reviewed and meets the highest quality standards for content and production.

PETER LANG New York • Bern • Berlin Brussels • Vienna • Oxford • Warsaw

Constantine R. Campbell, Buist M. Fanning, and Stanley E. Porter

The Perfect Storm Critical Discussion of the Semantics of the Greek Perfect Tense Under Aspect Theory Edited and with an introduction by D. A. Carson

PETER LANG New York • Bern • Berlin Brussels • Vienna • Oxford • Warsaw

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Campbell, Constantine R. | Fanning, Buist M. | Porter, Stanley E. | Carson, D. A., editor. Title: The perfect storm: critical discussion of the semantics of the Greek perfect tense under aspect theory / Constantine R. Campbell, Buist M. Fanning, and Stanley E. Porter; edited and with an introduction by D. A. Carson. Description: New York: Peter Lang, 2021. Series: Studies in biblical Greek; vol. 21 | ISSN 0897-7828 Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2019045673 | ISBN 978-1-4331-8374-4 (hardback) ISBN 978-1-4331-6816-1 (ebook pdf) | ISBN 978-1-4331-6817-8 (epub) ISBN 978-1-4331-8375-1 (mobi) Subjects: LCSH: Greek language, Biblical—Tense. | Greek language, Biblical—Aspect. | Greek language, Biblical—Semantics. Classification: LCC PA847 .P47 2021 | DDC 487/.4—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019045673 DOI 10.3726/b17518       Bibliographic information published by Die Deutsche Nationalbibliothek. Die Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the “Deutsche Nationalbibliografie”; detailed bibliographic data are available on the Internet at http://dnb.d-nb.de/.        

  © 2021 Peter Lang Publishing, Inc., New York 80 Broad Street, 5th floor, New York, NY 10004 www.peterlang.com   All rights reserved. Reprint or reproduction, even partially, in all forms such as microfilm, xerography, microfiche, microcard, and offset strictly prohibited.  

Soli Deo gloria.

Table of Contents

Series Editor’s Preface  ix 1. An Introduction to the Debate  1 D. A. Carson 2. The Greek Perfect: Why It Isn’t  5 Constantine R. Campbell 3. Response to Campbell’s Imperfective View of the Greek Perfect  25 Buist M. Fanning 4. Why the Greek Perfect Tense-Form Is Stative: A Response to Constantine R. Campbell  45 Stanley E. Porter 5. Defining the Ancient Greek Perfect: Interacting with Recent Alternatives to the Traditional View of the Perfect  61 Buist M. Fanning 6. Response to Fanning  79 Constantine R. Campbell 7. Defining the Greek Perfect Tense-Form as Stative: A Response to Buist M. Fanning  91 Stanley E. Porter 8. The Perfect Isn’t Perfect—It’s Stative: The Meaning of the Greek Perfect Tense-Form in the Greek Verbal System  105 Stanley E. Porter 9. Response to Porter  129 Constantine R. Campbell

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10. Response to Porter’s Stative View of the Greek Perfect  143 Buist M. Fanning Bibliography  159 Index of Names  169 Index of Scripture  173

Series Editor’s Preface

Studies in Biblical Greek is an occasional series of monographs designed to promote and publish the latest research into the Greek of both Testaments. The Series does not assume that biblical Greek is a distinct dialect within the larger world of koinē: on the contrary, the assumption is that biblical Greek is part and parcel of the Hellenistic Greek that dominated the Mediterranean world from about 300 B.C. to A.D. 300. If the Series focuses on the corpora of the Old and New Testaments, it is because these writings generate major interest around the world, not only for religious but also for historical and academic reasons. Research into the broader evidence of the period, including epigraphical and inscriptional materials as well as literary works, is welcome in the Series, provided the results are cast in terms of their bearing on biblical Greek. In the same way, the Series is devoted to fresh philological, syntactical and linguistic study of the Greek of the biblical books, with the subsidiary aim of displaying the contribution of such to accurate exegesis. The present volume is an unusual entry in the SBG series. In the controversial world of aspect theory, nothing is more controversial than the semantics of the Greek perfect tense-form. Here three prominent scholars argue for their respective understandings of the Greek perfect, and seek also to rebut the other two. The introductory chapter sets out the origin and shape of the chapters. Few will be the readers who are not almost convinced by one protagonist or another, only to be similarly almost convinced by the next protagonist. Let the debate begin! D. A. Carson Trinity Evangelical Divinity School

1.  An Introduction to the Debate D. A. Carson In November 2010, Constantine R. Campbell, Buist M. Fanning, and Stanley E. Porter engaged each other in a spirited debate on the Greek perfect. The setting was the Biblical Greek Language and Linguistics section of SBL. The section is normally well attended, but that day something over 600 scholars were packed into the room. (I know; from where I was standing at the back of the room, I had a good view as I counted them.) The time constraints being what they are on these occasions, there was little time for detailed interaction among the three presenters, and still less for questions from the floor. There was just enough time for interaction that all of us who attended could glimpse the sparks among the three presenters and the interest of the audience. After that session, I  suggested that the three might consider collecting their respective contributions into a book for the Studies in Biblical Greek series, and they readily concurred. Discussion yielded two further decisions: (1) Instead of briefly revising the material they had just presented, they would engage in extensive revision, including reflections prompted by what they had heard from the other two participants. In other words, the core papers would be ratcheted up to a higher level. And then each scholar would respond to the other two. The aim was to make the level of interaction more detailed and more penetrating than what was possible in one SBL session. (2) Although there are views of the semantics of the Greek perfect tense-form other than the three articulated here, it was decided to restrict this book to a discussion of the findings of the three scholars represented here. That second point requires further elucidation. First, this book focuses on the views of these three scholars, and only accidentally on the way their respective views are sometimes adopted, defended, and critiqued elsewhere. For instance, Mathewson and Emig1 largely align 1 David L. Mathewson and Elodie Ballantine Emig, Intermediate Greek Grammar: Syntax for Students of the New Testament (Grand Rapids: Baker, 2016).

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with Porter; Kenneth L.  McKay, a classicist by training, developed aspect theory in his study of the Greek verb in classical Greek2 before turning his attention to the New Testament3; and, although there are of course idiosyncratic preferences in his work, his theory belongs to the same species of aspect theory represented in these pages4—not least his treatment of the Greek perfect.5 Similarly, there are studies of verbal aspect in, say, Mark’s Gospel6 that operate under one or more of the same theories that constrain this book. Our focus here, however, is on the work of Campbell, Fanning, and Porter. Second, aspect theory is currently in a state of flux and uncertainty. We have returned to the time of the Judges: everyone does as they see fit (Judg. 21:25). Even at the level of terminology, there is little consistency. For example, a scholar as eminent as Geoffrey Horrocks asserts that certain “verbs, whose lexical aspectual character (or Aktionsart) might … be described as [such and such]”7—thereby identifying lexical aspectual character and Aktionsart, an identification that could not be approved by any of the participants in this volume. In some ways, the most comprehensive treatment of the current debate is The Greek Verb Revisited, to which I have just referred,8 but its subtitle, A Fresh Approach for Biblical Exegesis, is wildly optimistic if the words “fresh approach” are meant to signal unity of both method and result. The book includes numerous outstanding and thought-provoking essays, but that doesn’t mean they cohere very well. If there are commonalities in the essays in Fresh Approach, one of the more striking is this: Greek tense-forms commonly grammaticalize both time and kind of action (or the 2 Greek Grammar for Students:  A Concise Grammar of Classical Attic with Special Reference to Aspect in the Verb (Canberra: Australian National University, 1974). 3 Ibid., A New Syntax of the Verb in New Testament Greek:  An Aspectual Approach (Studies in Biblical Greek 5; New York: Peter Lang, 1994). 4 This is not to say that Campbell, Fanning, and Porter always agree with him, any more than they always agree with each other: see, for example, Stanley E. Porter, “Time and Aspect in New Testament Greek:  A Response to K.  L. McKay,” in Linguistic Analysis of the Greek New Testament: Studies in Tools, Methods, and Practice (Grand Rapids: Baker, 2015), 159–74. 5 Ibid., “The Use of the Ancient Greek Perfect Down to the End of the Second Century Century AD,” Bulletin of the Institute of Classical Studies 12 (1965):  1–21; idem, “On the Perfect and Other Aspects in the Greek Non-Literary Papyri,” Bulletin of the Institute of Classical Studies 27 (1980): 23–49; idem, “On the Perfect and Other Aspects in New Testament Greek,” Novum Testamentum 23 (1981): 289–329. 6 Rodney J. Decker, Temporal Deixis of the Greek Verb in the Gospel of Mark with Reference to Verbal Aspect (Studies in Biblical Greek 10; New York: Peter Lang, 2001). 7 “Envoi,” in The Greek Verb Revisited: A Fresh Approach for Biblical Exegesis, ed. Steven E. Runge & Christopher J. Fresch (Bellingham: Lexham, 2016), 629. 8 See n.7.

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author’s choice of how to present an event or kind of action). What is usually missing is rigorous discussion as to how one decides between, on the one hand, the inference that the entire semantic freight of a verb in a particular context is encoded in its morphology, and, on the other, the inference that the tense-form encodes part of the total semantic freight (e.g., verbal aspect; or, under a more traditional theory, time relationships), while other parts are conveyed by lexis, deictic markers, syntactical peculiarities, discourse considerations, and so forth. A third reason for restricting the number and focus of the participants in this volume is that not only are there many competing positions surfacing in academic aspect theory, but the sub-disciplines that have a bearing on how to understand the perfect keep multiplying like rabbits. Debates that affect one’s grasp of the perfect include the interplay between tense-form and discourse analysis,9 verbal forms and grounding status (the relationship between tenseform and theme line or support line), diachronic and synchronic analyses,10 markedness, prominence (including backgrounding and foregrounding, and word order), systemic linguistics, the underlying morphological structure of the Greek verbal system, and much more. Another way of exposing the conceptual hurdles that must be surmounted even to get a conversation going on the semantics of the Greek perfect tense-form is to consider briefly the most recent comprehensive theory of the perfect, that of Robert Crellin.11 Leaning on the work of Wolfgang Klein’s semantic framework as a reference point,12 which provides a description of tense and aspect predicates in terms of Situation Time, Topic Time, and Utterance Time, Crellin assesses and finds inadequate other proposals before proposing that “the perfect derives 9 See, for example, Elizabeth Robar, “The Historical Present in NT Greek: An Exercise in Interpreting Matthew,” in The Greek Verb Revisited, 329–52. At one level, her work is admirably careful; at another, seems wedded, without defense, to the view that the present tense-form, outside locations in Matthew where the historical present occurs, encodes present time. Otherwise put, unless I have misunderstood her, she seems to address semantic questions by appealing to pragmatic considerations. 10 For a succinct summary of the bearing of the history of the perfect on our understanding of the tense-form, see especially. Klaas Bentein, “Perfect,” Encyclopedia of Ancient Greek Language and Linguistics, https://referenceworks.brillonline.com. ezproxy.tiu.edu/entries/encyclopedia-of-ancient-greek-language-and-linguistics/ perfect-EAGLLCOM_00000375, accessed 17 February 2015. 11 The Syntax and Semantics of the Perfect Active in Koine Greek (Publications of the Philological Society 47; Chichester: Wiley Blackwell, 2016); idem, and more briefly, “The Semantics of the Perfect in the Greek of the New Testament,” in The Greek Verb Revisited, 430–57. 12 “The Present Perfect Puzzle,” Language 68 (1992): 525–52; idem, Time in Language (Germanic Linguistics; London: Routledge, 1994).

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a homogeneous atelic eventuality from the predicate and includes [Topic Time] within the [Situation Time] of this eventuality,”13 and then applies his rubrics to the well-known diversity of functions of the perfect tense-form. It remains to be seen whether Crellin will win a wide following; what is certain is that his understanding of the semantics of the Greek perfect tense-form inhabits another continent than where Campbell, Fanning, and Porter live. So if in this book we have narrowed the field of inquiry, we have nevertheless increased its depth. The nine-year delay between the original presentation of (an abbreviated form of) the core papers and the publication of this book sprang from several factors, including my own indolence. Nevertheless our hope is that the detailed argumentation in these papers will be consulted for many years to come. Our warm thanks to the careful labor of Desmond Teo, who helped with the indexes.

13 Crellin, “Semantics of the Perfect,” 454.

2.  The Greek Perfect: Why It Isn’t Constantine R. Campbell

1.  Introduction In this essay, I will argue that the best explanation for the use of the Greek perfect is that it is imperfective in aspect. For some, the very idea that a “perfect” might be imperfective is a stumbling block in and of itself. Others might be reticent to jettison traditional understandings of the perfect system. Yet others may prefer to regard the perfect as stative in aspect. My chief argument for the imperfective aspect of the Greek perfect is that, counter-intuitive nomenclature notwithstanding, imperfective aspect provides the strongest explanatory power for its use in context. In this essay I aim to do the following: (1) Briefly restate some elements of my critiques of the traditional view and of stative aspect; (2) Clear some misconceptions about imperfective aspect, and restate some of the strengths of understanding the perfect as imperfective; and (3) Respond to Porter’s lengthy critique of this understanding.1

2.  The Greek Perfect Isn’t The burden of this first section is to point out problems with the two main approaches to the Greek perfect: the traditional view and the stative aspect understanding. It will be observed that neither approach offers the most compelling explanation of the full usage of the perfect, and that both approaches 1 I am also aware of the critiques of Mathewson and Cirafesi, but since these scholars follow Porter, I will restrict my interaction to him. See David L. Mathewson, Verbal Aspect in the Book of Revelation (Linguistic Biblical Studies 4; Leiden: Brill, 2010), 31–34; Wally V.  Cirafesi, Verbal Aspect in Synoptic Parallels:  On the Method and Meaning of Divergent Tense-Form Usage in the Synoptic Passion Narratives (Linguistic Biblical Studies 7; Leiden: Brill, 2013), 41–45.

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suffer from significant theoretical weaknesses. We turn first to consider the traditional view.

2.1  Against the Traditional View Simply stated, the “traditional” view of the perfect claims that it conveys a past action with present consequences. Strictly speaking, Fanning does not hold to a traditional conception of the Greek perfect. His approach is aspectual, while the traditional perfect is built upon Aktionsart categories. Nevertheless, Fanning’s aspectual analysis of the perfect recasts the traditional understanding into aspectual categories. He regards the perfect to be a combination of perfective aspect, past tense, and stative Aktionsart,2 and he regards this as consistent with the traditional understanding of the perfect. Since Fanning regards his own conception as compatible with the traditional view, or at least an aspectual reformulation of such, I will discuss both together. 2.1.1  Exceptions at Both Ends of the Semantic Conception Along with several others, I  have observed that the traditional description requires a great deal of flexibility in order to account for perfect usage. Sometimes it is the past action that is emphasized, while the present state that emerges is not regarded as significant (the extensive or consummative perfect). Other times, it is the present result of the verbal action that is emphasized while the past action is less significant (called the intensive perfect by some grammars). Additionally, it is admitted that sometimes the perfect expresses a purely aoristic action, thereby not admitting a present result at all (the aoristic perfect), or, conversely, the perfect may express only the present result with no hint of a past action in view (either the perfect of existing state or the intensive perfect).3 How, then, does one account for the enormous flexibility required to describe the usage of the Greek perfect? The short answer is that there are multiple types of exceptions to the rule. For instance, the numerous occurrences of οἶδα and ἕστηκα are described as Homerisms that evidently became fossilized.4 Fanning lists other lexemes that express a “present stative meaning,” which are also regarded as fossilized forms, and are therefore exceptional.5 As 2 Buist M.  Fanning, Verbal Aspect in New Testament Greek (Oxford Theological Monographs; Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1990), 112–20. 3 Constantine R. Campbell, Verbal Aspect, the Indicative Mood, and Narrative: Soundings in the Greek of the New Testament (Studies in Biblical Greek 13; New  York:  Peter Lang, 2007), 162. 4 Fanning, Verbal Aspect, 112, n. 74. 5 Fanning, Verbal Aspect, 229.

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for those perfects that appear to behave as aorists, they likewise are regarded as exceptional: “there are a few perfects in the NT which display a tendency to become virtual aorists in denoting simply a past action without reference to its present consequence.”6 He argues that true aoristic perfects are rare, and are nevertheless distinct from aorist tense-forms “in that they refer not only to a past occurrence but also to some present result of the action.”7 He does not elaborate as to how this present result of the action is expressed or to be understood. Consequently, Fanning regards purely present perfects and purely aoristic perfects as exceptions that were produced through the diachronic development of the language:  “Exceptions to this pattern lie at either end of the historical spectrum.”8 The difficulty with this analysis is not so much related to the diachronic facts, but to the accommodation of them. These “exceptional” uses of the perfect are awkwardly accommodated by the traditional view. If we are serious about the linguistic principle of power of explanation, an approach that more simply accommodates the full usage of the perfect is preferable. 2.1.2  It Is Theoretically Weak to Allow Parts of the Semantic Conception to Be Canceled The distinction between semantics and pragmatics has become standard in discussions about Greek over the past twenty or more years. This distinction is widely held in linguistics, beyond Greek studies, and while there are varying ways in which these terms are defined, nevertheless it remains a powerful tool. A significant weakness of the traditional view of the perfect is that its supposed semantic values are regularly and routinely transgressed. Whenever a perfect does not seem to convey a past action, this value is canceled. Whenever a perfect does not seem to convey present consequences, that value is canceled. But, of course, the entire point of the term “semantics”—at least in the context of Greek verbal semantics—is that semantic values are uncancellable. Even if we allow a few “exceptions” here or there for whatever reason, we surely all agree that semantic values are meant to be expressed consistently, otherwise we cannot label them semantic values. The traditional view of the Greek perfect claims that past action and present consequences are the semantic values of the form, but the fact that there are a staggering number of perfects that either do not convey a past action, or do not convey present consequences, makes the point clearly: these are not semantic values of the

6 Fanning, Verbal Aspect, 112, n. 74. 7 Fanning, Verbal Aspect, 303. 8 Fanning, Verbal Aspect, 112, n. 74.

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Greek perfect. They are frequently and regularly canceled. Only by rejecting the standard definition of “semantics” can the traditional view be salvaged. 2.1.4  The Latinization of the Greek Perfect Finally, while it has yet to be proved, the traditional understanding of the Greek perfect is likely a latinization, like deponency. At the 2010 SBL meeting, Stanley Porter, Bernard Taylor, Jonathan Pennington, and I  argued that the category of deponency is a five hundred year-old error. Taylor in particular demonstrated that it was introduced to Greek grammar through the widespread latinization process of the Renaissance period. Taylor writes, “At least by the Renaissance, Latin grammar and terminology had become the norm and were used to describe and delimit other languages, not only within, but even beyond the Indo-European family.”9 Indeed, the last one hundred and fifty years have witnessed several corrections to our understanding of Greek grammar, overturning errors introduced through latinization. The traditional understanding of the perfect likely fits this category of error. It cannot be found in the ancient Greek grammarians such as Dionysius Thrax, and in that sense is no more “traditional” than any other view presented in this volume; it is merely the oldest “modern” view of the Greek perfect. Thus, among the chief problems of the “traditional” view of the Greek perfect are the following issues: its semantic conception does not offer a compelling explanation of the full usage of the perfect; when explanations are offered, the semantics of the form frequently require cancellation; and it is likely an innovation introduced by the latinization process of the Renaissance period, and therefore does not belong to the Greek language any more than deponency does. In this respect, it does not deserve the title “traditional,” which misleads many into thinking that it is the way in which the Greek perfect has always been understood. We turn now to the stative aspect understanding of the Greek perfect.

2.2  Against Stative Aspect Porter’s stative aspect understanding of the Greek perfect is developed from the work of McKay and Louw,10 and avoids some of the problems of the 9 Bernard A. Taylor, “Deponency and Greek Lexicography,” in Biblical Greek Language and Lexicography:  Essays in Honor of Frederick W.  Danker (edited by Bernard A.  Taylor, John A.  L. Lee, Peter R.  Burton, and Richard E.  E. Whitaker; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2004), 170–71. 10 K. L.  McKay, A New Syntax of the Verb in the New Testament Greek: An Aspectual Approach (Studies in Biblical Greek 5; New York: Peter Lang), 31; J. P. Louw, “Die Semantiese Waarde van die Perfektum in Hellenistiese Grieks,” Acta Classica 10 (1967):  23–32. McKay employs the label “perfect aspect” when referring to the

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traditional view. For Porter, “The Perfect grammaticalizes the speaker’s conception of the verbal process as a state or condition.”11 Rather than the traditional view’s claim that the perfect encodes a past event with present consequences (or a state resulting from the past event), stative aspect is entirely stative. As such, those many perfects that do not appear to convey a past event are better explained through stative aspect than through traditional accounts. The stative aspect conception also avoids the theoretical problem of canceled semantic values (see Section 2.1.2, above). Stative aspect, however, introduces new problems at the theoretical level, as well as having some difficulty in explaining certain types of perfect usage. 2.2.1  Stative Aspect Divorces Semantics from the Verbal Subject Porter’s model of stative aspect parallels Wackernagel’s resultative perfect, which regards stativity applying to the object of the verb rather than the subject.12 Porter has argued against the resultative perfect at length,13 but he has nevertheless committed a parallel error—despite his objections to the contrary.14 Instead of attributing stativity to the subject of the verb, as a finite verb should, Porter attributes stativity to “the state of affairs” or “the situation,” whatever that is. He thus divorces the semantic meaning of the perfect from the subject of the verb in that the stativity of the perfect does not relate to the subject of the verb, but rather to the surrounding situation. While this view differs from the resultative perfect in that the latter views stativity modifying the object of the verb, rather than the subject, it has in common the idea that the semantics of the verb do not modify the subject. In effect, the “subject” of Porter’s perfect is “everything,” that is, the state of affairs in general. This contravenes the purpose of a finite verb, which (by definition) is to indicate the action or state of a specified subject. If one wishes to convey a verbal idea without specifying a subject, the Greek infinitive is ready at hand.

perfect form in order to avoid terminological confusion, but his understanding of the “perfect” aspect is stative: McKay, A New Syntax, 31ff. Ironically, this term can easily be confused with “perfective aspect.” 11 Stanley E. Porter, Verbal Aspect in the Greek of the New Testament with Reference to Tense and Mood (Studies in Biblical Greek 1; New York: Peter Lang, 1989), 257. 12 See my Verbal Aspect, 163–66, 169–72. 13 Porter, Verbal Aspect, 273–81. 14 Stanley E.  Porter, “Greek Linguistics and Lexicography,” in Understanding the Times: New Testament Studies in the 21st Century. Essays in Honor of D. A. Carson on the Occasion of his 65th Birthday (eds. Andreas J.  Köstenberger and Robert W. Yarbrough; Wheaton: Crossway, 2011), 47–48.

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2.2.2  Transitive Lexemes Are a Case in Point In relation to the previous point, transitive lexemes are poorly accommodated by Porter’s stative aspect. The problem with transitive lexemes for any version of stative aspect is that they do not permit stativity to be attributed to their subjects. These perfects are traditionally classed “aoristic-perfects”; they simply denote an action involving a transference of energy, with the subject performing said transference. It is implausible that any kind of stativity is attributed to the subject of such verbs. Thus, Porter analyzes these perfects as communicating stativity of the situation, rather than the subject. This is an unconvincing analysis of Greek perfects with transitive lexemes. 2.2.3  Stativity Is Not an Aspect For the wider linguistic world, stativity is not regarded as an aspectual value— at least not in the way we are using the term “aspect” to refer to viewpoint aspect. Porter has objected to this observation, citing a number of general linguists who, he claims, support the notion of stative aspect. I will respond to this objection below, but for now I restate my original observation: only in Greek studies is stativity regarded a viewpoint aspect. A careful reading of the literature strongly suggests that the conception of “stative aspect” represents a misunderstanding of aspect. Viewpoint aspect is a binary opposition of internal and external viewpoints, or imperfective and perfective aspect. Only by using the term “aspect” to refer to something other than viewpoint, such as lexical aspect, or procedural aspect—neither of which concerns viewpoint—will we find anything other than this binary opposition. We will return to the problems of Porter’s approach in §4 below, but first I  will address some misconceptions about imperfective aspect and identify some of its strengths in explaining the functions of the Greek perfect.

3.  The Imperfective Perfect I have argued that the Greek perfect is, in fact, imperfective in aspect, following T. V. Evans.15 There are several strands of evidence that point in this direction, the most significant being the perfect’s functions in text, both at micro and macro levels. At the micro level, the widespread stative function of 15 See T.  V. Evans, Verbal Syntax of the Greek Pentateuch:  Natural Greek Usage and Hebrew Interference (Oxford:  Oxford University Press, 2001), 30–32. Cf. also his “Future Directions for Aspect Studies in Ancient Greek,” in Biblical Greek Language and Lexicography:  Essays in Honor of Frederick W.  Danker (eds. Bernard A.  Taylor, John A. L. Lee, Peter R. Burton, and Richard E. Whitaker; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2004), 206.

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the perfect should be interpreted as an Aktionsart expression of imperfective aspect, not a third, stative, aspect (contra Porter).16 Any past temporal reference that accompanies stative expression is regarded as a result of lexeme in context (contra Fanning).17 At the macro level, the perfect indicative is very clearly a discourse tense-form, overlapping with the present indicative.18 Even when the perfect is not found in discourse contexts, occurring rarely on the mainline of narratives, for example, this function parallels the same function of the Greek present.19 The most likely explanation for the tight parallels between the perfect and present indicative tense-forms is that they share the same aspectual value.

3.1  Clearing Misconceptions Judging from formal and informal responses about my previous work on the Greek perfect, in which I have argued that it conveys imperfective aspect, it is evident that two misconceptions in particular ought to be cleared before addressing some of the strengths of this understanding of the semantic nature of the perfect. 3.1.1  Imperfective Aspect Does Not Mean “in progress” The imperfective aspect of the Greek perfect will be harder to accept if one misunderstands imperfective aspect. It is commonplace to describe imperfective aspect as “progressive.” That is, imperfective aspect is understood to view an action in progress. This, however, is mistaken. Imperfective aspect is the internal viewpoint; it is used to portray an action from the inside. Progression is but one function of imperfective aspect; it is not what imperfective aspect means. This can be seen clearly with Greek present indicatives that convey stativity. Lexemes such as γινώσκω and ζάω do not convey an action in progress, or a process of any kind—even as present indicatives. They simply convey a state: I know and I live. This very common use of the Greek present indicative demonstrates that not all Greek presents are progressive. To claim otherwise is to conflate a pragmatic function of the present form with its semantic meaning. In evaluating whether or not the Greek perfect encodes imperfective aspect, we must be clear on how imperfective aspect is to be understood. If 16 See my Verbal Aspect, 187–89; cf. 166–75. 17 Evans, Verbal Syntax, 30. 18 I will not pursue this line of argumentation further in this essay, but see my Verbal Aspect, 175–87. 19 See my Verbal Aspect, 208–209.

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one mistakenly thinks that imperfective aspect is progressive, one may reject imperfective aspect as an explanation for the Greek perfect, since progression is not an obvious function of the form. In fact, most perfects are stative. Imperfective aspect does not suggest that they are in fact progressive; rather imperfective aspect is the natural means by which to convey stativity. 3.1.2  “Heightened proximity” Is a Familiar Idea with Novel Nomenclature I will return to this issue below, but I freely acknowledge that I have invented the term “heightened proximity” to describe the difference between the Greek perfect and the present. Both forms express imperfective aspect according to my model of the verbal system, and the spatial metaphor of heightened proximity distinguishes these two imperfectives in meaning and function. While I  have invented the term “heightened proximity,” the concept it seeks to convey is not novel. Prominence and intensification are conveyed in several languages through morphological indicators. An obvious example for this readership is from Hebrew. The Piel and Pual binyanim are widely recognized as expressing intensification of the basic Qal binyan.20 This function is reflected in the morphology of both binyanim through the strengthening of the second root letter—doubling occurs through gemination (indicated by dagesh forte).21 The notion of heightened proximity, issuing the functions of prominence and intensification, and reflected by the morphological reduplication of the perfect system, is not linguistically novel.22

3.2  Imperfective Aspect and Perfect Usage We turn now to consider some of the strengths of an imperfective aspect understanding of the Greek perfect. 20 W. Gesenius, Gesenius’ Hebrew Grammar (ed. E.  Kautzsch; trans. A.  E. Cowley; Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1910), 141–43; A. B. Davidson, An Introductory Hebrew Grammar with Progressive Exercises in Reading, Writing and Pointing (25th ed.; revised by John Mauchline; Edinburgh: T&T Clark), 105–107; Moshe Greenberg, Introduction to Hebrew (Engelwood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall, 1965), 58–59; Menahem Mansoor, Biblical Hebrew Step-by-Step (2nd ed.; Grand Rapids:  Baker, 1980), 191–92; Thomas O.  Lambdin, Introduction to Biblical Hebrew (London:  Darton, Longman and Todd, 1973), 194; C. L. Seouw, A Grammar for Biblical Hebrew (rev. ed.; Nashville:  Abingdon, 1995), 174; Allen P.  Ross, Introducing Biblical Hebrew (Grand Rapids: Baker, 2001), 193–97, 200–203. 21 In referring to Hebrew, I  am not claiming that there is some kind of interdependence, or derived relationship, between Greek and Hebrew; I am simply pointing out that the concept of intensification of verbal meaning through morphology may be observed in other languages. 22 This issue will be addressed again, in Section 4.1 below.

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3.2.1  Imperfective A spect Is the Natural Bearer of Stative Aktionsart It is uncontroversial to assert that imperfective aspect is the natural bearer of stative Aktionsart. As Carl Bache observes, in “most languages imperfective forms are typically used to refer to [stative] situations.”23 Comrie also notes that the combination of stativity and imperfective aspect is natural.24 As Szemerényi indicates, “If the Greek perfect expressed a state resulting from a past action, then it is quite clearly, normally, a representative of imperfective aspect, and not a different kind of thing.”25 Thus, to find an abundance of stative Greek perfects, as we all do, should be regarded as evidence that points to imperfective aspect, rather than any other aspect. 3.2.2  Imperfective Aspect Is Sufficiently Broad to Explain the Variety of Perfect Uses Imperfective aspect is able to account for the full spectrum of usage of the Greek perfect. We have already established that it naturally conveys stative Aktionsart. This accounts for the majority of Greek perfect usage. Those perfects that, in context, indicate a past action from which the state arises is comfortably accommodated by imperfective aspect, as we see from the usage of the Greek present indicative, which is imperfective in aspect and can perform the same function. Even those perfects that appear to be “aoristic,” namely perfects with transitive lexemes, may be explained through imperfective aspect. These are no different from the present indicative phenomenon of the historical present; while imperfective in aspect, certain lexical groups are used in past-referring contexts. So too the perfect. So-called “aoristic” perfects are, in fact, historical perfects, and function in parallel to historical presents. 3.2.3  Imperfective Aspect Fits the Morphology of the Greek Perfect Three things are widely accepted about the origins of the Greek perfect: it developed out of the Greek present tense-form; the perfect represented an intensification of the Greek present; and the morphology of reduplication originally signaled intensification. Georg Curtius says that “the perfect indicative was originally nothing but a particular kind of present formation. As a reduplicated present with an intensive meaning this form separated itself from the present-stem and became by degrees an independent member in 23 Carl Bache, “Aspect and Aktionsart:  Towards a Semantic Distinction,” Journal of Linguistics 18 (1982): 69. 24 Bernard Comrie, Aspect: An Introduction to the Study of Verbal Aspect and Related Problems (Cambridge Textbooks in Linguistics; Cambridge:  Cambridge University Press, 1976), 51. 25 Oswald Szemerényi, “The Origin of Aspect in the Indo-European Languages,” Glotta 65 (1987): 10.

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the system of verbal forms, with a distinctive stamp of its own.”26 He later adds, “[W]‌e have seen repeatedly that the original force of the reduplication was intensive and that the perfect was a present to start with. […] We have had reason to think that the perfect was originally nothing but an intensive present.”27 A. T. Robertson later reflects the consensus indicated by Curtius by acknowledging that the intensive use of the perfect “was probably the origin of the tense.”28 He adds, “Reduplication, though not always used, was an effort to express this intensive or iterative idea.”29 More recently, Basil Mandilaras regards the perfect’s morphological reduplication as expressive of intensification,30 as does Sara Kimball.31 Lest anyone think it silly that the Greek perfect might be related to the present, expressing imperfective aspect and creating an opposition of intensification, a number of scholars acknowledge that this was, indeed, the original meaning of the perfect. It is my contention that what we know about the origins of the Greek perfect, and what its morphology originally represented, ought to inform our understanding of its meaning and function in the Koine period. It is not far-fetched to expect that the semantics of the Greek perfect through the Koine period might stand in continuity with its original development. 3.3.4  Imperfective Aspect Can Explain the Diachronic Development of the Greek Perfect Since older grammarians recognized that the Greek perfect began life as a type of present, what shall we say about the general consensus that the synthetic perfect eventually merged with the aorist? First, it is worth noting that neither the traditional view, nor the stative aspect understanding, offer compelling explanations for the oft-observed tendency for perfects to become interchangeable with aorists during the later Koine period. How does a stative aspect tense-form turn into a perfective form? No one really can say. My alternative suggestion is as follows. While the observation is correct—that perfects increasingly are found in contexts in which we would normally expect to see aorists—the interpretation of this phenomenon is incorrect. The increase of 26 Georg Curtius, The Greek Verb:  Its Structure and Development (trans. Augustus S. Wilkins and Edwin B. England; London: John Murray, 1880), 354–55. 27 Curtius, The Greek Verb, 376, 382. 28 A. T. Robertson, A Grammar of the Greek New Testament in the Light of Historical Research (4th ed.; Nashville: Broadman, 1934), 893. 29 Robertson, Grammar, 893. 30 Basil G. Mandilaras, The Verb in the Greek Non-Literary Papyri (Athens: Hellenistic Ministry of Culture and Sciences, 1973), 205. 31 Sara E. Kimball, “The Origin of the Greek k-perfect,” Glotta 69 (1991): 144–46.

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perfects being found in aorist-dominated contexts can readily be explained as an increase in the use of the historical perfect. Following Martín Ruipérez, I  argue that perfects that seem to refer to past events, without viewing “ongoing consequences,” are parallel with the historical present in function.32 As we know, the historical present is most commonly found in contexts in which we expect to find aorists, namely on the mainline of narratives. While scholars do not regard this frequent use of the present as a “collapsing” into the aorist, nevertheless our translations render them as though aorists because in English we have but little choice. Thus an interpretation of the historical present based on translation would conclude that the present has become aoristic—but we know better, privileging the semantics of the form over translation. Why, then, when we observe perfects following the same pattern—being found on the mainline of narratives, apparently interchangeable with aorists—would we assume that such perfects have become aoristic? Rather than conclude that the perfect merges into an aorist, it is better to understand the phenomenon as an increased use of the historical perfect. Since the historical perfect parallels the historical present, both sharing imperfective aspect and using similar lexemes, the diachronic development of the perfect—from originally paralleling the Greek present to finally paralleling the historical present—is comfortably accommodated through imperfective aspect. In this way, imperfective aspect has greater power of explanation than other views regarding the diachronic evolution and devolution of the Greek perfect. With stative aspect, for example, the disappearance of the perfect must mean that a whole aspect drops out of use in the Greek language. Once the perfect (and pluperfect) disappears from the language, Greek must therefore restructure itself from a three-aspect to a two-aspect verbal system, as it is today. This then would represent a very significant alteration to the structure of the language, going well beyond the simple devolution of a particular verb form. I, for one, find it much more plausible to suggest that the language has always been a two-aspect system, from its early origins, through the Koine period, and to this day. The devolution of the perfect, then, is simply the disappearance of a form that ultimately becomes redundant, since its functions can be assumed by the present tense-form, both in its stative and “historical” expressions. 32 So Ruipérez claims, ‘la existencia de un perfecto histórico paralelo al presente histórico’; Martín S. Ruipérez, Estructura del sistema de aspectos y tiempos del verbo griego antiguo:  Análisis funcional sincrónico (Theses et Studia Philologica Salmanticensia 7; Salamanca:  Colegio Trilingüe de la Universidad, 1954), 153. See also my Verbal Aspect, 182, 187.

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4.  An Imperfect Critique: Responding to Porter The following is a response to Porter’s critique of this analysis of the Greek perfect, published in the 2011 Festschrift for D. A. Carson. I am not able to address every point here, but will respond at some length for two reasons. First, this represents the most serious critique of my position to date; and second, by engaging the critique, it will become further evident that some serious flaws mar Porter’s approach.

4.1  Against “heightened proximity” An inevitable question arising from understanding the Greek perfect as imperfective in aspect is its distinction from the present indicative. I  argue for a spatial distinction, such that the present tense-form is imperfective with the spatial value of proximity, while the perfect is imperfective with heightened proximity. I understand why such terminology is controversial. The creation of terminology is risky, since it can appear that the concept it labels is not known elsewhere in the literature. But it is a truism that linguists frequently create terminology to speak of categories already known; the reason for doing such is that existing terminology is found to be deficient. I created the term “heightened proximity” because other terms, such as prominence or markedness, were not sharp enough. Nevertheless, the fact that other scholars recognize “heightened proximity” as roughly comparable to “prominence” demonstrates that I have not invented a new concept, but have coined new terminology for an old one. A  disappointing aspect of Porter’s critique is that he ridicules the idea of heightened proximity,33 but later claims that the category roughly corresponds with his own analysis: “What [Campbell] appears to be saying, at the end of his analysis, regardless of what other words are used to describe and label the forms, is that the perfect tense form is a marked form in relation to the present tense form.”34 Porter then admits, “Observant readers will note that, in fact, that is what my systemic analysis of the Greek verbal system, beginning with the formal evidence of the language, concluded from the start.”35 In fact, several Greek scholars have endorsed a concept roughly equivalent to heightened proximity. These include Curtius,36

33 Porter, “Greek Linguistics,” 53. 34 Porter, “Greek Linguistics,” 54. 35 Porter, “Greek Linguistics,” 54. 36 Curtius, Greek Verb, 354–55, 376, 382.

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Smyth,37 Burton,38 Robertson,39 Hartmann,40 Rijksbaron,41 Hatina,42 and Sauge.43

4.2  Linguists Who Endorse Stative Aspect Earlier in this essay I  claimed that stativity is not regarded as an aspectual value within general linguistics. Porter attempts to undermine the claim by reference to several scholars, who, he says, endorse the notion of a stative aspect. I will demonstrate that these references are disingenuous. First, Porter lists some Greek linguists who have endorsed the notion of stative aspect.44 This is hardly relevant, since it is the consensus within Greek studies that I am challenging by reference to the wider world of linguistics. In any case, we may simply cite a different list of Greek scholars who reject the notion of stative aspect. Such a list would include Buist Fanning, Trevor Evans, Martín Ruipérez, Mari Broman Olsen, and Basil Mandilaras, to mention a few.45

37 Herbert Weir Smyth, Greek Grammar (revised by Gordon M.  Messing; Harvard: Harvard University Press, 1920), 435: “Certain verbs tend to appear in the perfect for emphasis.” 38 Ernest de Witt Burton, Syntax of the Mood and Tenses in New Testament Greek (3rd ed.; Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1900; repr., Grand Rapids: Kregel, 1976), 38. 39 Robertson, Grammar, 893, 96–97. 40 Hans Hartmann, „Zur Funktion des Perfekts:  Eine strukturelle Betrachtung,” in Festschrift B. Snell: Zum 60. Geburtstag am 18. Juni 1956 von Freunden und Schülern überreicht (Munich: Beck, 1956), 246. 41 Albert Rijksbaron, The Syntax and Semantics of the Verb in Classical Greek:  An Introduction (Amsterdam: J. C. Gieben, 1984), 36. 42 Thomas R.  Hatina, “The Perfect Tense-Form in Colossians:  Verbal Aspect, Temporality and the Challenge of Translation,” in Translating the Bible: Problems and Prospects (ed. Stanley E. Porter and Richard S. Hess; JSNTS 173; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1999), 249–50. 43 André Sauge, Les degrés du verbe:  sens et formation du parfait en grec ancien (Bern: Peter Lang, 2000), 104. 44 Porter, “Greek Linguistics,” 48. 45 Buist M.  Fanning, “Approaches to Verbal Aspect in New Testament Greek:  Issues in Definition and Method,” in Biblical Greek Language and Linguistics:  Open Questions in Current Research (ed. Stanley E. Porter and D. A. Carson; JSNTS 80; Sheffield:  Sheffield Academic Press, 1993), 49–50; Fanning, Verbal Aspect, 117; T. V. Evans, “Future Directions,” 206; Ruipérez, Aspectos, 60; Mari Broman Olsen, A Semantic and Pragmatic Model of Lexical and Grammatical Aspect (Outstanding Dissertations in Linguistics; New  York:  Garland Publishing, 1997), 259–60; Basil Mandilaras, The Verb in the Greek Non-Literary Papyri (Athens: Hellenistic Ministry of Culture and Sciences, 1973), 205.

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Second, Porter lists the general linguists who, he claims, endorse the notion of stative aspect: Mitchell and El-Hassan, Michaelis, Verkuyl, Clackson, and Lyons.46 These scholars do not in fact endorse his position. On the contrary, they speak against it. Let us consider Michaelis. In the section that Porter references, Michaelis sounds promising for Porter’s claim: “In this section, we will investigate an aspectual property attributed to the general perfect construction: stativity.” The trouble is that Michaelis does not mean what Porter says she means; in fact, a reading of her whole book indicates that she means the opposite. Michaelis elsewhere asserts that stativity is conveyed by imperfective aspect: “An event predication evokes an ‘external’ viewpoint […]. By contrast, a state predication evokes an ‘internal’ viewpoint, whereby boundaries are not countenanced.”47 Also, “Imperfectively described situations (also known as states) obtain throughout the interval at issue, possibly overflowing the boundaries of that interval.”48 Michaelis regards stativity as conveyed by imperfective aspect, and she believes in two aspects, not three: “I follow Smith (1986, 1991) in using the label viewpoint aspect as a cover term for the aspectual categories imperfective and perfective.”49 With respect to what she calls “viewpoint aspect.” Michaelis clearly accepts only two aspects. She does, however, acknowledge other aspectual systems: situation aspect and phasal aspect. In the section that Porter cites, Michaelis refers to stativity as a situation aspect, which, in her own words, is equivalent to Aktionsart.50 If one reads the whole of Michaelis’ work, it becomes clear that she does not support stativity as a viewpoint aspect. There are only two viewpoint aspects—perfective and imperfective—and stativity is expressed through imperfective aspect. Let us consider Verkuyl. Porter cites Verkuyl, p.11, as evidence of a general linguist who endorses the notion of stative aspect.51 However, on p.11 of Verkuyl, there is no mention of stative aspect, or even of stativity at all— nor does the entire chapter mention stative aspect. On the contrary, through the section pp. 34–68, Verkuyl consistently discusses stativity as a Vendlerian class—meaning that he regards stativity as a lexical property. While Verkuyl 46 Porter, “Greek Linguistics,” 48–49. 47 Laura A. Michaelis, Aspectual Grammar and Past-Time Reference (London: Routledge, 1998), 7. 48 Michaelis, Aspectual Grammar, 17 [emphasis added]. 49 Michaelis, Aspectual Grammar, 59. 50 Michaelis, Aspectual Grammar, 58. 51 Porter, “Greek Linguistics,” 48.

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frequently refers to Vendlerian categories as aspectual classes, this describes lexical distinctions, not viewpoint aspect. Furthermore, Verkuyl says, “States, Process and (terminative) Events are construed by combining semantic information expressed by the verb with semantic information expressed by its argument NP(s) [noun phrase(s)].”52 In other words, stativity is expressed through the combination of the semantics of a verb with its context. We would refer to this as Aktionsart. Later, Verkuyl argues that stativity is conveyed by durative aspect—what we would call imperfective aspect: “the distinction between terminative and durative aspect gives speakers the means to encode their wish to speak about (terminative) events, or (unbounded) processes, or about states.”53 Stativity is conveyed by imperfective aspect. Let us consider Mitchell and El–Hassan.54 Porter claims that they endorse the notion of stative viewpoint aspect, but such an endorsement cannot be found in the pages cited by Porter, nor anywhere else in their book. References to aspect are to lexical classes, not viewpoint aspect, and stativity is consistently considered a lexical class. Mitchell and El–Hassan regard stativity as a pragmatic class that can be expressed through the primary distinction of “durativeness,” which, as they describe it, roughly corresponds to our imperfective aspect.55 They speak of a binary viewpoint aspectual system (“punctual or undivided as opposed to what is extensive or durative”),56 and stativity is

52 Henk J.  Verkuyl, A Theory of Aspectuality:  The Interaction between Temporal and Atemporal Structure (Cambridge Studies in Linguistics 64; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), 19. 53 Verkuyl, Aspectuality, 268–69. 54 T. F. Mitchell and Shahir El-Hassan, Modality, Mood and Aspect in Spoken Arabic with Special Reference to Egypt and the Levant London: Kegan Paul International, 1994); cf. Porter, “Greek Linguistics,” 48. 55 “The basic reason for the recognition of aspectual categories seems to be the contrast that is recognizable in so many languages, however diversely it is manifested, between what may be seen as punctual or undivided as opposed to what is extensive or durative, whether in time or space. Distinctions are perhaps most easily grasped from a temporal viewpoint in accordance with which a threefold set of stages or phases or uninterrupted acts, activities, events, processes, and states may be singled out and labeled the inceptive or beginning phase, the progressive or continuing phase, and the terminative or ending phase. […] Durativeness is not only progressive but also, for example, perfect (as in ‘He is wearing his new suit, he is still in the state of having done so’), cognitive (‘He knows his French’), timeless or gnomic (‘The earth travels round the sun’), etc. Such enduring states are seen from varying standpoints of changelessness.” Mitchell and El-Hassan, Modality, Mood and Aspect, 65. 56 Mitchell and El-Hassan, Modality, Mood and Aspect, 65.

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one of the functions of “durativeness.” In other words, stativity is a lexical and pragmatic function of imperfective aspect. Let us consider Clackson. Clackson’s book on Indo–European linguistics simply reflects the consensus within Greek scholarship that the perfect stem indicates stativity (which, by the way, he does not call an aspect). He does not, therefore, constitute evidence from the wider linguistic world, as Porter claims. In any case, Clackson indicates that Greek has four different tense-aspect stems.57 Since Porter claims that three verbal stems indicate three aspects, Clackson presents a problem—there are four! According to Porter, the future tense-form does not indicate aspect at all, but this claim contradicts his argument that morphological verb stems indicate separate aspectual values. He contravenes his own methodology by asserting that the fourth stem, the future, does not indicate aspect. Thus, Clackson presents two options. If Porter’s methodology is right—that each distinct verb stem indicates its own aspect—then Porter is wrong: there are four aspects in Greek, not three. If Porter is wrong—and distinct verb stems do not necessarily indicate their own aspects—then Porter is wrong to assert a third aspect for the perfect system on this basis. While speaking of Indo-European scholars, Albert Lloyd applies linguistic theory directly to IE, with specific reference to Greek, to show that the proposal of a third aspect represents a misunderstanding of aspect: “Attempts by Kuryłowicz (1964, 90ff.) and others to identify the IE perfect as a third aspect, contrasting with the ‘perfective’ (aorist stem) and ‘imperfective’ (present stem) are not consistent with the basic function aspect and must be rejected.”58 Kuryłowicz, here cited negatively by Lloyd, actually changed his mind on this very point. Despite having defended the three-aspect system in Greek for most of his career, he eventually concluded that the traditional distinction of three aspects corresponding to the system present–aorist–perfect is evidently false.59 Indeed, according to Szemerényi, the assumption of three aspects was carried over from analyses of Slavic aspect, and there is little 57 James Clackson, Indo-European Linguistics: An Introduction (Cambridge Textbooks in Linguistics; Cambridge University Press, 2007), 117. 58 Albert L.  Lloyd, Anatomy of the Verb (Studies in Language Companion Series 4; Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 1979), 117–18. 59 “La distinction traditionnelle de trois aspects correspondant au système i.e. présent– aoriste–parfait est évidemment fausse.” Jerzy Kuryłowicz, Problèmes de linguistique indo-européenne (Polska Akademia Nauk Komitet Językoznawstwa; Prace Językoznawcze 90; Wrocław:  Zakład Narodowy Imienia Ossolińskich, 1977), 60 [italics are original].

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justification for the view that the Greek perfect represents an independent aspect.60 Finally, let us consider Lyons. According to Porter, Lyons says that “there may well be languages that grammaticalize stative aspect.”61 But what does Lyons actually say? Even in the text that Porter cites, Lyons does not say that some languages might grammaticalize stative aspect. Lyons actually says, “Whether a language grammaticalizes either stativity or progressivity (or both, or neither) is something that cannot be predicted.”62 Lyons says that stativity could be grammaticalized in a language; he does not endorse such a thing as stative aspect. Lyons does, however, elsewhere refer to stative aspect, but what does he mean by this? As with the previous scholars Porter cites, Lyons does not mean viewpoint aspect, but rather Aktionsart. He refers to Aktionsart on p.706, and after critiquing the label states, “[W]‌e will make no further use of the term ‘Aktionsart.’ ” Note carefully what Lyons says next: “We will introduce instead the term ‘aspectual character’. The aspectual character of a verb, or more simply its character, will be that part of its meaning whereby it (normally) denotes one kind of situation rather than another.”63 From this point, whenever Lyons refers to stativity, he does so as a property of aspectual character, meaning Aktionsart. When Porter quotes Lyons as saying, “Stativity, then, is lexicalized, rather than grammaticalized, in English,” he omits the remainder of the sentence, “it [stativity] is part of the aspectual character of particular verbs.”64 “Aspectual character” means Aktionsart, and stativity is this kind of feature. Porter then resumes the quote:  “Whether a language grammaticalizes either stativity or progressivity […] is something that cannot be predicted in advance of an empirical investigation of the grammatical and semantic structure of the language.”65 Now we are in a position to understand Lyons’ meaning. He means that the Aktionsart quality of stativity could, in theory, be grammaticalized. Actually, this is Fanning’s position—the Greek perfect semantically encodes perfective aspect and stative Aktionsart. Lyons does not endorse the notion of a third, stative, viewpoint aspect. To conclude this section, we may make several observations. First, a close reading of the scholars whom Porter cites in approval of a third, stative, viewpoint aspect, shows that they do not in fact endorse even the possibility of such 60 Szemerényi, “Origin,” 10. 61 Porter, “Greek Linguistics,” 49. 62 John Lyons, Semantics (vol. 2; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1977), 707. 63 Lyons, Semantics, 706. 64 Lyons, Semantics, 707; cf. Porter, “Greek Linguistics,” 49. 65 Lyons, Semantics, 707; cf. Porter, “Greek Linguistics,” 49.

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a notion. Second, most of these scholars explicitly endorse the conviction that there are only two viewpoint aspects in languages—perfective and imperfective. Third, all of these scholars regard stativity as an Aktionsart, or lexical, value, even if their terminology differs. Fourth, my critique, therefore, still stands: the notion of a stative viewpoint aspect has not been found outside Greek scholarship. Fifth, either Porter’s method is right, but his conclusions are therefore wrong—because there are four verb stems in Greek, not three— or Porter’s method and conclusions are wrong—because it is methodologically flawed to assert that the number of verb stems indicates the number of aspects. This observation leads to my final section, scrutinizing Porter’s methodology further.

4.3  Linguistic Method Porter declares that several of my methodological steps are contrary to “linguistic method.” He fails, however, to indicate which linguistic methodological principles are being transgressed. We might assume the linguistic methodology he has in mind is “minimalist formalized semantics.” Let us turn, then, to consider this methodology. Porter’s approach is deductive and based on assumption. Read carefully the following sentences: Observant readers will note that, in fact, that is what my systemic analysis of the Greek verbal system, beginning with the formal evidence of the language, concluded from the start.

Here, Porter admits that his conclusions were formed “from the start.” On what basis? On the basis that there are three stems in the Greek verbal system. Three stems must indicate three aspects. After all, this has been assumed since Georg Curtius in the mid-nineteenth century. But why do three stems indicate three aspects? What if they indicate something else? How would you know, apart from examination of the empirical evidence? Sadly, Porter’s scorn for an attempted inductive approach is plain: In other words, Campbell has apparently pursued a series of misleading trails simply to arrive at a conclusion that is very similar to the one that I arrived at earlier. The major difference is that I began with morphology and ended with a workable aspectual system in line with a minimalist formalized semantics.

Porter has admitted to a serious error for functional linguistics: a top-down approach based on presuppositions about morphology rather than usage. Finally, Porter’s last sentences (cited partially), by which he intended to put the nail in my coffin, has, I submit, shot himself in the foot:

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[Campbell] has approached the entire topic backwards, ending with what should have been an initial, fundamental morphological distinction. As a result, he has not presented an analysis of the Greek verbal system that is linguistically grounded.

Functional linguistics prioritizes usage of language, discerned through inductive methodologies. While he claims otherwise, Porter’s approach does not belong to functional linguistics, but to formal linguistics, which is characterized as top–down, formalized, and presuppositional. Allow me to draw an analogy from hermeneutics. Biblical scholars have long lamented the phenomenon of reading our theological systems into the text of the New Testament. And yet, it is impossible to read any text apart from the worldview and presuppositions that one brings to the text. The reader ought to approach the text with epistemic humility, understanding that theological convictions will shape our reading of the New Testament, but that we should be open enough to allow the text to shape, refine, and sometimes challenge our systems. If we allow the text to shape our theology, then our next reading will less likely distort the text. This principle has become known as the hermeneutical spiral.66 Our theology is shaped by text, which is shaped by theology, which is shaped by text. Our system should change to reflect the text, rather than the other way around. Porter criticizes me for wanting the text to inform my understanding of the aspectual system. But his approach is to establish his system first, on the basis of morphology, then read the text. This is contrary to the analogy of the hermeneutical spiral. It is, rather, a deductive, top–down approach, which any New Testament scholar should regard as dubious.

5.  Conclusion Imperfective aspect provides stronger power of explanation than the traditional view and the notion of stative aspect. This is concluded on the basis of the usage of the perfect, as determined by context (not translation), both on a sentential level, and on the wider level of distribution. Imperfective aspect fits the morphology of the perfect, since reduplication indicates intensification of the present stem. Imperfective aspect also explains the diachronic development, and eventual disappearance, of the synthetic perfect from the Greek language.

66 Grant R.  Osborne, The Hermeneutical Spiral:  A Comprehensive Guide to Biblical Interpretation (revised and expanded ed.; Downer’s Grove: InterVarsity, 2006).

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It cannot be argued that imperfective aspect fails to explain the textual usage of the perfect, since it explains its usage extremely well. It cannot be argued that the frequent stative function of the Greek perfect rules out imperfective aspect, since stativity is conveyed through imperfective aspect. It cannot be argued that, because there are three verb stems, there must be three aspects, since there are, in fact, four verb stems in the Greek system. Either adopt a four–aspect system, or abandon the unproven presupposition that the number of verb stems indicates the number of aspects. It cannot be argued that imperfective aspect contravenes wider linguistic principles, since everyone else agrees there are only two aspects and stativity is an Aktionsart. In conclusion, the imperfective aspect of the Greek perfect cannot be challenged through appeal to its usage, through appeal to morphology, through the diachronic development of the form, through linguistic methodology, nor through wider linguistic consensus about stativity and aspect.

3.  Response to Campbell’s Imperfective View of the Greek Perfect Buist M. Fanning Campbell must be commended for taking a view of the ancient Greek perfect that is out of the mainstream and defending it energetically and widely. His academic books and essays on the topic—and perhaps more importantly his popular book introducing verbal aspect—have placed his view of the perfect unmistakably in the spotlight.1 His reading of the perfect as encoding imperfective aspect has a certain degree of plausibility on the face of it, even if it has not been championed more widely. This general plausibility does not hold up, however, when examined more carefully, as I will try to show in the first part of my response. Campbell’s other line of argument for his view consists of tracing the problems that other approaches face in giving a unified description of the perfect’s semantic value. These problems involve methodological debates as well as disagreement over the sense of the perfect in actual texts and the range of meanings it is said to express. I will address these issues later in my response.

1 Constantine R. Campbell, Verbal Aspect, the Indicative Mood, and Narrative: Soundings in the Greek of the New Testament (New  York:  Peter Lang, 2007); Verbal Aspect and Non-Indicative Verbs:  Further Soundings in the Greek of the New Testament (New  York:  Peter Lang, 2008); “Finished the Race? 2 Timothy 4:6–7 and Verbal Aspect,” in Donald Robinson Selected Works: Appreciation (ed. Peter Bolt and Mark Thompson; Camperdown, NSW:  Australian Church Record, 2008), 169–75; “Breaking Perfect Rules:  The Traditional Understanding of the Greek Perfect,” in Discourse Studies and Biblical Interpretation:  A Festschrift in Honor of Stephen H. Levinsohn (ed. Steven E. Runge; Bellingham, WA: Logos, 2011), 139–55; Basics of Verbal Aspect in Biblical Greek (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2008).

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1.  The Greek Perfect as Imperfective: A Plausible Approach? At various places Campbell defends the view of the perfect as imperfective aspect by showing its general plausibility despite this not being a widely accepted approach. For example, it must be plausible because other reputable scholars have espoused this approach—it is not his view alone. So he cites instances of other scholars who have supported this position in one form or another:  Evans, Curtius, and Szemerényi.2 Perhaps a few others could be listed as well, but left unsaid is that this is far and away a minority view among scholars who study the ancient Greek perfect from an aspectual approach. Of course, such questions cannot be decided by majority vote. Campbell makes much of the parallels between the present (imperfective) and perfect in their discourse co-occurrence. The perfect occurs most often in spoken discourse rather than as a narrative tense, and since this is true of the present indicative as well, “this fact alone immediately aligns the perfect with the present indicative” rather than with the aorist.3 He is certainly correct about the typical genre occurrences for these forms, but that in itself is a poor argument for assigning the Greek perfect to imperfective aspect. The co-occurrence pattern is due to the shared temporal value of the present and perfect indicative (present time), not to a shared aspectual sense. In addition, attributing imperfective aspect to the perfect offers a weak explanation for the diachronic shift in which the perfect merged into the aorist. See discussion of this in the final section below. To support the plausibility of his view Campbell also uses morphological evidence, particularly a certain construal of the significance of reduplication in the perfect forms. Following Curtius, he takes the perfect’s reduplication to denote intensity and also to connect it to the present, which displays some reduplicated roots.4 So the perfect “developed out of the Greek present-tense form,”5 and “the original meaning of the perfect in its entirety was intensive.” 2 See Campbell essay, 10–13, especially p. 13; 2007, 186, 189; Campbell, Basics, 50. In Campbell, Verbal Aspect, the Indicative Mood, and Narrative, he calls Curtius “the father of Greek verbal aspectual analysis” while citing his support. 3 Campbell, Verbal Aspect, the Indicative Mood, and Narrative, 184–87; quotation from 184; see also 175. 4 Ibid., 199–200, 231, citing Georg Curtius, The Greek Verb:  Its Structure and Development (trans. Augustus S.  Wilkins and Edward B.  England; London:  John Murray, 1880), 354–55. Campbell cites Sara E. Kimball, “The Origin of the Greek κ-Perfect,” Glotta 69 (1991):  141–53, for this point as well, but she says nothing about intensity or reduplication. Her argument, somewhat related, is that the—κ—in the perfect and—κ—in the aorist formation are separate morphemes. 5 Campbell, essay, 7.

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This is then taken as a telling critique of the standard account of the Greek perfect’s diachronic evolution (to be discussed below).6 But alternative (post1880) views of reduplication should be considered. Bybee, Perkins, and Pagliuca, for example, find cross-linguistic evidence that reduplication is most likely associated originally with repetition (including senses like iterative, frequentative, and continuative) and that this often morphs into more general meanings like durative, stative, or intransitive/passive.7 In this latter sense reduplication can change a transitive (e.g., plant, do) into an “inactive” or stative (be planted, “be in a state of having been done”). It is possible then that the Greek perfect may have originated as an imperfective but developed away from that sense over time. See the final section below for further discussion of Campbell’s reading of NT perfects as “intensive.” A final line of argument for the imperfective meaning of the perfect is to assert its “inherent suitability” for conveying a stative sense, especially in its use with verbs that have a lexically stative meaning (e.g., know, see, stand, be). According to Campbell, if a verb carries a stative sense lexically, the imperfective aspect naturally gives attention to its stativity, “since it views verbal occurrences internally as they unfold … [and] does not portray verbal occurrences with either the beginning or end of such occurrences in view.”8 This is certainly true and is widely acknowledged in recent aspect studies. But such a point alone is a narrowly limited slice of this line of analysis. Campbell does not round out the argument and consider related implications. For example, what sense typically results when the imperfective aspect (e.g., Greek presents and imperfects) combines with verbs of other lexical types besides statives?9 A further question is how a lexically stative verb in the Greek perfect can refer (as an imperfective) to the prior action that produced the state in 6 Campbell, Verbal Aspect, the Indicative Mood, and Narrative, 200. 7 Joan Bybee, Revere Perkins, and William Pagliuca, The Evolution of Grammar: Tense, Aspect, and Modality in the Languages of the World (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994), 166–74; see also D. N. Shankara Bhat, The Prominence of Tense, Aspect and Mood (Amsterdam:  John Benjamins, 1999), 55–57, 127; Eduard Schwyzer, Syntax und syntaktische Stilistik (vol.  2 of Griechische Grammatik; ed. Albert Debrunner; Munich: C. H. Beck, 1950), 263; and Andreas Willi, The Languages of Aristophanes: Aspects of Linguistic Variation in Classical Attic Greek (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003), 129. 8 Campbell, Verbal Aspect, the Indicative Mood, and Narrative, 187; essay, 6. 9 I touch on a few questions like these in my essay, pp. 64, 68-69. This would include verbs like die, give, speak, come, go, send, fulfill/fill, raise/arise, justify, and so forth. Campbell says (Basics, 107), “sometimes the context can create a stative Aktionsart even if the lexeme is not itself stative,” but he does not give a linguistically sound explanation for this.

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view.10 As Campbell himself notes (lines quoted in my previous paragraph), imperfective aspect does not hold the beginning of the state in view in such cases. On the other hand recent aspect studies consistently affirm that perfective aspect in combination with lexically stative verbs commonly produces an ingressive sense: the combination refers to the action of entering the condition the verb denotes.11 Campbell’s attempt to refute my claim in this regard falls flat, since he argues the case using two Greek verbs that are not states but activities: πάσχω, τηρέω.12 These issues with how actional characteristics (i.e., Aktionsart) combine with imperfective aspect argue also against a related view of the Greek perfect:  the idea that it displays a combination of perfective and imperfective aspect. Like Campbell’s view, this one has a certain plausibility about it, since one could say the Greek perfect behaves as a perfective in referring to an action in summary but as an imperfective in paying attention to the state or condition related to that action. But this makes the mistake of supposing that a stative focus must be somehow aspectual.13 If the perfect possesses an imperfective aspectual sense, we would expect its use with non-telic verbs of action to focus on the activity in progress (no end point in view), and there is no evidence for this. Despite his awareness that imperfectives do not focus on beginning points, Campbell thinks that imperfective aspect with stative verbs can in fact refer to the past action leading to the state. He alludes to this possibility in his essay (p. 6): “Those perfects that, in context, indicate a past action from which the state arises are comfortably accommodated by imperfective aspect, as we see from the usage of the Greek present indicative, which is imperfective 10 I raise this issue also in my essay (69). See also Robert Crellin, “The Greek Perfect through Gothic Eyes: Evidence for the Existence of a Unitary Semantic for the Greek Perfect in New Testament Greek,” Journal of Greek Linguistics 14 (2014): 13. 11 Bernard Comrie, Aspect: An Introduction to the Study of Verbal Aspect and Related Problems (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1976), 51; Carl Bache, “Aspect and Aktionsart:  Towards a Semantic Distinction,” Journal of Linguistics 18 (1982): 69; Carlota S. Smith, The Parameter of Aspect (2nd ed.; Dordrecht: Kluwer, 1997), 69–70; Dag Haug, “Aristotle’s Kinesis/Energeia-Test and the Semantics of the Greek Perfect,” Linguistics 42 (2004): 403–4; 409–10. 12 Campbell, Verbal Aspect, the Indicative Mood, and Narrative, 190–91. See Buist M. Fanning, Verbal Aspect in New Testament Greek (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1990), 145; Crellin, “Greek Perfect through Gothic Eyes,” 25; BDAG, 1002. 13 Bhat, Prominence, 169–70; Randall Buth, “Verbs Perception and Aspect:  Greek Lexicography and Grammar,” in Biblical Greek Language and Linguistics: Essays in Honor of Frederick W. Danker (ed. Bernard A. Taylor et al.; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2004), 191–92.

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in aspect and can perform the same function.” But as far as I  can tell, he does not discuss or illustrate how this comes about in any of his writings. Presumably he means that present verbs like γινώσκω, θέλω, πιστεύω14 carry some broad inference that if the state of knowledge, desire, or belief now exists, it must have come about through some prior action that produced that condition. But is this true for only some stative verbs or only some contextual situations or does it carry over for all statives since it arises from real-world implicature? It would be helpful for him to specify what contextual features typically imply—or do not imply—an allusion to the prior occurrence for a stative verb in the imperfective aspect. This is an appropriate place to reflect on the passage in Aristotle’s Metaphysics where he compares and contrasts two lexical classes of Greek verbs occurring in present versus perfect forms (9.1048b, 18–35). He posits an important distinction between verbs that have a limit or end (τέλος) and those that do not. The former he labels κινήσεις (movements, goal-oriented actions) and the latter he labels ἐνέργειαι (workings, actualities). The sense of the latter term is disputed because at the outset he seems to call both classes “actions” (πράξεις) but all his Greek illustrations are stative verbs (ὁράω, φρονέω, νοέω, ζάω, εὐδαιμονέω). In terms of the Vendler-Kenny system, some take ἐνέργειαι to mean activities (non-telic actions) and others take them as states, both of which are unbounded in broad terms in contrast to telic verbs of all types (performances, accomplishments, achievements). It seems best to understand Aristotle’s ἐνέργειαι to denote states, since his examples are all stative and he uses the term elsewhere to mean “realizations, actual effects.”15 What Aristotle says about ἐνέργειαι (states) is that the present tense of such verbs presupposes or entails the perfect so that to express the present is to affirm the perfect as well: “at the same time he sees and has come to see, understands and has come to understand, thinks and has thought …. He lives well and has come to live well, he is happy and has become happy, at the same time” (Metaphysics 9.1048b, 23–26). To be in a state (present) means that one has at some point entered or was brought into it and so is in it (perfect). On the other hand, for κινήσεις (telic actions) the present form does not entail the perfect: “he is learning is not the same as he has learned, nor does he is getting healthy mean he has gotten healthy …. For these are not the same things: he is going and he has gone, he is building and he has built, he is becoming and he has become, it is being moved and it has been 14 These are the verbs Campbell uses as examples of present statives in Basics, 64. 15 LSJ, 564. See Daniel W. Graham, “States and Performances: Aristotle’s Test,” The Philosophical Quarterly 30 (1980): 117–30; Haug, “Semantics of the Greek Perfect,” 487–93.

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moved; they are different” (Metaphysics 9.1048b, 24–33). With verbs such as these (μανθάνω, ὑγιάζω, βαδίζω, οἰκοδομέω, γί[γ]νομαι, κινέω), the present and the perfect denote distinct things: the present denotes a process that has not reached its terminus, while the perfect denotes a condition that has come about because the natural terminus of the process has been reached. Neither Campbell nor I find complete support in Aristotle’s analysis of ἐνέργειαι (i.e., lexically stative verbs), because Aristotle finds them to be essentially the same in the present and perfect while we both want to say that they are not exactly the same. We claim they are parallel in one important dimension (focusing on a present state in existence) but are different in another respect:  the perfect denotes heightened proximity as well (Campbell) or it denotes also the action that led to the state (Fanning). However, Aristotle’s assessment of κινήσεις (telic verbs) fits quite well with analyzing the perfect as a quasi-perfective (Fanning) in view of how perfectives regularly combine with telic verbs, but they do not square at all with an imperfective (Campbell) or a stative view (Porter).16 It is important to note that these different entailments are connected directly to differences between the present and perfect as tense forms, not to other features of the contexts in which they are used (e.g., real-world implicatures, pragmatic inferences, discourse functions). Since the lexical characteristics are the same and the examples are cited apart from context, Aristotle perceives something inherent in the semantic value of the present versus the perfect to be the difference. And the difference is concerned with paying attention to the natural endpoint implied in the telic action sense of the verb, making the perfect parallel in this regard to the aorist/perfective aspect but not parallel to the present/ imperfective.17 The common element among these plausibility claims for Campbell’s view of the perfect is that they make some sense when seen in isolation, but when we take a broader view the plausibility fades. The next section will show that a broader perspective is needed on other grounds as well.

16 See specific NT examples in my essay, pp. 64, 69, 74. 17 Aristotle’s opinion about the sense of the perfect disproves Campbell’s suggestion (essay, p.  8) that the traditional view of the Greek perfect arose due to confusion with Latin grammatical categories and is actually a “modern” conception. Geoffrey Horrocks, Greek: A History of the Language and Its Speakers (2nd ed. Oxford: WileyBlackwell, 2010), 102, 176, discusses a possible ancient influence of Latin on Greek verb usage itself but this does not constitute later grammatical misunderstanding of Greek.

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2.  Supposed Problems with the Other Approaches: Method and Sense In his major book on verbal aspect in the indicative, Campbell uses a “last man standing” sequence in his chapter on the perfect: he surveys two other approaches (which he regards as non-aspectual) and finds them wanting, then discusses the other aspectual option (perfective) and finds that wanting, and so concludes that the imperfective view is superior. All that remains is for him to show how it satisfactorily accounts for all the uses of the perfect.18 This is a shrewd argumentative tactic, but it does not provide a well-balanced investigation of the issues.

2.1  Questions of Linguistic Method: What Kind of Semantic Description Is Needed? One of the issues Campbell leaves virtually unexplored in his discussion of the Greek perfect involves linguistic method.19 This begins with his insistence that what is needed is a unitary, comprehensive description of the semantics of the Greek perfect, but it branches out to other issues from there. In his survey of other approaches he repeatedly finds fault with their failure to account for the range of usage the ancient Greek perfect seems to display. One approach satisfactorily explains one portion of the usage (e.g., stative senses) but fails in another important area (e.g., transitive uses), and other approaches reverse the pattern but likewise fail to give a comprehensive explanation.20 In the course of his treatment he invokes several linguistic non-negotiables that seem quite valid but actually require further examination and qualification. Campbell calls again and again for an inductive examination of actual usage unsullied by preconceptions or traditional constructs. The focus must be on synchronic description before we tackle diachronic study. Assessing the frequency of certain senses and their contexts is an essential part of inductive, synchronic analysis. Patterns of translation, while a bit problematic, can give important warnings about questionable approaches. Along the way we must carefully sort out which features of meaning are due to the inherent uncancelable semantic value of the perfect itself and which nuances come from

18 See Campbell, Verbal Aspect, the Indicative Mood, and Narrative, 193. 19 Campbell includes a significant and valuable discussion of methodological issues in the introductory chapter of his book (ibid., 16–30), but the caveats and qualifications stated there are almost completely absent from his treatment of the Greek perfect in the later chapter and subsequent essays. 20 Ibid., 162–65, 169, 174, 193

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pragmatic or contextual influences that may come and go. In formulating the inherent semantic sense we must discover the unitary, invariant meaning that can be traced in all the uses, the single core meaning of the perfect.21 I would not disagree in general terms with any of these principles. Human language presents a welter of complexities, and guidelines like these help to sort things out. But without going into extensive theoretical discussion, I believe that some dimensions of these principles can be disputed and they bring with them certain weaknesses that undermine our conclusions if we are not careful. Inductive examination of texts, for example, can be notoriously idiosyncratic and subjective. All our claims to “follow the evidence wherever it leads” cannot insulate us from our own preferences and blind spots and can produce erratic, subjective results. Statistical analysis, especially from raw computer searches, can be suspect since the numbers sometimes mask important patterns a high-level search will miss, and statistics are still crude data in need of interpretation. Attempts to find a core meaning that explains all the usage can be elusive—what happens when inductive analysis genuinely leads to diverse senses? Do we settle for an extremely abstract, and thus unhelpful, formulation that finds some vague common element? Does our method force us a priori to reject the inductive diversity we have found? Or do we resort to strained efforts to make everything fit? What counts in the end as a satisfactory explanation of the usage.22 One set of insights that holds promise as a check on our inductive findings comes from linguistic typology which brings with it a diachronic as well as cross-linguistic perspective on language usage. To this we will now turn.

2.2  The Sense of the Ancient Greek Perfect: Diachronics and Language Typology Neither diachronic nor cross-linguistic analysis gives us automatic answers for solving the problems of the Greek perfect. The fact that one stage of a 21 For examples, see ibid., 164, 175, 184, 188, 190, 210–11. 22 See reflection on these issues regarding tense usage in Fanning, Verbal Aspect, 78–84; Bybee, Perkins, and Pagliuca, Evolution, 17; Smith, The Parameter of Aspect, 10–14; Eva-Carin Gerö and Arnim von Stechow, “Tense in Time:  The Greek Perfect,” in Words in Time: Diachronic Semantics from Different Points of View (ed. Regine Eckardt, Klaus von Heusinger, and Christoph Schwarze; Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter, 2003), 267–69; John A. Cook, Time and the Biblical Hebrew Verb: The Expression of Tense, Aspect, and Modality in Biblical Hebrew (Winona Lake:  Eisenbrauns, 2012), x–xi, 172–91; Steven E. Runge, “Contrastive Substitution and the Greek Verb: Reassessing Porter’s Argument,” NovT 56 (2014): 167; Crellin, “Greek Perfect through Gothic Eyes,” 7–9; and the literature they cite.

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language’s grammatical development exhibits a given meaning is no guarantee that a different stage has the same sense. Nor can the presence of a semantic feature or developmental pattern in various other languages be imposed on a separate individual language without careful investigation of that language itself. Diachronic and cross-linguistic comparison comes into play as a check on inductive, synchronic analysis that has already been done, especially when such analysis produces competing descriptions each of which can viably claim to provide the best explanation. At that point it is valuable to ask which explanation is most probable compared with how such categories work in other human languages. Is one description anomalous, unparalleled in view of what we know about how languages generally work?23 Probability judgments are valuable in the face of a welter of rival explanations for complex systems. The anomalous view could still be the best for a given individual language, but we should look more carefully at its supporting evidence.24 Diachronic considerations likewise help broaden our perspective to guard against drawing conclusions from a narrow slice of usage. Patterns of meaning and change show up more clearly across time, and we may misread the synchronic evidence if we are unaware of the larger trajectory. It is axiomatic that languages and their grammatical categories evolve over time, sometimes rapidly, sometimes quite slowly. In the process these stages of development overlap: “grammatical categories span points along a continuous path, trailing some past traits and pushing forward into new uses.”25 This is certainly true of the ancient Greek perfect, and many scholars in different disciplines using varied approaches have observed consistent features of diachronic change in the Greek perfect.26 There is widespread agreement about the broad pattern 23 For tense-aspect systems we have a wealth of comparative data to work with, since these categories are pervasive in languages of the world and they have been extensively studied in recent decades. Regarding the perfect see Östen Dahl, Tense and Aspect Systems (Oxford:  Basil Blackwell, 1985), 129–53; Bybee, Perkins, and Pagliuca, Evolution, 51–105; and Jouko Lindstedt, “The Perfect: Aspectual, Temporal and Inferential,” in Tense and Aspect in the Languages of Europe (ed. Östen Dahl; Berlin: de Gruyter, 2000), 365–83. 24 Bybee, Perkins, and Pagliuca, Evolution, 1–4; Cook, Time and the Biblical Hebrew Verb, x–xi, 178, 190. 25 Bybee, Perkins, and Pagliuca, Evolution, 302. See also their p. 4: “cross-linguistically and within a given language, we can expect to find grammatical material at different stages of development.” 26 Jacob Wackernagel, “Studien zum griechischen Perfectum [1904],” reprinted in Kleine Schriften (2  vols.; Göttingen:  Vandenhoeck and Ruprecht, 1953), 1000– 24; Pierre Chantraine, Histoire du parfait grec (Paris:  Champion, 1927), 1–3, 253–56; Schwyzer-Debrunner, Syntax, 263–64; Fanning, Verbal Aspect, 105–6; Haug, “Semantics of the Greek Perfect,” 398–411; Jacob Wackernagel, Lectures on

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of this development accompanied by disagreement over particular details and the timing of some of the changes. Some of the elements of this diachronic change figure prominently in Campbell’s critique of my view of the perfect and he argues in his essay that his view offers a better explanation for at least the final stage of this change (perfects merging with aorists). So I want to set out its broad features and the contribution I think it makes to understanding the NT Greek perfect and assessing these claims.27 Along the way I will include relevant details from cross-linguistic studies of how perfects typically develop and the senses they normally carry in other languages of the world. I will also try to show how this information can help us with occurrences of the perfect in the NT. Four stages of development for the ancient Greek perfect are relevant for our purposes. 2.2.1  Stative/Resultative28 Sense In Homeric Greek (and in what we can surmise about earlier forms), the perfect displays a stative or resultative sense. It is debated whether the Greek perfect began as a pure stative (present state only with no action producing the state in view) or had a resultative sense from the start (referring to a state resulting from prior action). The two are very close to each other.29 This sense (or senses) occurs consistently with verbs of a limited lexical range: verbs that Syntax, with Special Reference to Greek, Latin, and Germanic (ed. and trans. David Langslow; Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), 215–20; Chrys C. Caragounis, “Tense System in Disarray: The Interchange of Aorist and Perfect,” in New Testament Language and Exegesis:  A Diachronic Approach (WUNT 323; Tübingen:  Mohr Siebeck, 2014), 141–60; Crellin, “Greek Perfect through Gothic Eyes,” 10–11. 27 Campbell, essay, 6–7, 12–13. He is generally doubtful and dismissive when he refers to studies of diachronic change in the Greek perfect (Verbal Aspect, the Indicative Mood, and Narrative, 163–66; 184–85, 190). However, he affirms the value of diachronic analysis in general, and he appeals to its support regarding temporal values for Greek tenses (23–24). 28 In most literature on the perfect tense in Greek and other languages, “resultative” means “signaling that a state exists as a result of a past action” (see Bybee, Perkins, and Pagliuca, Evolution, 54, 318) and this is what I mean by it here. This is equivalent to the traditional view of the perfect or, as I prefer to see it, the view that the Greek perfect encodes perfective aspect with a focus on the state that results from its summary action. It is unfortunate that the term “resultative” was used to describe a focus on the state of the object rather than the subject of a perfect verb (e.g., by Chantraine, Wackernagel, McKay). Campbell confuses the two senses in Verbal Aspect, the Indicative Mood, and Narrative, 163–66. 29 See Valdimir P.  Nedjalkov, “Resultative Constructions,” in Language Typology and Language Universals:  An International Handbook (ed. Martin Haspelmath, et  al.; vol. 2; Berlin: de Gruyter, 2001), 928; He labels these stative-resultatives “statal perfects” as opposed to the “actional perfects” to be covered in my next section (936).

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denote a state or a change of state. In the Vendler-Kenny system these would be stative verbs (either intransitive or transitive: for example, ἔοικα “I am like” vs. οἶδα “I know”) or verbs of telic action, and the latter are usually intransitives (e.g., βέβηκα, γέγονα, τέθνηκα). Their transitives that do occur are frequently in passive voice but may include actives or middles that express a clear effect on the subject. This latter group often includes verbs that shift their transitivity in the perfect when compared to their other tense-forms. Some examples are:  ἀνέῳγα (I am open), ἀπόλωλα (I am lost), ἕστηκα (I stand), μέμνημαι (I remember), πέποιθα/πέπεισμαι (I am confident).30 The stative and resultative senses are close to each other in that even the verbs that are taken as pure statives seem to imply a clear resultative pathway leading to that sense. So for οἶδα (I know) the derivation seems to be from the root meaning “to see,” but at some early stage οἶδα developed independently and came to mean simply “I know” rather than “I perceived and thus I  know.”31 A  similar derivation can be surmised for other verbs often cited as early examples of purely stative perfects: γέγηθα (I am glad), δέδοικα (I fear), εἴωθα (I am accustomed), ἔοικα (I am like).32 Another debated point about this early stage (and its carry-over into later eras) is whether the stative sense was intensive, denoting some stronger force than the present form of the same verb would carry. I mention above that the morphological argument for this (reduplication iconically denotes intensity) seems invalid—actually the “maximally iconic” sense would be iteration, not intensity, and that seems a better rationale to follow.33 And however attractive intensity may seem for some examples in contextual sense, it does not seem valid for all. A  better explanation is that by referring to the prior act that produced the state a 30 Campbell points to οἶδα and ἕστηκα as frequent exceptions to the sense expected by the traditional view of the perfect (Campbell, “Breaking Perfect Rules,” 142–44). But these two verbs give problems for his view as well, in regard to his claim that the perfect semantically encodes heightened proximity. Are we to accept that without exception all 300-plus NT occurrences of οἶδα display intensity or discourse prominence (cf. Campbell, Verbal Aspect, the Indicative Mood, and Narrative, 201–9)? 31 Schwyzer-Debrunner, Syntax, 263; Jurij S.  Maslov, “Resultative, Perfect and Aspect,” in Typology of Resultative Constructions (ed. Vladimir P.  Nedjalkov; trans. Bernard Comrie; Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 1988), 71; Oswald J. L. Szemerényi, Introduction to Indo-European Linguistics (Oxford:  Clarendon Press, 1996), 293; Benjamin W.  Fortson, IV, Indo-European Language and Culture:  An Introduction (Oxford:  Blackwell, 2004), 94–95; James Clackson, Indo-European Linguistics: An Introduction (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 121. 32 Caragounis, “Tense System in Disarray,” 143; Crellin, “Greek Perfect through Gothic Eyes,” 11–13. 33 Bybee, Perkins, and Pagliuca, Evolution, 166–74; quoted phrase from p. 167.

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speaker adds something above and beyond the simple state predication of the present, and pragmatically this can imply a stronger sense in some contexts.34 This resultative sense for the perfect when used with verbs denoting states and changes of state constitutes a stable core of meaning capable of continuing unchanged for a long period of time. There is nothing about those combinations intrinsically conducive to semantic change. As we will see, it is the extension of this core sense to uses with other lexical types that proves unstable. So it is quite plausible to argue that this use focusing on states, subject-focused changes of state, intransitives, passives, and so forth would carry over as a residual sense even when the perfect as a larger category was expanding and evolving. In fact a number of verbs of these types occur frequently as perfects in the NT, and their interpretation as resultatives (focusing on an existing state arising from a perfective action) is unproblematic and superior to other explanations (stative or imperfective).35 These uses constitute unmistakable evidence for the view that the Greek perfect is a kind of perfective aspect, parallel in part to the aorist (perfective) aspect, in that it mirrors the pattern that aorists follow when used with such lexical and actional characteristics.36 2.2.2  Quasi-resultative Senses Moving from Homeric Greek into the classical period itself, the perfect extended its usage to cover a wider lexical range and initiated a transition that eventually led to significant semantic change. However, the transition with some verbs (non-telic verbs of action and causative actives) is accompanied by retention of the older pattern of usage with the other verbs just discussed (states and subject-focused changes of state). In addition, the older resultative sense for one group of verbs and the newer quasi-resultative senses for the other have a common element of meaning in that both express semantically the feature of “a state in existence as a result of the verbal action.” They both indicate that a state appropriate to the lexical and actional sense of the verb persists at the time of utterance. This is the crucial difference between this stage of development and the one that follows (anterior sense).37

34 Fanning, Verbal Aspect, 292–93; Haug, “Semantics of the Greek Perfect,” 403–4. 35 For examples and discussion, see Fanning, Verbal Aspect, 138–40, 294–95. 36 See discussion and examples in my essay, 16–17; also Crellin, “Greek Perfect through Gothic Eyes,” 11–13; 37–38. 37 Bybee, Perkins, and Pagliuca, Evolution, 63; Jouko Lindstedt, “Tense and Aspect,” in Language Typology and Language Universals: An International Handbook (ed. Martin Haspelmath, et al.; vol. 1; Berlin: de Gruyter, 2001), 777; Nedjalkov, “Resultative Constructions,” 930; Haug, “Semantics of the Greek Perfect,” 405–9.

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What changes about this “existing state,” however, is that it becomes more general and flexible as the lexical and actional range expands. There is solid cross-linguistic evidence that such lexical expansion triggers grammatical change.38 In the case of ancient Greek this change occurred as the perfect forms and their semantic sense moved by analogy from the verbs to which it was largely limited in Homeric Greek to include also non-telic actions and causative actives of telic verbs.39 Non-telic actions include verbs like: ποιέω, κοπιάω, λαλέω, λέγω, γράφω, ἀποστέλλω, δίδωμι. Causatives are telic action verbs,40 but here we are interested in their growing use with the perfect in active voice (not passives as in the previous section): ἁγιάζω, ἀφίημι, ἐγείρω, ἐκχέω, ἑτοιμάζω, παραλύω, πληρόω, τελέω, τυφλόω, φανερόω.41 For verbs with these lexical characteristics the sense of an existing state is retained, but it is more difficult to pin down what state is in view.42 However, three kinds of states seem to be valid:  (a) attention is paid to the ongoing responsibility of the subject for having done the action; (b) the state of the object comes into view; or (c) the focus shifts to the accomplishment of the action itself and the state of the subject, while still in view, fades into the background. The first of these, a focus on the subject’s responsibility, makes good sense in a number of contexts. Examples are given below (and in Figure 2 in my main essay), but see McKay for discussion of many more NT examples and

38 Maslov, “Resultative, Perfect and Aspect,” 70; Bybee, Perkins, and Pagliuca, Evolution, 68–78. 39 Chantraine, Histoire du parfait grec, 72–74, 85–86, called this “building a conjugation,” regularizing and expanding the morphology to cover more verbs, both previously existing and newly formed ones. See Haug, “Semantics of the Greek Perfect,” 403–7. 40 Causatives are telic action verbs that denote “cause [object] to be x” in contrast to the non-causatives that denote “become x” (discussed in the previous section). See ibid., 402–3. 41 Campbell’s idea (Verbal Aspect, the Indicative Mood, and Narrative, 46–47, 186–87, 209–10; Basics, 107–8) that verbs that “convey transition” like coming, going, lifting, taking, giving (his “propulsion verbs”) have a special affinity for imperfective (i.e., present or perfect) usage, and the perfects of such verbs are prone to being used as “historic perfects” is far-fetched and strained. It is also a stretch to take verbs that introduce speech, including εὑρίσκω since it occurs alongside such verbs in a few places, as sharing in the discourse patterns that occur in the speech segments themselves—through a “spill-over” effect (Verbal Aspect, the Indicative Mood, and Narrative, 41–44, 54–56, 176–80). 42 Haug, “Semantics of the Greek Perfect,” 398–99, 409–10; Crellin, “Greek Perfect through Gothic Eyes,” 7, 13–15.

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Haug and Rijksbaron for classical instances.43 The perfect using non-telic verbs of action and causative action verbs (telic) can clearly point in context to the credit or blame that attaches to the subject for having done the action or his or her authority as the agent that continues to be relevant in the present. This reading is much superior to Campbell’s explanations of several of these as “historic perfects” or “progressive” (translated with English simple present).44 Mark 7:37 καλῶς πάντα πεποίηκεν Luke 4:18 ἀπέσταλκέν με κηρύξαι αἰχμαλώτοις ἄφεσιν John 7:22 διὰ τοῦτο Μωϋσῆς δέδωκεν ὑμῖν τὴν περιτομήν—οὐχ ὅτι ἐκ τοῦ Μωϋσέως ἐστὶν ἀλλ’ ἐκ τῶν πατέρων—καὶ ἐν σαββάτῳ περιτέμνετε ἄνθρωπον (Campbell, Verbal Aspect, 169 misreads this verse to support his grammatical argument; the sense is “not only from Moses but also from the fathers” John 12:18 διὰ τοῦτο [καὶ] ὑπήντησεν αὐτῷ ὁ ὄχλος, ὅτι ἤκουσαν τοῦτο αὐτὸν πεποι ηκέναι τὸ σημεῖον. (see also 12:49–50) John 17:6 Ἐφανέρωσά σου τὸ ὄνομα τοῖς ἀνθρώποις οὓς ἔδωκάς μοι ἐκ τοῦ κόσμου. σοὶ ἦσαν κἀμοὶ αὐτοὺς ἔδωκας καὶ τὸν λόγον σου τετήρηκαν. (hardly present progressive as Campbell, Basics, 109 says; note the preceding past tenses) Acts 13:2 ἀφορίσατε δή μοι τὸν Βαρναβᾶν καὶ Σαῦλον εἰς τὸ ἔργον ὃ προσκέκλημαι αὐτούς (God’s authority in the call; not intensive present progressive per Campbell, Verbal Aspect, 205) Acts 13:34 οὕτως εἴρηκεν ὅτι δώσω ὑμῖν τὰ ὅσια Δαυὶδ τὰ πιστά. (God is responsible for this declaration and will see it through; cf. 2 Cor 12:9) Acts 21:28 ἔτι τε καὶ Ἕλληνας εἰσήγαγεν εἰς τὸ ἱερὸν καὶ κεκοίνωκεν τὸν ἅγιον τόπον τοῦτον (not state of the object; Paul is to blame for this action) 1 Cor 9:1 οὐχὶ Ἰησοῦν τὸν κύριον ἡμῶν ἑόρακα; (Paul’s apostolic claim; cf. Acts 22:15)

The second sense (state of the object) has been hotly debated since Wackernagel and Chantraine, who argue that such a shift began in the classical period and continued to grow in post-classical Greek. McKay disputes this, placing the change well past the NT era.45 His dismissal of all possible 43 K. L. McKay, A New Syntax of the Verb in New Testament Greek (New York: Peter Lang, 1994), 31–32 and “On the Perfect and Other Aspects in New Testament Greek,” NovT 23 (1981): 311–14; Haug, “Semantics of the Greek Perfect,” 406–7; and Albert Rijksbaron, The Syntax and Semantics of the Verb in Classical Greek: An Introduction (3rd ed.; Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2006), 36. 44 Campbell, Basics, 107–10; also Verbal Aspect, the Indicative Mood, and Narrative, 167–69. 45 Wackernagel, “Studien,” 1000–21; Chantraine, Histoire du parfait grec, 146–90; K. L. McKay, “The Use of the Ancient Greek Perfect Down to the Second Century A.D.,” Bulletin of the Institute of Classical Studies 12 (1965): 6–21; and idem, “On the Perfect and Other Aspects in the Greek Non-Literary Papyri,” Bulletin of the Institute of Classical Studies 27 (1980): 23–43.

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examples seems a bit strained, however, and in my opinion persuasive examples do exist.46 With the change in lexical and action character of the verb itself, the shift to focusing on the object’s resulting state is a natural extension of the perfect’s sense. Here are some NT examples that illustrate the possibilities. Matt 22:4 τὸ ἄριστόν μου ἡτοίμακα, οἱ ταῦροί μου καὶ τὰ σιτιστὰ τεθυμένα καὶ πάντα ἕτοιμα· John 11:34 ποῦ τεθείκατε αὐτόν; λέγουσιν αὐτῷ· κύριε, ἔρχου καὶ ἴδε. John 16:1 ταῦτα λελάληκα ὑμῖν ἵνα μὴ σκανδαλισθῆτε (cf. 16:4, 6, 33; these seem to point not to his authority in speaking but to the effect on those spoken to) 1 Cor 7:15, 17 ἐν δὲ εἰρήνῃ κέκληκεν ὑμᾶς ὁ θεός … ἕκαστον ὡς κέκληκεν ὁ θεός, οὕτως περιπατείτω. Heb 8:13 ἐν τῷ λέγειν καινὴν πεπαλαίωκεν τὴν πρώτην· (state of the object or does it refer to God’s authority behind this change?)

The third sense illustrates the narrow dividing line between these quasi-resultative uses and the larger change that comes with the diachronic shift discussed in the next section. To focus on the accomplishment of the action (“this has actually occurred”) while still having an existing state of the subject or object in the background comes very close to the “experiential” sense for the perfect (discussed below).47 But there are uses, I think, that do not quite cross that line although this can be debated for individual examples. Such a focus on accomplishment (the end point is reached despite obstacles) is similar to the consummative use of the aorist,48 illustrating the parallel aspectual value of the perfect and aorist. Mark 4:11 ὑμῖν τὸ μυστήριον δέδοται τῆς βασιλείας τοῦ θεοῦ· Mark 9:13 ἀλλὰ λέγω ὑμῖν ὅτι καὶ Ἠλίας ἐλήλυθεν John 1:41 εὑρήκαμεν τὸν Μεσσίαν John 9:37 καὶ ἑώρακας αὐτὸν καὶ ὁ λαλῶν μετὰ σοῦ ἐκεῖνός ἐστιν. John 16:33 ἐγὼ νενίκηκα τὸν κόσμον. John 20:25 ἑωράκαμεν τὸν κύριον. Heb 10:14 μιᾷ γὰρ προσφορᾷ τετελείωκεν εἰς τὸ διηνεκὲς τοὺς ἁγιαζομένους.

46 Fanning, Verbal Aspect, 295–96. See also BDF § 342(4) and Maximilian Zerwick, Biblical Greek: Illustrated by Examples (trans. Joseph Smith; Rome: Scripta Pontificii Instituti Biblici, 1963), 97–98. 47 Haug, “Semantics of the Greek Perfect,” 396; Caragounis, “Tense System in Disarray,” 145; Gëro and Stechow, “Tense in Time,” 281. 48 Fanning, Verbal Aspect, 263–65.

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2.2.3  Anterior Sense It is disputed when the transition to this stage occurs in ancient Greek, but perfect tense-forms in many languages of the world attest this development and the shift is unidirectional: always from resultatives (an existing state resulting from prior action) to anteriors (a past action with current relevance).49 Anteriors are more temporal than aspectual, but they are not yet full preterites (simple pasts) operating as normal narrative tenses. They relate some past occurrence to the time of speaking so there is a relative time value in the sense, but an anterior can operate independently of a full relative-tense system such as past-in-the-present, past-in-the-past, past-in-the-future (e.g., English present perfect, past perfect, future perfect).50 This “current relevance” for a past action is derived from the resultative’s focus on a prior action’s existing state, but the state has become so generalized that no distinct condition is in view beyond the vague idea of an occurrence taking place at some prior point but still seen as related to the time of speaking.51 For example, the resultative “she has gone to London” (so she is not here just now) is more specific than the anterior “she has visited/has been to London” (she has had that experience).52 The English perfect is largely an anterior, so the resultative reading of “she has gone to London” would depend on contextual indications to clarify the sense. The anterior’s general idea of current relevance for a past occurrence has certain commonly observed sub-types. One is the “experiential” use just illustrated (the action has actually occurred “at least once during some time in the past leading up to the present,” or if negated has not ever happened). 49 Maslov, “Resultative, Perfect and Aspect,” 70–73; Bybee, Perkins, and Pagliuca, Evolution, 61–63, 68–69. 50 Bybee, Perkins, and Pagliuca, Evolution, 62; Gëro and Stechow, “Tense in Time,” 282, 288; Lindstedt, “Tense and Aspect,” 776: they express “detachment from other past facts, i.e., non-narrativity.” 51 In technical discussion a distinction is sometimes made between “target state” (closely related to the action the verb denotes and existing at the time of speaking but not necessarily forever: e.g., “he has fallen ill”) and “resultant state” (badly named because of inevitable confusion with “resultatives”; this refers to the more elusive condition, irrespective of the particular sense of the verb, that comes from the action ever having been done at all: “he has run two marathons”). See Terence Parsons, Events in the Semantics of English: A Study of Subatomic Semantics (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1990), 234–36; Haug, “Semantics of the Greek Perfect,” 398–401, 407; Crellin, “Greek Perfect through Gothic Eyes,” 7 52 Smith, The Parameter of Aspect, 107–9, uses the feature of “participant property” to bridge between these two senses: some “property” is true of a relevant participant, either the more focused target state or the more general situation of having participated in the occurrence.

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Closely related is the indefinite sense (occurrence at some time or any time in the past without specifying when). The “recent past” event is viewed as currently relevant because it has just occurred. And the “persistent situation” or anterior-continuing use denotes an action begun in the past but continuing to the present.53 But none of these has a distinct “target state” in view. One can debate whether the ancient Greek perfect ever carries an anterior sense such as these and if so when that meaning comes into usage. Some suggest that it can be found as early as the classical period54 and examples from the NT can plausibly be read this way.55 They tend to overlap with the “accomplishment” sense discussed above. The instances where the perfect is negated or accompanied by “ever” adverbs (e.g., πώποτε)56 can be read either as (negated) anterior experientials or as quasi-resultatives discussed in the previous section. Matt 24:21 ἔσται γὰρ τότε θλῖψις μεγάλη οἵα οὐ γέγονεν ἀπ’ἀρχῆς κόσμου ἕως τοῦ νῦν (see also 19:8) Mark 9:21 πόσος χρόνος ἐστὶν ὡς τοῦτο γέγονεν αὐτῷ; ὁ δὲ εἶπεν· ἐκ παιδιόθεν. John 1:18 Θεὸν οὐδεὶς ἑώρακεν πώποτε· John 4:18 τοῦτο ἀληθὲς εἴρηκας. (“just now”; see also Acts 8:24) John 12:29 ἔλεγεν βροντὴν γεγονέναι, ἄλλοι ἔλεγον· ἄγγελος αὐτῷ λελάληκεν. John 13:12 γινώσκετε τί πεποίηκα ὑμῖν; (“just now”) Acts 17:28 ὡς καί τινες τῶν καθ’ ὑμᾶς ποιητῶν εἰρήκασιν· (indefinite: “certain ones”) 2 Cor 11:25 τρὶς ἐρραβδίσθην, ἅπαξ ἐλιθάσθην, τρὶς ἐναυάγησα, νυχθήμερον ἐν τῷ βυθῷ πεποίηκα· 2 Tim 3:15 καὶ ὅτι ἀπὸ βρέφους [τὰ] ἱερὰ γράμματα οἶδας (persistent knowledge) Heb 1:13 πρὸς τίνα δὲ τῶν ἀγγέλων εἴρηκέν ποτε· (also 4:4, indefinite sense; but see quasi-resultative focus on subject’s authority in 4:3; 10:9; 13:5) Heb 7:13 ἀφ’ ἧς οὐδεὶς προσέσχηκεν τῷ θυσιαστηρίῳ·

53 See Comrie, Aspect, 58–61 for these sub–divisions and the quoted phrases used here. See also Bybee, Perkins, and Pagliuca, Evolution, 61–62; Nedjalkov, “Resultative Constructions,” 930; Gëro and Stechow, “Tense in Time,” 272 54 Gëro and Stechow, “Tense in Time,” 272–74, 281; Haug, “Semantics of the Greek Perfect,” 407. 55 It is true that in various languages these senses can be expressed by other tenses than the perfect, and in Greek other tenses can express meanings like these without making them equivalent to the perfect. The aorist can be used for recent past occurrences (Matt 9:18; Luke 5:26) and for indefinite pasts (Luke 1:1; Mark 12:26; Rom 3:23). The present can denote persistent action up to the present (Luke 13:7; 15:29). See Comrie, Aspect, 60. 56 Gëro and Stechow, “Tense in Time,” 272; Haug, “Semantics of the Greek Perfect,” 409; Caragounis, “Tense System in Disarray,” 155–57.

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2.2.4  Perfective/Simple Past Sense The final stage in the evolution of resultatives and anteriors in many languages is that they become equivalent to perfectives (aorists) or preterites (simple pasts).57 From the anterior sense (past action with current relevance) it is a fairly easy step to lose the notion of current relevance and express only the prior action (past tense) or the action seen as a whole (perfective aspect). This is the pathway the ancient Greek perfect followed as well.58 In later Hellenistic, Byzantine, and modern Greek, the simple inflected perfect forms gradually mingled both morphologically and semantically with the aorist and became a simple past. For a time an anterior sense for the perfect was maintained by a revival of older periphrastic (analytical) perfect formations (εἰμί plus perfect or aorist participles, a rare classical pattern). Eventually the inflected perfects coalesced entirely with the aorists as preterites. Other analytical formations with ἔχω plus perfect passive participles or aorist infinitives developed but as relative-time tenses with present perfect or past perfect meanings.59 The final semantic coalescence of the Greek perfect with the aorist is clear, but when this transition begins is a matter of debate. Caragounis finds a number of examples from fifth-fourth century b.c.e. in writers like Thucydides, Sophocles, Plato, and Demosthenes, but his criteria are faulty in my opinion.60 He adds more persuasive examples from Hellenistic works like Polybius, LXX, and early Christian writers.61 Horrocks claims to see it as early as Menander (around 300 b.c.e.).62 Examples from papyrus materials 57 Maslov, “Resultative, Perfect and Aspect,” 70–75; Bybee, Perkins, and Pagliuca, Evolution, 81–87; Lindstedt, “The Perfect:  Aspectual, Temporal and Inferential,” 371–74. 58 Chantraine, Histoire du parfait grec, 233–45; Gëro and Stechow, “Tense in Time,” 282–89; Haug, “Semantics of the Greek Perfect,” 411; Clackson, Indo-European Linguistics, 121–22; Crellin, “Greek Perfect through Gothic Eyes,” 10. 59 Chantraine, Histoire du parfait grec, 243–45; Horrocks, Greek, 176–78, 245, 297– 302, 396, 425; Caragounis, “Tense System in Disarray,” 142, 159–60. 60 Caragounis, “Tense System in Disarray,” 154–55. He seems too prone to label as aoristic any perfects that occur with definite past adverbials to locate the event in time. But many of these still carry the normal perfect (resultative) sense (see discussion of examples from Plato, Crito 44a and 1 Cor 15:4 in my essay). Basil G. Mandilaras, The Verb in the Greek Non-Literary Papyri (Athens: Hellenic Ministry of Culture and Sciences, 1973), 224–27, makes the same error in labeling true perfects (resultatives) as aoristic. Caragounis also seems to take recent pasts (“just now”) or indefinite pasts (negative “ever” predications) as always aoristic, but while these may be close to anteriors, they are not automatically aoristic (see earlier discussion in this essay). 61 Caragounis, “Tense System in Disarray,” 155–59. 62 Horrocks, Greek, 102.

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can be found from about a century later.63 Another feature of this breakdown of perfect and aorist distinctions is a morphological coalescence in regard to both personal suffixes and reduplication/augmentation patterns. In regard to the latter, for example, reduplication of perfect stems that begin with vowels, diphthongs, or double consonants seems to have been increasingly confused with augmentation for aorist forms, so that active perfects such as εἴληφα, εἴρηκα, εὕρηκα could be given an aoristic sense more commonly.64 NT examples clearly exist, although some would dispute these.65 Matt 1:22 τοῦτο δὲ ὅλον γέγονεν ἵνα πληρωθῇ τὸ ῥηθὲν ὑπὸ κυρίου διὰ τοῦ προφήτου (see also 21:4; 26:56; contra aorist in John 19:36) Matt 13:46 εὑρὼν δὲ ἕνα πολύτιμον μαργαρίτην ἀπελθὼν πέπρακεν πάντα ὅσα εἶχεν καὶ ἠγόρασεν αὐτόν. Matt 25:6 μέσης δὲ νυκτὸς κραυγὴ γέγονεν· John 6:25 καὶ εὑρόντες αὐτὸν πέραν τῆς θαλάσσης εἶπον αὐτῷ· ῥαββί, πότε ὧδε γέγονας; Rom 16:6 οἳ καὶ πρὸ ἐμοῦ γέγοναν ἐν Χριστῷ. Rev 5:7 καὶ ἦλθεν καὶ εἴληφεν ἐκ τῆς δεξιᾶς τοῦ καθημένου ἐπὶ τοῦ θρόνου. (see also 8:5). This context may support a quasi-resultative reference to the Lamb’s credit for taking the scroll since no one else is worthy (vv. 3–4). Rev 7:14 καὶ εἴρηκα αὐτῷ· κύριέ μου, σὺ οἶδας. καὶ εἶπέν μοι· (see also 19:3)66

3.  Conclusion These patterns of diachronic change illustrate the influence that lexical extension had on the underlying semantic sense of the Greek perfect. What began as a resultative—a focus on an existing condition resulting from a perfective action—changed over time to a quasi-resultative and then to an anterior and finally to a simple past with perfective sense. At each stage except the final one in late Hellenistic to Byzantine Greek, the prior senses were largely retained 63 Mandilaras, Greek Non-Literary Papyri, 224–26. McKay (“Greek Non-Literary Papyri,” 23, 31–32, 42–43) disputes this. 64 Mandilaras, Greek Non-Literary Papyri, 226–27; Horrocks, Greek, 177–78, 302–3; Caragounis, “Tense System in Disarray,” 159. 65 See the brief survey of grammars in Caragounis, “Tense System in Disarray,” 138–40. 66 This example (and 19:3) shows how unlikely are Campbell’s and Porter’s prominence theories about the perfect in discourse. David Mathewson (“Verbal Aspect in the Apocalypse of John: An Analysis of Revelation 5,” NovT 50 (2008): 58–77 and Verbal Aspect in the Book of Revelation: The Function of Greek Verb Tenses in John’s Apocalypse [Leiden: Brill, 2010]) also follows Porter’s views. John’s perplexed response to the question cannot be taken as frontgrounded, intensive, or more important to the story compared to the events narrated around it in the context.

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alongside the new nuances that were developing, especially for the verbs with lexical character conducive to the respective senses. So lexical and contextual factors have played a large role in this semantic development. And as we have seen, such factors are important for interpreting the perfect’s function in specific texts. But the linguistic evidence does not allow us to conclude that these are simply pragmatic or contextual effects. The diachronic and cross-linguistic evidence reveals subtle shifts in the semantics of the perfect itself to allow these new senses to develop. We cannot explain the combination of perfect forms with verbs of different lexical types and their predictable functions in context without seeing a certain core sense for the perfect that expanded in the ways just surveyed. This brings us back then to the question of method we took up earlier. Must we formulate a unitary, invariant semantic description of the ancient Greek perfect able to handle all the specifics of these diachronic changes?67 Do we need a rubric general enough to admit no exceptions for a thousand years of Greek usage—or even for a couple of centuries of rapid change in Hellenistic usage? Should we force the evidence to fit a certain pattern by adopting strained readings of some features and denying the possibility of other obvious readings? This is what I believe Campbell has done with his imperfective view of the perfect. On the other hand is it workable to emphasize a sense that is central in the origin and continuing development of the Greek perfect, one that also explains how the peripheral senses arose and gives predictable patterns for their interpretation? The latter is the approach I recommend.

67 This is what Crellin, “Greek Perfect through Gothic Eyes,” 14–15, 38 attempts to do, taking into account the shift from what I have called resultative to quasi-resultative to anterior. He rigorously defines the perfect as follows: “the perfect of a predicate P denotes a property of the subject S as a function of S existing at or beyond a terminal point of the event as determined by the event structure of P” (14, 38). The use of “participant property” is intended to accommodate a shift from a well-defined resulting state of the subject to a more general sense that the subject has “participated in a prior event” (38). While the rationale for this is understandable, I prefer to follow the approach stated above.

4.  Why the Greek Perfect Tense-Form Is Stative: A Response to Constantine R. Campbell Stanley E. Porter I appreciate the opportunity once more to respond to the work of Constantine Campbell. Whereas I have not known Con as long as I have Buist, I have had the opportunity to respond more recently and more directly to Con’s work— something about which he is clearly not too pleased.1 I apologize if I have in any way personally offended him, as my only motivation was to correct what seemed to me to be clear misunderstandings—misunderstandings that, unfortunately, still remain and require further comment (I think that we at least agree on the issue of deponency!). However, as to the specifics of the constructive chapter that Campbell offers in this volume, I  must admit to being greatly disappointed that there is not more new and rigorous material to which to respond. There are, nevertheless, a few fundamental issues that merit comment. Before I  get thoroughly into my response, however, I  wish simply to make the observation that I  am not entirely clear what Campbell seeks to accomplish in his chapter. He claims to be arguing that “the best explanation for the use of the Greek perfect is that it is imperfective in aspect” (5).2 This seems to be a claim to evaluate the perfect on the basis of use, while also saying something about aspect. He follows by claiming that his “chief argument for the imperfective aspect of the Greek perfect is that … imperfective aspect 1 S.E. Porter, “Greek Linguistics and Lexicography,” in Understanding the Times: New Testament Studies in the 21st Century. Essays in Honor of D.  A. Carson on the Occasion of His 65th Birthday (ed. A.J. Köstenberger and R.W. Yarbrough; Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2011), 19–61, esp. 46–54. 2 C.R. Campbell, “The Greek Perfect: Why It Isn’t,” in this volume, referred to in this response by means of page numbers in parentheses within the text.

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provides the strongest explanatory power for its use in context” (5). At the conclusion of this chapter, Campbell claims that “[i]‌mperfective aspect provides stronger power of explanation than the traditional view and the notion of stative aspect.” This “is concluded on the basis of the usage of the perfect, as determined by context (not translation), both on a sentential level, and on the wider level of distribution” (23). These statements appear to be at odds with each other. The first two rely upon judging according to use or use in context, while the last makes a claim for usage, but now confined to the sentence and some kind of numerical distributional pattern. In other words, it is not entirely clear what exactly Campbell is trying to argue or what he concludes. As we shall see, he mostly assumes his conclusion and does not actually argue very much at all at any larger level. One of the bases of Campbell’s argument is what he calls the “distinction between semantics and pragmatics,” which he claims “has become standard in discussions about Greek over the past twenty or more years” (7). He further states that this “distinction is widely held in linguistics, beyond Greek studies, and while there are varying ways in which these terms are defined, nevertheless it remains a powerful tool” (7). This comment illustrates some of the problems with Campbell’s approach. Campbell makes much of the so-called semantics/pragmatics distinction. He is also right that it has become somewhat standard in discussions about Greek since the Porter/Fanning debate of 1990.3 However, whereas it is firmly held by many in linguistics, it is also rejected by a strong contingent as well. Even those who utilize such a notion admit that there are major problems with the semantics/pragmatics distinction, realized and consistently addressed for at least the last thirty years.4 Systemic functional linguistics (SFL), as well as some other functionalist and 3 This is captured in S.E. Porter and D.A. Carson, eds., Biblical Greek Language and Linguistics:  Open Questions in Current Research (JSNTSup 80; Sheffield:  Sheffield Academic Press, 1993), 18–82 with essays by Porter, Fanning, Daryl Schmidt, and Moisés Silva, along with an introduction by D.A. Carson. 4 This is not the place to offer a lesson in semantics/pragmatics, but one notes, for example, the fact that much of what John Lyons discusses in vol. 2 under the heading of semantics (Semantics [2 vols.; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1977) constitutes the material in S.C. Levinson’s Pragmatics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983). For more recent discussion of many of the issues, see L.R. Horn and G. Ward, eds., The Handbook of Pragmatics (Oxford: Blackwell, 2006, for discussion of the kinds of topics usually subsumed under the rubric pragmatics, and the attempt to salvage the discipline by M. Ariel, Defining Pragmatics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), who begins from the standpoint that “no coherent definition is available for pragmatics” (1), which makes it difficult to ground any theory on it, including Campbell’s.

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other types of linguistics, reject the semantics/pragmatics divide. In its stratal approach, SFL rejects such a distinction and has a single stratum of meaning called semantics. This is because the semantic component is the realization of the situational context, and thereby (at least in theory) eliminates the need to differentiate semantics from pragmatics. Even within SFL, however, this notion has proved problematic, resulting in a distinction by some within SFL between discourse semantics and lexicogrammar, under the latter of which is what is usually called semantics.5 Because of my work on morphologically heavy non-configurational languages, and before development of the discourse semantics distinction, I made such a distinction as a “useful fiction” to allow the distinction between semantics and “operational instances.”6 I follow the approach of Nigel Gotteri, who endorses a formal systemic-functional grammar, one in which morpho-semantics is fully operative at every level of exponence and analysis.7 I apologize (and repent) if I have not been clear on this matter at all times, but I think that the Greek verbal forms grammaticalize sets of semantic features, and these semantic features are operative in all uses and contexts. There may be other entailments, but these are based upon discourse cotext and are not part of the meaning of the grammatical aspects, their semantics. Therefore, there are no such things as cancelable features, because these are not semantic features of the form. Besides all this, however, the more pressing problem concerning Campbell’s characterization of the semantics/pragmatics divide is that I believe he has misconstrued it. Campbell on the one hand seems to endorse the notion that cancellability is at the heart of the semantics/pragmatics distinction. I think that this formulation runs a serious risk of misunderstanding, and in some ways it is understandable that others have confounded it. Cancellability seems to imply that the use of a given tense-form, let’s say the perfect, carries with it an entire congeries of meanings, which it then expresses in any given instance of use. However, the problem, as Campbell 5 This discussion is extensive, and can be accessed through J.R. Martin, English Text: System and Structure (Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 1992), 19–20. 6 See S.E. Porter, Verbal Aspect in the Greek of the New Testament, with Reference to Tense and Mood (SBG 1; New York: Peter Lang, 1989), 15, citing N.J.C. Gotteri, “When is a System Network not a System Network? And is That a Fair Question? Fragments from a Continuing Discussion,” Occasional Papers in Systemic Linguistics 1 (1987): 5–14, here 9; and M. Gregory and S. Carroll, Language and Situation: Language Varieties and Their Social Contexts (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1978), 84. 7 N. Gotteri, “Toward a Systemic Approach to Tense and Aspect in Polish,” in Meaning and Form:  Systemic Functional Interpretations. Meaning and Choice in Language:  Studies for Michael Halliday (ed. M.  Berry, C.  Butler, R.  Fawett, and G. Huang; Norwood, NJ: Ablex, 1996), 499–507, esp. 505–506.

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rightly points out in his critique of Fanning, is that in a given context, one or more of these agglutinated meanings must be shed or canceled. Campbell rightly points out that these meanings must not be part of what the forms mean if they can be shed. However, the formulation itself is on its head, because the question is not what meanings are expendable in a given context (the cancellability theory), but what are the semantics of the form, such that these semantics are functional at every instance of usage (how I use the semantics/pragmatics distinction). Whereas I think that Campbell is right in pushing for the semantics of the Greek perfect tense-form, I think that his entire formulation around cancellability takes the discussion in the wrong direction, so that his emphasis is upon use and Aktionsart. Campbell on the other hand seems to have a mistaken notion of semantics and pragmatics. As a result of his cancellability principle, he seems to equate semantics and pragmatics simply with the meaning of the form versus its usage in context. This is a handy distinction to make within a unified semantic theory framework, but this is not what is usually meant by semantics vs. pragmatics (when it is more than simply an assemblage of topics). Semantics is usually equated with sentence meaning and pragmatics with utterance meaning. A typical example is the statement “It is cold in here.” In a semantics/pragmatics framework, one means of examining this is that “It is cold in here” is a sentence formulated as a statement, and it has a relatively straightforward meaning. However, when this statement is placed within any kind of a meaningful context (e.g., outside of a paper responding to Campbell) it may, as an utterance and not just a sentence, have a number of different meanings, sometimes called illocutionary force. This could be an observation about the weather (one person observes how cold the weather has been, and I respond by agreeing and stating that “It is cold in here”) or it could be an indirect command to my friend to turn up the heat (“It is cold in here,” “I’ll turn up the heat”), etc. Campbell is clearly not concerned with the relatively standard definition of semantics vs. pragmatics, possibly because such a conception might well overthrow his own conception of the Greek verbal system, including his understanding of the perfect tense-form. One response to Campbell’s criticisms of Fanning might well be that the sentence meaning using a perfect tense-form is one thing, but the utterance meaning is another, and both can be right. Nevertheless, if Campbell is concerned with semantics and pragmatics (despite his definitions above), then it is odd that he criticizes Fanning as he does, as Fanning’s claims regarding the perfect could be defended as falling within the semantics vs. pragmatics discussion. However, it would also make it imperative that Campbell define the semantics of the perfect tenseform to provide a sufficient counter-argument. In other words, for Campbell

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the issue must boil down to whether the semantics of the perfect tense-form are imperfective. The situation may not be as simple as this, however, because Campbell himself seems implicitly to be utilizing a type of semantics/pragmatics distinction in his own understanding of the Greek verbal system. Although he only hints at it in this chapter, in his popular basics book on verbal aspect he speaks of the relationship between semantics, lexical meaning, context and Aktionsart. What he essentially says is that semantics of the tense-form (aspect) + lexical meaning + context = Aktionsart.8 Aspect is concerned with the “viewpoint” (I don’t like the term but Campbell uses it) of the action as related by the verbal form and Aktionsart is how the action actually took place in reality. There are numerous problems with this attempt at an analysis. The first is that the notion of Aktionsart is bizarre in the extreme, as it is equated with the actual meaning of an event in time, not just a conception of how action occurs as indicated by a lexeme (the usual definition).9 In other words, Aktionsart in Campbell’s scheme seems to assume full contextual meaning, or what perhaps might also be called pragmatic meaning. The problems emerge more fully at this point. Campbell makes context a component of Aktionsart and hence a component of some larger context, whereas context is the largest category in which a verbal action can be conveyed. Further, Campbell distinguishes Aktionsart from lexical meaning. Some event typologists make such a distinction, although not in precisely this way by seeing Aktionsart as the simple product of such smaller elements; others, however, do not make such a distinction, but use the terms as interchangeable. In either case, Campbell utilizes a potentially unclear, debatable, and, most importantly, simplistic additive formula to attempt to describe what he perceives as the compositionality of Aktionsart.10 This makes it very difficult to know what exactly Campbell is claiming to have defined. There are other problems as well, including issues regarding defining tense-form semantics, how he conceives of aspect as either internal or external viewpoint and its relation to time, and lexical meaning as simply reduced to process types. Nevertheless, the problems are sufficient to show that I am not sure that Campbell can ever even hope to identify or argue for what he claims to want to argue for regarding the perfect tenseform, because his conceptual framework is fundamentally ill-defined. As a result, I do not believe that Campbell can adequately describe what he wishes to describe. 8 C.R. Campbell, Basics of Verbal Aspect in Biblical Greek (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2008). 9 See Porter, Verbal Aspect, 33–35, for a critique of the concept and its utilization. 10 I wish to thank Francis Pang for his help in formulating these ideas.

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We see the problem even more clearly when Campbell undertakes to define the meaning of the Greek perfect tense-form. He defines it thus: “the widespread stative function of the perfect should be interpreted as an Aktionsart expression of imperfective aspect, not a third, stative, aspect” (10-11). First, I note that he admits that there is a widespread stative function of the perfect tense-form. If the formulation that I note above regarding semantics as the contextual expression of the meaning of the form is valid (not the semantics/ pragmatics divide), then one might well label the perfect as stative. However, Campbell is not happy with this, as he wishes for the stative function to be seen as an expression of what he defines as Aktionsart, but Aktionsart motivated by imperfective aspect. In other words, up until his claim for motivation of the meaning, I would be in rough agreement with Campbell—the perfect tense-form has stative function as an expression of what it is, whether one wishes to call this Aktionsart (definitely the wrong term for clarity’s sake) or pragmatics or something else. We would just disagree on the motivation by the imperfective aspect. As for his other claims, I agree that imperfective aspect does not mean “in progress,” although I disagree with his simple acceptance of a definition of aspect as relating to internal or external viewpoint.11 He further notes that “most perfects are stative” (12), by which he apparently means that their lexical aspect or situational aspect is stative (see above on his lexical meaning). The situation gets less secure after this point. Campbell claims that “Imperfective aspect is the natural bearer of stative Aktionsart” (13). In support, he cites Carl Bache, who observes (N.B.), that in “most languages imperfective forms are typically used to refer to [stative] situations” (13).12 However, Campbell has now changed what he is saying, as Bache is not saying what Campbell did. Campbell first characterizes the notion of “stative” as a lexical feature but now he characterizes it as an Aktionsart. It cannot be both and, according to Campbell’s use of the term, it cannot be an Aktionsart, because (according to Campbell’s own definition) that encompasses all of the usage meaning, including context and situation (situation cannot be something outside of Aktionsart in his scheme). Second, whatever one might think of stative as a lexical meaning (lexical aspect, etc.), stative is too rough and general a characterization to capture all of the contextual meaning, as Campbell would be indicating that all of reality is reducible only to stative Aktionsart and a few 11 This remains one of the less fortunate legacies of B. Comrie, Aspect: An Introduction to the Study of Verbal Aspect and Related Problems (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1976), 3. 12 C. Bache, “Aspect and Aktionsart:  Towards a Semantic Distinction,” Journal of Linguistics 18 (1982): 57–72, here 69.

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others. Further, now Campbell is directly loading imperfective aspect with stative Aktionsart, as if it were a feature that the aspect carries (to use his metaphor), whereas Bache says that imperfectives are “typically used to refer to stative situations,” with the idea that stativity and the situation are something other than the aspect itself, and not to be equated. Campbell’s own characterization cited above, however, makes aspect only one of three components that make up the Aktionsart, not a single element that bears the weight of the entire contextual situation (Aktionsart). Right from the start, Campbell’s conception of aspect is completely out of kilter. He does not seem to know what differentiates grammatical aspect (the meaning of the verbal tense-form) from lexical or situational aspect (stative) from Aktionsart. He next claims that “Imperfective aspect is sufficiently broad to explain the variety of perfect uses” (13). Campbell continues his problematic treatment of grammatical aspect, lexical or situational aspect, and Aktionsart. Whereas grammatical aspect was originally conceived as a smaller component within a larger sphere of meaning, now it is the larger category and encompasses all of the variety of meanings. He claims that it can “account for the full spectrum of usage of the Greek perfect” and that “it naturally conveys stative Aktionsart” (6). We have seen that it does not naturally convey stative Aktionsart but that Campbell is confused on this notion. Further, he appeals to a parallel in usage of the present tense-form, such as the so-called historical present, to account for past uses of the perfect (like the present). The problem here is that I do not think that anyone thinks that the ability to refer to present and past time of the present tense-form is what it means for the present to have imperfective aspect. Campbell has, I fear, now fallen into his own trap. The distinction he made with Fanning was that if a feature does not appear in a given context then it is not part of the semantics of the form because it is cancelable. That seems to be the case here. Campbell is identifying cancelable features (not used in every context), in his effort to hypothesize an imperfective aspect sufficient for his impossible task. The result is that at least how Campbell defines the aspect of the perfect is insufficient to account for its semantics. Campbell next claims that the “Imperfective aspect fits the morphology of the Greek perfect” (13). Here Campbell may well perform a category mistake. He confuses the categories of morphology and semantics, as well as diachrony and synchrony. There is no inherent and established relationship that accounts for later meaning simply on the basis of morphology. Languages have limited sounds and forms from which to construct all of their substance, and so it is understandable that similar forms may appear with different meanings. By Campbell’s logic, the first and second aorists would have to have distinctly different meanings, as they do not have common origins and are

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morphologically distinct. Further, the authors that Campbell cites in support do not actually endorse his position. The major scholar he cites is Georg Curtius. Here is what Curtius actually says of the perfect tense-form (cited by Campbell): “this form separated itself from the present-tem and became by degrees an independent member in the system of verbal forms, with a distinctive stamp of its own” (13-14).13 Note that Curtius, already writing in the nineteenth century, recognized the systemic nature of the Greek verbal edifice. Whereas the perfect may have shared a morphological relationship with the present, it came to have its own place within the Greek verbal system with its own distinctive meaning. This further harms Campbell’s view, because he claims that the perfect tense-form has the same aspect as the present. This is not only not supported by his evidence, but is hard to conceive of, because of the redundancy in the language that probably would have led either to distinctiveness (as a separate aspectual tense-form!) or disappearance (as it later did), but not identical semantics. I realize that Campbell claims that the perfect also has “heightened proximity,” but this is a bit of a shell game. He claims to have established the meaning of the perfect tense-form as imperfective due to similar discourse contexts and uses with the present, but then he turns around and says that they must be different and attempts to find that difference. He cannot use one to show the other. It is much more logical to proceed from their difference from the start, even if they might end up being used in similar contexts (distinguished by the use of the different tense-form, as Campbell ends up admitting). Despite common origins with the present, the perfect tense-form has its own system within the Greek verbal network, at least at the time of the Greek of the New Testament, and it must be analyzed in these terms. As for Campbell’s theory better explaining the “diachronic development of the Greek perfect” (14), I find this an odd hypothesis. Admittedly, no one really knows the reasons that languages change, and certainly no one can predict what will change or the rate of change. However, I find Campbell’s hypothesis improbable that the perfect came to be used like the historic present, the so-called historical perfect. This still does not adequately account for why the perfect eventually disappears (replaced by a periphrastic form). For a considerable portion of his chapter, Campbell engages in direct response to an article that I previously wrote in response to his work on the perfect tense-form. This is divided into three unequal parts, and I respond accordingly. First, regarding heightened proximity, I am pleased to see that 13 G. Curtius, The Greek Verb: Its Structure and Development (trans. A.S. Wilkins and E.B. England; London: John Murray, 1880), 354–55.

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Campbell accepts the terminology and concept of markedness. Campbell misses the major point of my criticism (there is no ridicule here), however, and that was that the notion of “heightened proximity” is not problematic because of “heightened” but because of “proximity,” its relationship to other spatial and temporal metaphors, and how proximity could be heightened when it was already proximate. To this he does not respond. However, I am pleased that he notes a number of scholars who agree that markedness is a concept (though he confines this to discussion of Hebrew), and that he agrees that it can be applied to the perfect tense-form. I simply need to repeat what I earlier stated and that is that Campbell appears to be saying, then and now, that the perfect tense-form is a marked form in relation to the present tense-form, systemically and semantically.14 With this I agree. The second and lengthier point concerns the notion of stativity and how it is discussed among linguists. I need not spend much time with Campbell’s response. In Campbell’s disputing the notion of stative aspect, he claimed that “stativity is regarded by most linguists as an Aktionsart value rather than an aspect,”15 as if this were a reason not to endorse it as a category (when Campbell himself did not hesitate to argue for a new conception of the perfect tense-form as imperfective or redefined Aktionsart in new and different ways). Campbell also notes that “most linguists” hold to his view, which may be true (I do not think that linguistic analysis is done by majority vote), but he seems to concede that there are some who do not. I pointed out in my earlier article a number of Greek linguists and general linguists who in various ways endorsed the notion of stative aspect or equivalent. Campbell disagrees and states, first, that Greek linguists who might recognize or endorse stativity 14 Campbell is not correct that his list of scholars (9 and notes 36–43) all endorse the “equivalent to heightened proximity.” In fact, none of them does so far as I can tell. They mostly endorse the idea of an emphatic or intensive perfect, to be sure, but not anything related to proximity (unless they are simply discussing the perfect in relationship to the present tense-form). In fact, Campbell (17 note 42)  cites T.R. Hatina, “The Perfect Tense-Form in Colossians: Verbal Aspect, Temporality and the Challenge of Translation,” in Translating the Bible: Problems and Prospects [ed. SE. Porter and R.S. Hess; JSNTSup 173; Sheffield:  Sheffield Academic Press,  1999], 224–52, esp. 249–50), where Hatina finds support in Colossians for the view of the meaning of the perfect tense-form as found in S.E. Porter, Idioms of the Greek New Testament (2nd ed.; BLG 2; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1992), 22–23 and Porter, Verbal Aspect, ch. 2, who argues for it being heavily marked (there is no mention of proximity). 15 C.R. Campbell, Verbal Aspect, the Indicative Mood, and Narrative: Soundings in the Greek of the New Testament (SBG 13; New York: Peter Lang, 2007), 172, cited in Porter, “Greek Linguistics and Lexicography,” 48.

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as an aspect are “hardly relevant” (17). However, Campbell himself is the one who claimed that “[t]‌his is the consensus among both Greek linguists and general linguists alike,”16 so I was merely citing evidence from Greek linguists that refuted his claim—evidence that he now appears to want simply to ignore or dismiss. I take it that he must now concede this point, that there are Greek linguists who recognize and even utilize the notion of stative aspect.17 He further states regarding the general linguists that “these scholars do not in fact endorse [Porter’s] position” (18). I should perhaps have made it clearer that I do not think that these scholars necessarily endorse my position either on the stative itself or on the Greek verbal system (I believe that a number of them either confuse or conflate categories such as lexical, situational, and grammatical aspect), only that they discuss in a way that was clear to me that they took the notion of something like stative aspect or state seriously as a category worth consideration. They may well see the Greek verbal structure differently or conclude differently (many of them do!), but they discuss the concept of stativity or state. That is why I consciously used the term “notion” to refer to this conception, as the characterizations of it differ widely.18 In any case, all of this is simply immaterial as the question is not how many linguists do or do not endorse certain terminology, but how one analyzes the Greek verbal system, and especially the meaning of the perfect tense-form. In his zeal, Campbell has apparently lost sight of the major issue. Along the way, however, Campbell raises the issue of James Clackson’s endorsement of four verbal stems, and hence the possibility of four aspects. Campbell says that, “[a]‌ccording to Porter, the future tense-form does not indicate aspect at all” (20, my italics). I may at one time have stated this in some way (although Campbell does not say where I  say this), but if I  did, I  misspoke. In my Verbal Aspect (as well as Idioms), I make clear that the future form occupies a tenuous place in the Greek verbal system. It is part of the ASPECTUAL system, but it is not fully aspectual, as are the perfective (realized by the aorist), imperfective (present/imperfect), and stative (perfect/pluperfect) aspects. This is clearly shown in my Greek verbal network and explained more fully 16 Campbell, Verbal Aspect, 172. 17 This certainly seems to be the case in K. Bentein, “Perfect,” in Encyclopedia of Ancient Greek language and Linguistics (ed. G.K. Giannakis et al.; Leiden: Brill Online, 2014), esp. 1–2, where he apparently recognizes three approaches to the perfect, one being the stative view, held by McKay and Porter. 18 Porter, “Greek Linguistics and Lexicography,” 48:  those “who have endorsed the notion of stative aspect (or equivalent, such as state),” in which I thought that I had covered the range of terminology regarding aspect, whether grammatical, lexical, or otherwise.

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in my treatment of the semantics (expectation) of the future form.19 Thus, to the contrary, I do not “contravene” my own method, but in fact, without endorsing a fourth aspect, realize that there are characteristics of it that are aspectual-like. However, the three aspects remain. The third and final point concerns linguistic method. In response to my charge that Campbell himself contravenes linguistic method, rather than establish what his method is, he levels several accusations at me that, I fear, reveal his lack of perspicuity in this area. He first accuses me of being deductive and simply using assumption. My approach is more principled than this, as I have repeatedly made clear. In utilizing systemic functional linguistics, I  realize that a strong formal component is often lacking (because it begins with situational context and then moves to semantics; what Campbell would probably call a top-down approach, so that, in that sense, he is right in identifying the method within this camp), hence I incorporate in my approach a formalist element similar to that of Gotteri’s systemic formal grammar (what might, I suppose, be called a bottom-up approach) and given the label of “minimal formalized semantics.” I believe that I have already addressed the elements of Campbell’s criticism in my method that I have used from the inception of the discussion. Campbell’s major accusation against my approach is that I  find “three stems in the Greek verbal system” and hence “three aspects” (22). He questions this and even goes so far as to question whether they might indicate something other than aspect. Campbell takes this as some sort of defense of what he calls an inductive approach. I am perplexed by these comments, as Campbell himself does not use an inductive approach to the Greek verbal system. He claims at one point to use a “functional systemic approach”20 although I do not believe that terminology is used in his chapter here. However, he discusses how difficult it is to do inductive study, and opts for macro rather than micro patterns. When he turns to the present tense-form he simply states that the imperfective aspect is something “upon which all agree,” even if requiring further precision, and that the “imperfective aspectual value of the present tense-form in the Greek of the New Testament is uncontested in recent literature.”21 He claims similarly for the aorist and perfective aspect: it is “not a controversial issue” and encodes “perfective aspect.”22 It is only with

19 Porter, Verbal Aspect, 109 and 403–49; Porter, Idioms, 24. See also F.G.H. Pang, “Aspect, Aktionsart, and Abduction: Future Tense in the New Testament,” Filología Neotestamentaria 23 (2010): 129–59, esp. 155. 20 Campbell, Verbal Aspect, 33. 21 Campbell, Verbal Aspect, 35. 22 Campbell, Verbal Aspect, 103.

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the meaning of the perfect tense-form, apparently, that he claims to want to engage in an inductive approach. Nevertheless, since he bases analysis of the perfect upon the similarities with the present tense-form and its imperfective aspect, this estimation is no more inductive than the others (and he admits that the stative interpretation often makes sense when examined inductively, which indicates the need for a larger modeling of language).23 Despite his claim to use a systemic approach, however, Campbell never to my knowledge presents what that semantic system looks like.24 Campbell instead pursues various means to get to his end, including defining the perfect on the basis of what he calls discourse (and leaving the perfect form without definition in non-discourse contexts), establishing its imperfective aspect on the basis of supposed similar uses to the present tense-form, and then distinguishing its meaning on the basis of formal difference by claiming its “heightened proximity.” I  contend that this gets the entire topic backwards, ending with a morphologically based semantic distinction, rather than beginning with one. Readers will no doubt grimace at Campbell’s mixed metaphor about my conclusion, where I am said to intend “to put the nail” in Campbell’s coffin but have “shot” myself in the foot (I must be using a nail gun) (22). However, he shows that his aim is not entirely linguistic at all, as he appeals to theology as the means of resolving such a dispute, as encapsulated in the so-called hermeneutical spiral. The literature is far too large to engage in a discussion of this metaphor, except to note that, besides interpretation not being so easy, Campbell has in many ways captured the kind of abductive approach that I utilize, but that he himself appears not to be open to, as he has clearly pre-decided that there are only two aspects in Greek, so, therefore, he will not find a third one grammaticalized by the perfect tenseform. To the contrary, despite all of this, Campbell’s admitted conclusion is that the stative interpretation handles probably over 90% of the evidence satisfactorily.25 In fact, I would say more, and that is that his conclusion is better explained systemically rather than as he does, by recognizing that there is a semantic relationship between the meanings of the present and perfect forms, with the latter indeed “heightened” or marked, but that this is an aspectual relationship between the imperfective and more heavily marked stative aspect.

23 Campbell, Verbal Aspect, 184. 24 Campbell, Verbal Aspect, 243, not with standing. 25 C.R. Campbell, “Breaking Perfect Rules:  The Traditional Understanding of the Greek Perfect,” in Discourse Studies and Biblical Interpretation: A Festschrift in Honor of Stephen H.  Levinsohn (ed. S.E. Runge; Bellingham, WA:  Logos Bible Software, 2011), 139–55, here 148.

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In the final stage of my response, I  will address more fully Campbell’s direct response to my proposal regarding stative aspect. Campbell admits that stative aspect better explains uses with the perfect that do not refer to a prior event and avoids the problem of cancellability of semantic values. However, he raises three objections (though unfortunately he does not cite any examples for any of them). The first concerns the stative aspect and the verbal subject. Campbell claims that I “divorce” the two and in effect adopt Jacob Wackernagel’s resultative perfect (9). Campbell admits that I  have argued against this view, so I am not sure what his objection really is. He may simply be objecting to the language that I use to describe my position. He claims that by attributing stative aspect to “the state of affairs” or “the situation” that this “divorces the semantic meaning” of the verb from the subject (9). To the contrary, as the subject of the verb is not in that sense a separate entity from the process itself but the agent involved in it, the state of the process necessarily involves the state of the subject. Campbell further claims that transitive verbs are a problem for stative aspect, as the state in some way transfers to the object and thus away from the subject. Campbell is forced, as in the immediate point above, to try to link my position with a different one in order to try to force home his point. He states: “The problem with transitive lexemes for any version of stative aspect is that they do not permit stativity to be attributed to their subjects. These perfects are traditionally classed ‘aoristic-perfects’…” (10). He does not say what these versions are or how mine relates to it (I find it interesting that he admits to various versions of stative aspect theory), and does not show that that is the case. Nor do I see how or why they should be classed as aoristic-perfects (whatever that is). In fact, this is the same criticism raised as above, only now for transitive verbs. However, this is no more a problem for transitive verbs than for others. As Campbell himself notes elsewhere, this is the view of a number of scholars, in which one might understand it to mean “I x-ed the y, and now (logically, not temporally) am in a state of having done so.”26 Finally, Campbell simply claims that stativity is not an aspect. Campbell, using the terminology of “viewpoint aspect,” claims that stativity is not a type of “viewpoint aspect” (I prefer the term grammatical aspect) for what he calls the “wider linguistic world” (10). However, he does recognize that in Greek language studies stativity is regarded as an aspect. I am not sure what to make of this point. Language typology has its place, but the generalized 26 This formulation is based upon A.  Willi, The Languages of Aristophanes:  Aspects of Linguistic Variation in Classical Attic Greek (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003), 130–31, but differs significantly from his.

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nature of the study should not give it priority over work by specialized Greek linguistics. All good work should be considered, but to dismiss the work of one group simply because they are specialists in the language is absurd. By this, Campbell simply dismisses the work of J.P. Louw and K.L. McKay, among others. More telling is Campbell’s comment that “[v]‌iewpoint aspect is a binary opposition of internal and external viewpoints, or imperfective and perfective aspect” (10). Although he does not provide a footnote to this conception of viewpoint aspect, Campbell here reflects, as already noted above, the influential though far from universally accepted view of Comrie.27 I am not dismissing Comrie’s work, as it was and remains an important work in general linguistics in introducing aspect to English linguistics. However, not being a specialist in ancient Greek, Comrie was dependent upon the work of others for his linguistic data. This alone should make one stop and pause before pronouncing on the position of general linguists as necessarily superior to Greek language specialists. At the end of the day, although Campbell has not in fact made a strong re-assertion of his case for the meaning of the perfect tense-form, I believe that his assumption of only a binary opposition of two aspects has led to his misunderstanding of the Greek verbal system from the start of his analysis. The data of the language itself—whether one wishes to examine it morpho-semantically or otherwise—cry out for a tripartite aspectual analysis (I have dealt with the future above). Campbell as much as concedes this by his admission that most uses of the perfect are stative. However, he equates this stativity with Aktionsart, which he sees as the final process of interpretation. In this formulation, he has lost sight of the aspectual semantics of the perfect tense-form itself. As a result, he must also posit an impoverished view of lexical semantics, which in effect is confined to procedural types (such as punctiliar or stative), and the unknown factor of context. Nevertheless, once we boil down Campbell’s discussion, the end result is that Campbell in many ways concludes similarly to my own perspective, although he gets there by a circuitous and unsatisfying way. Campbell begins with the assumption (non-inductively discovered) of only two aspects (perfective vs. imperfective) and then, of necessity, must categorize the perfect as grammaticalizing one of these. He rightly sees some similarities with the imperfective aspect, although his definition on the basis of use in discourse does not provide the basis for the aspectual semantics of the 27 Comrie, Aspect, 127, acknowledges as his sources for ancient Greek the traditional grammar of W.W. Goodwin (1889) and the work of J. Holt on aspect who includes discussion of Greek, J. Lyons from 1963 on structural semantics (eight pages), and P. Friedrich.

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perfect form, that is, its semantics when used outside of the indicative form. Nevertheless, and here is where his approach becomes highly problematic, he then observes that the perfect tense-form grammaticalizes imperfective aspect on the basis of similarity, but also is distinct from the use of the present and thus has some other semantic feature. He labels this “heightened proximity,” based upon his use of a spatial rather than temporal metaphor. However, without addressing the use of the spatial metaphor, I find the “heightened proximity” label highly problematic, both as to how it is identified and as to what it can possibly mean. If “heightened proximity” is a semantic feature, then it is an added semantic feature of the perfect that the present does not have, and thus, in some way, the perfect is not simply imperfective aspect, but imperfective aspect plus another semantic feature (what he would call a non-cancelable feature). At the end of the day, Campbell simply seems to indicate that the meaning of the perfect tense is related to the present but more than the present—a perspective similar to the one that I take, though I believe that stativity better expresses this. In fact, I think that Campbell, in effect if not by admission, reaches a similar conclusion. By distinguishing the meaning of the perfect tense-form from the present tense-form, that is, heightened proximity imperfective from simply proximate imperfective, Campbell does so on the basis of morphology. I note above that his procedure is reversed, as he makes a final distinction on the basis of morphology in context rather than at the outset. That is, he makes the morphological distinction once the verbal tense-form is used within a specific context but conforming to a distribution over the entire corpus (as it applies in all instances). Thus, it appears that in Campbell’s mind verbal morphology is to be associated if not outright equated with what he elsewhere calls stative Aktionsart. If the morphology is the indicator of the difference in meaning in the given discourse context, this renders the other factors that Campbell has identified (lexical meaning or procedural or situational aspect; context, already noted to be problematic above; and Aktionsart, also problematic) redundant. In other words, for Campbell, the distinguishing meaning of the perfect tense-form is based upon its morphology, and therefore upon what seems by all appearances to be its grammatical aspect, that is, the meaning of the perfect tense-form. Whether we identify this as “heightened” in some way or simply stative (as Campbell has admitted for most instances in any case), I would contend that he has, despite his best efforts to avoid doing so, concluded (even if he uses different words) that the perfect tense-form grammaticalizes stative aspect. I conclude by thanking Con for the opportunity to respond once more to his work, and to confirm that from several different perspectives he is closer to the stative aspectual view than ever before.

5.  Defining the Ancient Greek Perfect: Interaction with Recent Alternatives to the Traditional View of the Perfect Buist M. Fanning Decades ago James D. G. Dunn began a book review as follows: A special honour is due to all those in any branch of scholarship who refuse to accept established orthodoxies and submit “assured results” to fresh scrutiny. Every so often such an attempt constitutes a break-through in understanding and highlights a new or neglected element which serves as a focal point for fresh insights and new constructions. But others do little more than demonstrate why the assured result has become so, since their alternative hypotheses show themselves to be much weaker and a less convincing interpretation of the evidence.1

As a matter of discretion I will not specify what book Dunn was reviewing, but I want to suggest that the same scholarly paradigm applies to the issue we are discussing in the present volume. Credit goes to my fellow participants in this book, Stanley Porter and Constantine Campbell, for their refusal “to accept established orthodoxies” about the Greek perfect.2 Their fresh scrutiny of the 1 James D. G. Dunn, SJT 31 (1978): 288. 2 Stanley E. Porter, Verbal Aspect in the Greek of the New Testament, with Reference to Tense and Mood (New York: Peter Lang, 1989), 245–90; Stanley E. Porter, “Greek Linguistics and Lexicography,” in Understanding the Times: New Testament Studies in the 21st Century: Essays in Honor of D. A. Carson on the Occasion of His 65th Birthday (ed. Andreas J.  Köstenberger and Robert W.  Yarbrough; Wheaton:  Crossway, 2011), 46–54; Constantine R.  Campbell, Verbal Aspect, the Indicative Mood, and Narrative:  Soundings in the Greek of the New Testament (New  York:  Peter Lang, 2007), 161–211; and Constantine R.  Campbell, “Breaking Perfect Rules:  The Traditional Understanding of the Greek Perfect,” in Discourse Studies and Biblical Interpretation: A Festschrift in Honor of Stephen H. Levinsohn (ed. Steven E. Runge; Bellingham, WA: Logos, 2011), 139–55.

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perfect’s meaning has been valuable. But I  will argue that their alternative views are weaker and less convincing than the traditional consensus. In pursuing this argument, I will first attempt to clarify what the traditional view says about the perfect and suggest a few refinements to clear up issues it has not addressed adequately. Second, I will compare how the perfect is understood to interact, according to each of the approaches, with other features of meaning that accompany its use—features inherent in the procedural character of verbs and verb phrases.

1.  Articulating the Traditional View of the Greek Perfect 1.1  Older Works of Classical Philology or Comparative Linguistics A wide range of standard grammars, syntax handbooks, and monographs on classical as well as NT Greek from the last 125 years all communicate essentially the same description of the ancient Greek perfect. This can be generalized as follows: it expresses an action done with existing results or the present condition produced by a past occurrence. Sicking and Stork3 and Orriens cite about 20 works ranging from Goodwin (1890) to Schwyzer-Debrunner (1950) to Rijksbaron (2006), what Orriens calls “almost all the well known publications,”4 that all say more or less the same thing—and others could be added. For NT Greek, Blass-Debrunner-Funk (1961) stands exactly in this tradition when it says that the perfect expresses “a condition or state as the result of a past action.”5 The descriptions in some of these works are better than others,6 but together they represent a widespread consensus of reputable scholars who had a broad exposure to Greek texts and a keen eye for analytical details. This in itself, of course, does not mean that the view is right or the

3 C. M.  J. Sicking and P.  Stork, “The Synthetic Perfect in Classical Greek,” in Two Studies in the Semantics of the Verb in Classical Greek (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1996), 125. 4 Sander Orriens, “Involving the Past in the Present: The Classical Greek Perfect as a Situating Cohesion Device,” in Discourse Cohesion in Ancient Greek, ed. Stephanie Bakker and Gerry Wakker (Leiden: Brill, 2009), 223. 5 Friedrich Blass and A. Debrunner, A Greek Grammar of the New Testament and Other Early Christian Literature (trans. Robert W. Funk; Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1961), § 318.4. 6 Definitions of the perfect in many standard grammars of NT Greek are unfortunately quite inferior even if their further explanations of usage are not too bad. Even BDF, quoted with approval in the previous note (§ 318.4), is particularly weak in a later paragraph (§ 340): “The perfect combines in itself, so to speak, the present and the aorist in that it denotes the continuance of completed action.”

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best approach—even scholars can be subject to the “herd mentality”—but it should make us cautious when we read the latest book that says it is all wrong.

1.2  Recent, Linguistically Informed Approaches In addition to those works that come from a more traditional approach to language, we can learn about the Greek perfect also from a number of more recent, linguistically sophisticated treatments of aspect in general and perfect verb forms in particular. I refer here to works like Cook (2012), Crellin (2013), Geröw & von Stechow (2003), Haug (2004), Orriens (2009), Rijksbaron (2006), Sicking & Stork (1996), and Smith (1997). For a brief exposure to these ideas the most accessible work is Cook (2012). A longer, very insightful treatment is Smith (1997).7 These are not uniform on every particular, but they share the consensus view of the Greek perfect taken by the traditional approach just presented. A few points from Haug will illustrate some typical lines of discussion from these recent treatments along traditional lines. He begins, “There seems to be general agreement that the Greek perfect expresses the present existence of a state resulting from a past event. Unfortunately, this is not very precise.”8 He then discusses various questions that need further probing within this general approach. Among these questions the most relevant one for the present volume is the basic issue of validation: does the Greek perfect in fact “present a state resulting from some past event”? What exactly is the linguistic pathway to guide us in a defensible way from some past event to its resulting state? To answer this, Haug tackles two interrelated issues:  (1) what is the aspectual sense of the Greek perfect? Can we see this by tracing an analogy between the two well-established aspects of the Greek verb (the imperfective and the perfective/aoristic) on the one hand and the Greek perfect on the other? (2) How does such an aspectual sense for the perfect interact in context with the lexical sense of the verb and verb phrase (i.e., its procedural character or Aktionsart)? In pursuing these questions Haug argues for a fundamental semantic parallel between the Greek perfect and the Greek perfective (i.e., aorist) aspect.9 This can be seen best by working first with verbs and verb phrases that express 7 John A.  Cook, Time and the Biblical Hebrew Verb:  The Expression of Tense, Aspect, and Modality in Biblical Hebrew (Winona Lake: Eisenbrauns, 2012), 65–68; Carlota S. Smith, The Parameter of Aspect (2nd ed.; Dordrecht: Kluwer, 1997), 106–9. 8 Dag Haug, “Aristotle’s Kinesis/Energeia-Test and the Semantics of the Greek Perfect,” Linguistics 42 (2004): 393. 9 Ibid., 394–95.

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a bounded action (“telic” verbs; often labeled accomplishments or achievements in recent aspect studies). With telic verbs we can see a clear pathway from a past event to a present state that naturally arises from it. Two examples appear in Figure 1: the verbs “die” and “deliberate” (Luke 8:49; Plato, Crito 46a). The central point to observe is how the Greek perfect mirrors in part the sense these verbs would carry in their aorist usage, but not their imperfect usage. In reference to a single event, the imperfect of these verbs would describe typically an activity or process of “dying” or “deliberating” but without the end point being included (cf. ἀπέθνῃσκεν in Luke 8:42). The aorist on the other hand describes the whole event as reaching its culmination: “to have died” or “to have reached a decision” (cf. ἀπέθανεν in Luke 8:52–53). The other two verbs in Figure 1 illustrate the same contrast in that the perfect denotes in part not the ongoing process of “raising” or “filling” but its accomplishment viewed in summary. Figure 1:  Bounded actions: having a natural endpoint Luke 8:49 τέθνηκεν ἡ θυγάτηρ σου· μηκέτι σκύλλε τὸν διδάσκαλον. 1 Cor 15:4 ἐγήγερται τῇ ἡμέρᾳ τῇ τρίτῃ κατὰ τὰς γραφὰς. Acts 5:28 καὶ ἰδοὺ πεπληρώκατε τὴν Ἰερουσαλὴμ τῆς διδαχῆς ὑμῶν. Plato, Crito 46a ἀλλὰ βουλεύου—μᾶλλον δὲ οὐδὲ βουλεύεσθαι ἔτι ὥρα ἀλλὰ βεβουλεῦσθαι—μία δὲ βουλή. But decide—rather it is time not to be deciding any longer, but to have decided—and there is only one plan possible.

From examples like this Haug makes the point that for telic verbs “the perfect denotes a present state resulting from a former event that can be expressed by the VP [verb phrase] in the aorist. The perfect, therefore, has a double reference: a present state and a past event that culminated.”10 I think this is correct and that such an analysis of verbs and verb phrases of bounded actions carries over with appropriate adjustments to the use of the perfect with verbs of other lexical types as well, with unbounded actions as well as with states or conditions, but I will focus on these a bit later. However, it is important to note that this constitutes a powerful argument against seeing the Greek perfect as imperfective aspect, an approach that Campbell and others have advocated.11 If someone wants to argue that in such instances the

10 Ibid., 395–96. He adds, “as we would expect in such situations, pragmatic factors can put emphasis on the state or on the event” (396). 11 Campbell, Verbal Aspect, the Indicative Mood, and Narrative, 184–89, 210–11. This also demonstrates why Trevor V. Evans, Verbal Syntax in the Greek Pentateuch: Natural Greek Usage and Hebrew Interference (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), 29 is wrong to say, “notions of anteriority and perfective aspect [for the perfect] can both

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perfect expresses a state that is “going on,” how do we get a reference to a state from such telic active verbs in imperfective aspect? If imperfective aspect with such verbs normally denotes the ongoing process, how does it refer to the accomplished state when the perfect is used? How do “she was dying” or “we were deliberating” (imperfect forms) become “she is dead” or “we are decided” in the perfect? Based on how the Greek perfect interacts with the lexical character of verbs,12 I argue that it is far more persuasive to understand the perfect as, in part, a perfective/aoristic aspect rather than an imperfective. I will return to this argument in the second half of this paper. I hope that exposure to these recent works on the perfect will help to dispel the notion that the traditional view I am advancing is an outdated relic from a hundred years ago, that the world of linguistics and semantics has moved light years beyond such old-fashioned ideas and we should all abandon it right away or be left behind. Such a notion is easy to pick up when, for example, Campbell says, “now is the time to leave the old behind,” by which he means the view “that the Greek perfect communicates a past action with present consequences.”13 Later he adds, “it might be time that all who read and study Ancient Greek collectively move beyond the traditional approach to the perfect. Scholars, teachers, and students would do well to put away the old Aktionsart analyses and adopt an approach that analyzes the Greek perfect in terms of verbal aspect.”14 I encourage anyone interested to read a bit in these recent works to see if they seem stuck in the intellectual world of a century ago or even of twenty-five years ago.

1.3  Refinement of the Traditional Approach Haug’s discussion cited above centered on the aspectual sense of the perfect, but he reflects also the other two elements that fill out the meaning of the be dismissed on the grounds that they arise from failure to distinguish between the effects of lexical and grammatical semantics.” The traditional view he is disputing accounts for the interaction of the perfect with these other semantic features in a more satisfactory way than his own approach. 12 Analyzing the interaction of the perfect with the verb’s lexical character is regarded by a number of recent linguists as central to figuring out the meaning of the perfect. See Haug, “Semantics of the Greek Perfect,” 387–418; Albert Rijksbaron, The Syntax and Semantics of the Verb in Classical Greek:  An Introduction (3rd ed.; Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2006), 35–39; Orriens, “Involving the Past in the Present,” 223–27; and Robert Crellin, “The Greek Perfect Active System: 200 BC—AD 150,” TynBul 64 (2013): 158–60. 13 Campbell, “Breaking Perfect Rules,” 139–40. 14 Ibid., 152.

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perfect: temporal location and procedural character. To repeat, he says “the perfect denotes a present state resulting from a former event …. The perfect, therefore, has a double reference: a present state and a past event.”15 I argue that the Greek perfect is an intersection of aspect (perfective/aoristic), temporal location (prior occurrence of the event relative to the state it produces), and procedural character (stative). The intersection of these three elements is affirmed by the recent treatments of the perfect I have listed. To pursue these features further it will be valuable to explore briefly Smith’s careful discussion of the perfect as a cross-linguistic category. She describes typical features of verbal aspect as a meta-linguistic category and illustrates by discussing specifically how aspect works in English, French, Russian, Mandarin Chinese, and Navajo, particular languages drawn from three different language families (Indo-European, Sino-Tibetan, and American Indian). These languages display individual differences in their aspect systems and in their perfect forms, but there is a broad area of agreement on these points cross-linguistically. In regard to the aspect value of the perfect, she describes it as a special type of perfective or aoristic aspect, one that has an additional marking beyond the basic perfective sense alone. She writes, “There are marked perfective viewpoints which have a span beyond the situation in focus [“situation” here = event, activity, or state described by the verb]. The most common is the Perfect, a complex construction that involves temporal location as well as aspectual information.”16 In a more specific discussion of the perfect later in her book she adds, “The viewpoint of these sentences [with perfect forms] is perfective and therefore closed, that is, the situations are presented with initial and final endpoints.”17 She explains the perfect’s temporal sense when she says that perfects “locate a situation [i.e., event or action] prior to the RT [Reference Time] of the sentence. … The event … occurs at a time before RT.”18 On the perfect’s stative sense she writes, “Perfect sentences have a stative value. They present a state of affairs with characteristics due to the prior situation.” They “focus on a state that obtains in the present

15 Haug, “Semantics of the Greek Perfect,” 395. 16 Smith, The Parameter of Aspect, 66–73; quotation from p.  71. This is similar to the view of Randall Buth, “Verbs Perception and Aspect:  Greek Lexicography and Grammar,” in Biblical Greek Language and Linguistics: Essays in Honor of Frederick W. Danker (ed. Bernard A. Taylor et al.; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2004), 191, that the ancient Greek perfect is aspectually “a secondary subset within the ‘perfective’ aspect” and “it should not be placed on the same functional level” as the present and aorist aspects. 17 Smith, The Parameter of Aspect, 107. 18 Ibid.

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… a property that results from [the subject’s] participation in the prior situation.”19 Finally, her three-fold summary of the perfect is as follows: “Perfect sentences present a state located at Reference Time, which state is due to the prior occurrence of a closed situation …. Perfect sentences … ascribe to the subject a participant property that follows from the subject’s participation in the situation.”20 Not all who espouse some form of the traditional view of the perfect specify this three-part analysis of its sense, but many recent treatments have done so and in very much the same terms as Smith uses.21 The fact that Smith analyzes things this way and that a number of others see the persuasiveness of it does not make it correct, of course, either cross-linguistically or in regard to ancient Greek. But if it is true of the perfect in various languages, this is a powerful argument from language typology that ancient Greek usage will be similar to it. At least it should give us hesitation to accept an idiosyncratic view of how the Greek perfect works, and we should require such a proposal to be clearly superior in accounting for the evidence of Greek usage.22 I contend, however, that the traditional approach best represents the system of interactions that can be seen in ancient Greek texts, and I will try to defend this further in the next section of this essay. Thus far I have attempted to lay out the basic features of the traditional view of the Greek perfect. More recent treatments along the lines of this traditional view have refined it a great deal and related it more clearly to issues that have surfaced in discussions of tense and aspect in contemporary linguistics and semantics. But these are still consonant with, even if much more sophisticated than, the consensus view found in most Greek grammars from the past 125 years.

2.  Handling the Basic Problem All the Views Must Face Campbell has noted that the traditional view of the Greek perfect is “full of problematic complexities.”23 But this is true of all three views reflected in 19 Ibid. 20 Ibid., 108. 21 See Paul Friedrich, On Aspect Theory and Homeric Aspect (Chicago:  University of Chicago Press, 1974), 16–19, 36; Bernard Comrie, Aspect:  An Introduction to the Study of Verbal Aspect and Related Problems (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1976), 52; A. C. Moorhouse, The Syntax of Sophocles (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1982), 197– 98; Haug, “Semantics of the Greek Perfect,” 395, Rijksbaron, Syntax and Semantics of the Verb, 35–38. 22 See also Cook, Time and the Biblical Hebrew Verb, x–xi, who argues for a method of validation based on diachronic analysis and language typology to avoid undue subjectivity and arguments based solely on statistics of usage. 23 Campbell, Verbal Aspect, the Indicative Mood, and Narrative, 163.

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this book. The basic issue is how to explain the sense that the perfect seems to display in usage and how to relate that to the Greek aspect system, since all three views provide an aspectual explanation of some sort. To focus the question even further, since all three views understand the perfect to express a stative sense at least under some circumstances, how do we get from the verb’s lexical meaning to a stative sense via any of the three views discussed in this book? In this section of the essay I will survey the three views represented in this book and evaluate how they handle these complexities.

2.1  Campbell: The Perfect Expresses Imperfective Aspect with Heightened Proximity According to Campbell the Greek perfect at times describes a state or condition, but he insists that any stative meaning for the perfect comes from its frequent use with verbs that carry a stative lexical sense.24 In fact, one line of defense for his idea that the perfect encodes imperfective aspect is that since lexical stativity is inherently unbounded, it is “easily compatible” with imperfective aspect. He cites Bache and Comrie to the effect that stativity and imperfective aspect often co-occur.25 From this he concludes, “Given the inherent suitability of imperfective aspect in expressing stative situations, it should be of no surprise that many lexically stative verbs are attracted to the perfect indicative, since it is indeed imperfective in aspect.”26 The gap in Campbell’s argument, however, is that he fails to carry the analogy over to his treatment of how this imperfective aspect works when the perfect occurs with lexically active verbs both telic and non-telic.27 If we read elsewhere in Bache and Comrie, they tell us that when imperfective aspect occurs with non-telic verbs of action, it emphasizes the activity in process at the time the speaker chooses to focus on, some action taking place without reference to any cessation. With telic-verbs of action, the imperfective pays close attention to the process that may lead to its natural end-point, but the end-point is not included in the speaker’s view of the action.28 See the examples in Figure 1 discussed earlier: the imperfect versus perfect of “die” in Luke 8:42, 49. 24 Ibid., 187; Campbell, “Breaking Perfect Rules,” 147–48. 25 Carl Bache, “Aspect and Aktionsart:  Towards a Semantic Distinction,” Journal of Linguistics 18 (1982): 69; Comrie, Aspect, 51. 26 Campbell, Verbal Aspect, the Indicative Mood, and Narrative, 189. 27 This is a critique of Campbell’s view leveled also by Robert Crellin, “Basics of Verbal Aspect in Biblical Greek,” JSNT 35 (2012): 201–2. 28 Bache, “Aspect and Aktionsart,” 68–69; Comrie, Aspect, 44–48.

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On what linguistic basis can we take a verb of unbounded action (e.g., “speak” or “do” in Ezek 37:14 and Luke 17:10 in Figure 2), put it with an imperfective aspect and translate it with the form “have spoken” or “have done” as most translations do? The literature on imperfective aspect and its combination with lexical features of verbs gives no support to this. Imperfectives of these verbs should yield the sense “speaks, is speaking” or “does, is doing” (e.g., λαλῶ in Rom 7:1; ποιῶ in 1 Cor 9:8). The only pattern where Greek imperfective aspect carries this sense is the traditional category of “past action still in progress,” where the implication is that an action started in the past but has continued up to the moment of speaking.29 The commonly-cited NT example of this is Luke 15:29, “for so many years I have served you/have been serving you.” But Greek consistently uses present tense-forms not perfects for this. It is a peculiarity of English idiom that requires us to translate this with the English present perfect. Greek does not use perfect forms to say this kind of thing. Figure 2:  Unbounded actions: no natural endpoint Ezek 37:14 ἐγὼ κύριος λελάληκα καὶ ποιήσω, λέγει κύριος. Luke 17:10 ὅτι δοῦλοι ἀχρεῖοί ἐσμεν, ὃ ὠφείλομεν ποιῆσαι πεποιήκαμεν. John 4:38 ἐγὼ ἀπέστειλα ὑμᾶς θερίζειν ὃ οὐχ ὑμεῖς κεκοπιάκατε· ἄλλοι κεκοπιάκασιν καὶ ὑμεῖς εἰς τὸν κόπον αὐτῶν εἰσεληλύθατε. Heb 2:18 ἐν ᾧ γὰρ πέπονθεν αὐτὸς πειρασθείς, δύναται τοῖς πειραζομένοις βοηθῆσαι.

Examples like the ones in Figure 2, however, provide good illustrations of the explanatory power of the traditional view of the perfect (focus on an existing result of an action that has been done). When the perfect occurs with unbounded verbs of action (i.e., non-telic activities), it can be puzzling to assess what resulting state or condition the speaker has in mind since the unbounded action does not indicate an obvious result. In these cases I find great help from McKay’s suggestion that such transitive perfects point to the responsibility (either for credit or blame) of the subject for having done a certain action.30 God’s pledge to fulfill what he has said (Ezek 37:14) is 29 Buist M. Fanning, Verbal Aspect in New Testament Greek (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1990), 217–18; K.  L. McKay, A New Syntax of the Verb in New Testament Greek (New York: Peter Lang, 1994), 41–42. 30 McKay covers this in a number of places, but see e.g., McKay, New Syntax of the Verb, 31–32 and “On the Perfect and Other Aspects in New Testament Greek,” NovT 23 (1981): 311–14. See also Haug, “Semantics of the Greek Perfect,” 406–7; and Rijksbaron, Syntax and Semantics of the Verb, 36.

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reinforced by the perfect’s focus on God’s responsibility for the pronouncement. The servants’ self-effacing declaration (Luke 17:10) that they have only fulfilled basic obligations moves into the realm of “blame”: “we for our part have only done our duty; truly useful servants would go beyond.” A unique dimension to Campbell’s approach to the perfect is his proposal that it expresses “heightened proximity” and that at times this has the pragmatic effect of making the action more prominent in a discourse.31 I think this sometimes holds good, but it seems better to regard it as a secondary effect of referring to the combination of past action and present result. In some contexts this may produce a stronger focus on an action that an aorist would provide or a stronger reference to a state than a present would provide. The problem comes with insisting that the perfect always carries a stronger or more prominent nuance. The perfects in Heb 7:11; 10:11, for example, occur in background clauses (in 7:11 in a parenthetical γάρ clause; in 10:11 in a μέν clause that prepares the way for the more prominent δέ clause in v. 12) and it is hard to see any intensive sense for them.

2.2  Porter: The Perfect Is a Third Aspect (Stative) in Opposition to Imperfective (Present) and Perfective (Aorist) Porter argues that stative meaning is grammaticalized in the perfect as a third viewpoint aspect in opposition to the imperfective (present) and perfective (aorist).32 To regard the Greek perfect in this way as a parallel member of a three-part aspectual system is very common in traditional grammars of ancient Greek, and it is found occasionally in more recent linguistic studies. However, most of these recent studies significantly qualify their description of the perfect as an aspect, taking away with one hand what they seem to grant with the other.33 But other recent linguists dissent strongly from calling the perfect an 31 Campbell, Verbal Aspect, the Indicative Mood, and Narrative, 206–11. 32 Porter, Verbal Aspect, 8–16, 245–59. 33 It is misleading for Porter, “Greek Linguistics and Lexicography,” 48–49, to cite Comrie and Clackson in support of his views on the aspectual sense of the Greek perfect. He cites them selectively, quoting what appears to agree with his ideas (Comrie, Aspect, 62; James Clackson, Indo-European Linguistics:  An Introduction [Cambridge:  Cambridge University Press,  2007], 119–21) while omitting material nearby that disputes the specific point he is trying to prove. See for example, Comrie, Aspect, 52 (the perfect is quite distinct from the other aspects; many question whether it is actually an aspect; but it should be included in a book on aspect, “while bearing in mind continually that it is an aspect in a rather different sense from the other aspects”). Also Clackson, Indo-European Linguistics, 121 (the Greek present and aorist are “aspectual” but the perfect is “semantically distinct” from that; it “originally referred to a state following an action in the past, and was not just a stative”).

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aspect,34 label it a quasi-aspect not a true one,35 or analyze the perfect not as a third aspect category but as a sub-type of the perfective.36 The reason that recent scholars demur from taking the perfect as a true aspect is that its meaning is semantically distinct from the essential features of viewpoint aspect (i.e., a way of viewing the occurrence, the speaker’s presentation of the occurrence without reference to the procedural character of the occurrence itself). While there is inconsistency in recent aspect studies over the best way to use the key terms, a broad consensus of linguists clearly distinguish “viewpoint aspect” from procedural character (i.e., Aktionsart or “situation aspect”) when analyzing verbal aspect.37 Campbell and I have both challenged Porter’s use of “stative” as an aspect description on this basis.38 Porter’s recent response to this critique is to cite a parade of authors who, in his estimation, describe “stative” as an aspect feature.39 However, a number of those writers (e.g., Friedrich, Lyons, and McKay) do not clearly see aspect as expressing “viewpoint” but as simply grammaticalizing features 34 Albert L. Lloyd, Anatomy of the Verb: The Gothic Verb as a Model for a Unified Theory of Aspect, Actional Types, and Verbal Velocity (Amsterdam:  John Benjamins, 1979), 117–22. 35 Friedrich, On Aspect Theory, 19 36 Carl Bache, Verbal Aspect:  A General Theory and Its Application to Present-Day English (Odense: Odense University Press, 1985), 223–27; Buth, “Verbs Perception and Aspect,” 190–92; Haug, “Semantics of the Greek Perfect,” 394–95; Smith, The Parameter of Aspect, 66–73, 107. 37 The older treatments that established this distinction were Walter Porzig, “Zur Aktionsart indogermanischer Präsensbildungen,” Indogermanische Forschungen 45 (1927):  152–67; Eduard Hermann, “Objektive und subjektive Aktionsart,” Indogermanische Forschungen 45 (1927):  207–28; and Eduard Hermann, “Aspekt und Aktionsart,” Nachrichten der Gesellschaft/Akademie der Wissenschaften zu Göttingen 5 (1933):  470–80. See the discussion of their work in Fanning, Verbal Aspect, 30–42. More recent works that are crystal-clear on the semantics of this distinction and its critical importance are Lloyd, Anatomy of the Verb, 8–10; Bache, “Aspect and Aktionsart,” 57–72; and Carlota S.  Smith, “A Theory of Aspectual Choice,” Language 59 (1983): 479–501. 38 Buist M. Fanning, “Approaches to Verbal Aspect in New Testament Greek: Issues in Definition and Method,” in Biblical Greek Language and Linguistics: Open Questions in Current Research (eds. Stanley E.  Porter and D.  A. Carson; Sheffield:  JSOT Press, 1993), 48–50; Campbell, Verbal Aspect, the Indicative Mood, and Narrative, 172–73; Buist Fanning, “Greek Presents, Imperfects, and Aorists in the Synoptic Gospels:  Their Contribution to Narrative Structuring,” in Discourse Studies and Biblical Interpretation:  A Festschrift in Honor of Stephen H.  Levinsohn (ed. Steven E. Runge; Bellingham, Wash.: Logos, 2011), 158–59; Campbell, “Breaking Perfect Rules,” 150–51. See the wider literature cited in each of these presentations. 39 Porter, “Greek Linguistics and Lexicography,” 48–49.

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such as durativity, stativity, repetition, and the like that could otherwise be expressed lexically.40 And others such as Michaelis say stativity is aspectual only within a system where they clearly distinguish “viewpoint aspect” from “situation aspect” (i.e., Aktionsart) and include stativity in the latter category.41 This seems quite incompatible with Porter’s own insistence that aspect is concerned with “the author’s reasoned subjective choice of conception of a process” and not with “any characterization of the process itself.”42 A further response from Porter is to assert, following Lyons, that the important distinction is whether stativity is lexicalized or grammaticalized in a language, and he adds, “there may well be languages that grammaticalize stative aspect.”43 But as argued above, the central point is not whether stativity is expressed lexically or grammatically but whether it pertains semantically to aspect per se (“viewpoint aspect”) or to procedural character (“situation aspect”). On the very page from Lyons that Porter cites, Lyons adds a list of features he regards as “aspectual” including “stativity and progressivity.” Then he adds “others are duration, completion, habituality, iteration, momentariness, inception and termination.”44 I doubt that Porter would be happy to accept these as “aspects” whether lexicalized or grammaticalized. But we should ask more specific questions about Porter’s view of the perfect as stative. He says that the perfect “represents the state or condition of the grammatical subject, as conceptualized by the speaker.”45 In other places he describes the sense even more vaguely: “the Perfect grammaticalizes the speaker’s conception of the verbal process as a state or condition.”46 So then, what sort of state of the subject is in view? How do we get from the lexical sense of unbounded actions, for example, as illustrated in Figure 2, to some appropriate state for the subject? What guidelines can he give us to help us in our interpretation? Unfortunately, he consistently avoids discussing specific interactions between stative aspect and the lexical character of verbs and verb phrases. I  think this produces a treatment of the perfect that is vague and

40 See Bache, “Aspect and Aktionsart,” 57–72 for his strong critique of Comrie and Lyons for their “conflation of aspect and Aktionsart into one broad category of aspect” (57). 41 Laura A. Michaelis, Aspectual Grammar and Past Time Reference (London: Routledge, 2002), 3–8. 42 Porter, Verbal Aspect, 88, 90. 43 Porter, “Greek Linguistics and Lexicography,” 49. 44 John Lyons, Semantics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1977), 2:707. 45 Porter, Verbal Aspect, 259; see also 274. 46 Ibid., 257. See also Porter, “Greek Linguistics and Lexicography,” 48: “the state of af-fairs is the one created by the semantics of the verb.”

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impoverished. It provides almost no help for interpreters and translators trying to get at the meaning of actual texts. In a few places Porter mentions lexical interactions with aspect, but only in passing. Regarding the perfect he writes, “[W]‌hile there may be a reference to a previous act that results in a state or condition, this is a matter of lexis in context. The aspect itself merely represents the state or condition of the grammatical subject, as conceptualized by the speaker.”47 So he is not entirely unaware of such lexical interactions. He can invoke them when they seem helpful to his view. But he gives no further suggestions for sorting out the sense in various contexts. In neglecting to give attention to such interactions he is out of step with almost all other linguistic studies of verbal aspect in recent decades.48 As Lloyd argues, “aspect is not the same as Aktionsart”; they “are two entirely different things,” but we must work with both together to get at the overall sense of the verbal predication; “a theory limited to aspect alone is neither possible nor desirable.”49 A further question for Porter’s view is whether the perfect is only stative. Does it not quite consistently imply a past action that results in the state? If the perfect is purely stative, how do we explain instances where a past specific time modifier is added to the perfect verb? See 1 Cor 15:4 in Figure 1 and Plato, Crito 44a in Figure 3. How can this happen if the perfect itself looks only at an existing condition and says nothing about a prior occurrence? One expedient is to argue as Stan does regarding 1 Cor 15:4 that the past time indicator tells us the time of the state only: Jesus was in a resurrected condition on the third day.50 But this yields a weaker basis for Paul’s point in vv. 1, 20 that Christ’s present state of resurrected life is central to the Gospel and Christian hope, and the past occurrences (vv. 3ff.) of his dying, being buried, being raised, and appearing are the basis for this in his preaching. The same point can be seen in Crito 44a: what Socrates saw earlier in his dream produced a state of awareness that the ship will arrive tomorrow. I argue that the perfect in both places has a dual reference to a past event as well as the present state it produces and so such past time indicators tell when the event occurred, but the verb points also to the condition of the subject at the time of speaking. These examples illustrate how the perfect can relate two temporal reference points to each other, sometimes focusing more on one than the other, but encompassing both in its scope. 47 Porter, Verbal Aspect, 259; see also 87, 96–97, 184. 48 See my critique of Porter on this point in Fanning, “Approaches to Verbal Aspect,” 60–62. 49 Lloyd, Anatomy of the Verb, 8–14; quotations from pp. 10, 8, 14. 50 Porter, Verbal Aspect, 262.

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Figure 3:  States or conditions: no change in subject or object John 6:69 καὶ ἡμεῖς πεπιστεύκαμεν καὶ ἐγνώκαμεν ὅτι σὺ εἶ ὁ ἅγιος τοῦ θεοῦ. John 15:24 νῦν δὲ καὶ ἑωράκασιν καὶ μεμισήκασιν καὶ ἐμὲ καὶ τὸν πατέρα μου. Rom 5:2 δι’ οὗ καὶ τὴν προσαγωγὴν ἐσχήκαμεν [τῇ πίστει] εἰς τὴν χάριν ταύτην ἐν ᾗ ἑστήκαμεν καὶ καυχώμεθα ἐπ’ ἐλπίδι τῆς δόξης τοῦ θεοῦ. Plato, Crito 44a οὐ τοίνυν τῆς ἐπιούσης ἡμέρας οἶμαι αὐτὸ ἥξειν ἀλλὰ τῆς ἑτέρας. τ εκμαίρομαι δὲ ἔκ τινος ἐνυπνίου ὃ ἑώρακα ὀλίγον πρότερον ταύτης τῆς νυκτός. Well I don’t think it will come in today but tomorrow. And I deduce this from a dream that I saw a little earlier tonight.

2.3  Fanning: The Perfect as an Intersection of Aspect, Temporal Location, and Procedural Character In this section I will present evidence for the traditional view of the Greek perfect as I prefer to describe it: as an intersection of aspect (perfective/aoristic), temporal location (prior occurrence of the event relative to the state it produces), and procedural character (stative). This approach is best understood through examining examples of Greek usage and seeing how these three features combine with the lexical sense of verbs to produce an overall contextual meaning. I will refer to the NT examples laid out in Figures 1–3. With verbs that have a bounded or telic sense (Figure 1), the perfective aspect of the perfect entails the culmination of the action, not just the occurrence of the process. This accomplished action of whatever character viewed in summary (whether durative or momentary, repeated or single, etc.) is seen to produce a state or condition that follows upon that action. The state that we should look for is dependent on contextual indicators, but as many have observed, the voice or transitivity of the verb points us in clear directions. With intransitives and passives (e.g., Luke 8:49; 1 Cor 15:4), the perfect naturally denotes the state of the subject produced by the culmination of that bounded process or event. Both the action and the resulting condition are in view, but in context one may be emphasized over the other.51 The translation of such intransitives or passives into English can vary between, for example, “has died” or “is dead” (“has been raised” or “is risen”) depending on contextual factors. One contextual feature that can trigger the (“have/ has” translation pattern is an emphasis on the actual accomplishment of the action though unexpected or despite opposition. See for example the perfects in Luke 5:23; John 19:28; and Acts 10:45. 51 Cf. Haug, “Semantics of the Greek Perfect,” 395: “the perfect … has a double reference: a present state and a past event that culminated.”

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With transitive active perfects as in Acts 5:28 (Figure 1), the state in view will often be clear enough, but at times requires reflection on the lexical sense and other contextual indicators. The issue of possible states of the object (e.g., Jerusalem in Acts 5:28; the so-called “resultative” perfect) can be considered, but it is not as likely as the state of the subject (e.g., the apostles). A helpful pattern mentioned earlier in this essay is to look for the state of the subject to be concerned with the realm of responsibility (for credit or blame) for doing the action. In Acts 5 the apostles stand accused before the council, so “you” is the focus, not Jerusalem. They bear the blame for this in the view of the council. The example in Crito 46b (Figure 1) shows a nice contrast of present versus perfect with a telic verb in the infinitive: not the incomplete process of deliberating, taking counsel, but the culmination and its result: “to resolve after deliberation, to determine and thus be set on one’s course of action.” Another option for transitive active perfects is the focus, as mentioned above, on the actual accomplishment of the action despite difficulty. There is still a notion of the subject’s state of credit or blame for the action, but the context places emphasis on the action having been done against all odds. I think this is a superior explanation of the three perfect verbs in 2 Tim 4:7 (ἠγώνισμαι, τετέλεκα, τετήρηκα) compared to Campbell’s imperfective “I am fighting … I am finishing … I am keeping.”52 With verbs that have an unbounded sense, that is, with no natural endpoint and none added by nominal or adverbial adjuncts (Figure 2), the state connected with these predications is less naturally definable. The perfect suggests that an activity has occurred, producing some effect in the present. In close parallel to aorists used with such verbs, it is very possible for the perfect to express a prior “action” that encompasses multiple occurrences rather than a single specific event. These repeated actions perhaps done on various occasions are viewed together in a summary reference and together are seen to produce the existing result. See the examples in Figure 2 from Luke 17:10; John 4:38; Heb 2:18. Various proposals have been made about non-telic examples as in Figure 2 that attribute an English present perfect meaning to the Greek perfect, an “extended now” or experiential sense. Here the English perfect indicates that an action has been done at least once in the past (e.g., “I have been to London”).53 This minimizes any allusion to an existing result and makes the perfect simply an indefinite preterite, a statement that an action occurred at some time but not specifying when. I  think, however, that this sense is 52 Campbell, Verbal Aspect, the Indicative Mood, and Narrative, 194. 53 See Comrie, Aspect, 58–59; Haug, “Semantics of the Greek Perfect,” 390, 397,  407–9.

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unsatisfactory for these Greek perfects.54 The aorist can carry an indefinite past sense like this (e.g., Mark 12:26; Luke 1:1), but it makes more sense to see some element of resulting state in these Greek perfects. The insight that the perfect may emphasize the subject’s responsibility for having done the action works quite well with examples like these. The examples from Ezekiel and Luke in Figure 2 were discussed earlier. In the other examples, John 4:36 cites the reward that will come for laborers: the others who have labored (v. 38) are deserving of the credit that such labor brings. The disciples are invited to enter in and become deserving of reward as well. In Heb 2:18 the sense is that Jesus has undergone suffering and as a result he is now qualified to aid those who are tempted.55 In regard to verbs denoting a state (Figure 3), Haug’s analysis cited earlier is very important. Just as the combination of aorist aspect with stative verbs quite regularly signals an ingressive sense (i.e., coming to be in that state), so too the Greek perfect with stative verbs usually signals entrance into and then on-going existence in that condition.56 This dual reference of the perfect (event and resulting condition) produces a stronger sense than the present used with such verbs, because it explicitly adds a reference to the event that led the subject into the state, not just to the existing state by itself. This stronger sense has led some grammarians to posit a so-called “intensive” perfect which is essentially identical to the meaning of the same verb in the present form (both denoting ongoing existence in the state) but expressing a strengthened sense: a firmer faith, a deeper knowledge, a clearer vision, and so forth.57 However, it is hard to justify this sense from actual examples of NT usage. Reference to the entrance into the condition as well as to the condition itself makes more sense as described above.58 So in the examples in Figure 3 there is a reference to the subject’s existence in the condition the verb denotes, but with an implication of the event of coming to be in such a condition. In John 6 the preceding verses refer 54 Haug, “Semantics of the Greek Perfect,” 389–90, 401. 55 In regard to the sense of πάσχω in Heb 2:18, Campbell, Verbal Aspect, the Indicative Mood, and Narrative, 191, discusses a perfect of this verb in Luke 13:2 and disputes what I say about the perfect with stative verbs, but I regard πάσχω to be an unbounded action verb instead. Juan Mateos, El aspecto verbal en el Nuevo Testamento (Madrid:  Ediciones Cristiandad, 1977), 65 agrees with this classification, and this is reflected in its fairly common use with the prepositions ὑπό or ἀπό to denote the agent who inflicts suffering upon the subject. 56 Comrie, Aspect, 19–20, 50–51; Smith, The Parameter of Aspect, 69–70; Haug, “Semantics of the Greek Perfect,” 403–4; 409–10. 57 See Fanning, Verbal Aspect, 292–93 and the literature cited there. 58 See similar conclusion in Haug, “Semantics of the Greek Perfect,” 394.

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to Jesus’ words as well as to other followers who “do not believe” (present tense) and have turned away. Peter’s confession in 6:69 affirms his (and others’) positive response and thus present conviction about what they had heard and seen during their days with Jesus. John 15:24 reflects the same thing but on the negative side; see the details there. Rom 5:2 refers to access that Christians have now come to possess, and the perfect of ἔχω mirrors in one word the two verbs of 5:1 (“having been justified [aorist], we have peace or let us have peace” [present]). The dual reference to past act and its present effect appears in Crito 44a. The perfect sense is present in the Greek, but the English translation has to adjust to a simple past because the specific time indication (telling when the act took place) does not fit very idiomatically with an English present perfect. The other perfect in Rom 5:2 illustrates a small set of Greek perfects that I regard to be fossilized forms carrying a purely present stative meaning with no implication of the prior act that produced that state. In addition to ἕστηκα and its compounds, the verb οἶδα also occurs frequently with this sense in the NT. This sense for these verbs seems to have originated from roots that denoted the normal perfect meaning of “a state produced by a prior action” but over time came to denote the state alone.59

3.  Conclusion I began this essay with the opinion that Campbell’s and Porter’s alternative approaches to the Greek perfect are weaker and less convincing than the traditional consensus. I have tried to support this opinion by clarifying what the traditional view says about the perfect and showing how this provides a better explanation of the perfect’s meaning in combination with various lexical and contextual features. Along the way I have pointed out problems raised by the alternative approaches, especially in how they account (or fail to account) for how the perfect combines with lexical features of verbs or broader actional features of the verb phrase that are all-important in specifying the overall sense of the perfect in context. While the traditional view is in need of further refinement and clarification, it gives a more solid basis for study and interpretation of the ancient Greek perfect.

59 On οἶδα see Clackson, Indo-European Linguistics, 121.

6.  Response to Fanning Constantine R. Campbell

1.  Introduction Buist Fanning is to be appreciated for his careful scholarship and irenic tone. As to be expected, there is much food for thought in his essay, especially in regard to the interactions between aspect and lexical types. I will structure my response in three sections: points I can affirm, questions I would put to him, and points I must challenge.

2.  Points I Can Affirm Sometimes response essays begin by mentioning a few cursory happy thoughts before moving in for the kill. I include this section, however, because I share several points of genuine agreement with Fanning, and these ought to be articulated. 2.1 First, it is good to see Fanning critique the definitions of the Greek perfect found in many standard grammars. He says these are “unfortunately quite inferior even if their further explanations of usage are not too bad.” In particular, he takes issue with BDF’s description of the perfect as a combination of the present and aorist. Though Fanning’s essay is a defense of the “traditional” understanding of the perfect—notwithstanding certain important differences from his description—he is right to bemoan the grammars’ weakness in their treatment of the perfect. Whatever the result of the debate within this volume, we all agree that we need to do better than our predecessors in this regard. While we owe a great debt to the grammatical giants of the past, we must

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build on their legacy rather than remain captive to it. They were not right about everything.   2.2 Second, Fanning flags that central to his critique of my approach to the perfect is how imperfective aspect can be understood in relation to telic and non-telic active lexemes. I will respond to this critique in the third section of this essay, but here it is noted that I entirely endorse the approach Fanning takes. To ask how imperfective aspect interacts with certain lexical types is exactly the right question to ask. I  appreciate that Fanning has observed the significance of this question, which reveals that he has explored the notion of an imperfective perfect in order to see how well it accounts for the evidence of perfect usage. He has not simply dismissed my view a priori, or for abstract reasons. Fanning has taken the idea seriously and tested it.   2.3 Third, of course I  endorse Fanning’s critiques of Porter. He notes Porter’s misleading citation of other scholars, as I have so observed in my main essay.   2.4 Fourth, I entirely agree with Fanning’s observation that certain intransitives or passives can be translated into English with or without the auxiliary “have.” That is, “has died” or “is dead,” “has been raised” or “is risen” are all legitimate translations of such perfects, depending on contextual factors. As Fanning correctly notes, “[O]‌ne contextual factor that can trigger the “have/ has” translation pattern is an emphasis on the actual accomplishment of the action.” As I have argued elsewhere on the translation of the Greek perfect, the “have/has” auxiliary should not be enforced, but should be used when the context and lexeme demand it. Furthermore, if we read “have/has” into every use of the perfect, then it will come as no surprise if we also conclude that there are a lot of “have” perfects in Greek! I also want to affirm the same point in reverse. That is, imperfective aspect does not mean that there is no such thing as a “have” perfect. Depending on context and lexeme, imperfective aspect is capable of expressing a state connected to an anterior event. It’s just that the anterior event is not part of the semantic meaning of the perfect form, but is conveyed by context and lexeme. These points demonstrate my clear agreement with Fanning in several respects. Moreover, I  believe they show that he has carefully evaluated my claims about imperfective aspect, thinking through their implications at the detailed, textual level.

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3.  Questions I Would Put Before moving to the points of frank disagreement, Fanning’s essay prompts a few questions. My intention in this section is to air such questions and to push back a little where appropriate, while acknowledging that these are not the areas of direct confrontation.   3.1 Modern Restatements of the Perfect. Fanning appeals to recent works on Greek and linguistics “to dispel the notion that the traditional view I am advancing is an outdated relic from a hundred years ago.” Of course it is most welcome to embrace the best of recent literature and linguistic methodology. However, recent linguistic approaches are still able to make the same mistakes of older approaches. One mistake I have in mind is the assumption that all Greek perfects combine anteriority with a resulting state. As long as this assumption about the function of the perfect remains, the results will turn out much the same. Such results may be stated with modern terms and dressed in linguistic garb, but that core assumption is an old one, and remains the chief problem afflicting modern discussions about the perfect. It is simply not true that all Greek perfects indicate an anterior action with an ensuing present result. The only way that description of the perfect can be maintained is by excluding the oldest and most frequently used perfects that do not indicate anteriority and all the perfects that do indicate anteriority but without any hint of an ensuing present result. Fanning is aware, of course, of such perfects and has discussed them elsewhere. At a more popular level, however, there seems to be some reluctance among Greek scholars and teachers to look at all the evidence, that is, all the uses of the Greek perfect in context. If one takes the time to do so, it will become clear that “anterior action with resulting consequences” is an inadequate description of perfect usage. At least, it is inadequate for anyone who aims to describe the meaning of the perfect form that covers most if not all its functions. There are always those who are happy to live with rules that need multiple exceptions, but I think such do not make very good rules.   3.2 Is the Perfect a Perfect? Fanning appeals to the work of Carlotta Smith for some cross-linguistic affirmation of his understanding of the Greek perfect. But the central problem with citing Smith is the assumption that she is talking about what we are talking about. She discusses the cross-linguistic category of “perfect,” which typologically refers to anteriority combined with a current state. That’s fine. What is not fine is to assume that’s what the Greek perfect is about.

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There is a circularity here that is not helped by our terminology. By referring to the morphoparadigms represented by λέλυκα as “perfect,” we have assumed the answer to the question. Our question is not what does the “perfect” mean, but what is the meaning of the λέλυκα forms. I  do not seek to challenge the notion of “perfect,” that is, the expression of an anterior action in combination with its present results. It is likely that all languages have a “perfect” category, and there are no doubt several different ways to express such a notion cross-linguistically. In English, we use the auxiliary “have/has” to express it. In Modern Greek, the auxiliary ἔχω is used, and so are some present indicatives. But our question is not “Does the perfect exist?” in Greek. It is not even “How does Greek express the perfect?” Rather, the question is “What do the λέλυκα forms mean?” I  think the error of the grammarians of the past, which is repeated by recent contributors, is to collapse those two questions into one. By asking what the Greek perfect means (referring to the λέλυκα forms), there follows an inevitable circularity. Consequently, I suggest that the way forward is to abandon our current terminology, which confuses the issues. Hebrew scholars have recognized the wisdom of such an approach, so that it is standard to refer to verbal forms by their morphological characteristics rather than by a semantic label. Terms such as qatal, yiqtol, weqatal, and wayyiqtol remind us that we are talking about specific verbal forms without attributing meaning to them via labels. These terms are more helpful than the older terms used for Hebrew verbs—perfect, imperfect, and so forth, which assume the meanings of the forms. As with Greek, there is debate surrounding Hebrew verbs, so to remove terminology that assumes the answers to the questions is an eminently good idea. It would be preferable to do the same for Greek, and refer to the elusa (aorist), luso (future), luo (present), eluon (imperfect), elelukein (pluperfect), and leluka (perfect) forms. This may seem a radical suggestion, but really it is not. These are neutral terms that will suit everyone’s point of view about the Greek verbal system for the simple reason that they do not attribute meaning to the forms. Moreover, such terms would help us to avoid the kind of circularity that is evident in the following statement from Fanning: The fact that Smith analyzes things this way and that a number of others see the persuasiveness of it does not make it correct, of course, either cross-linguistically or in regard to ancient Greek. But if it is true of the perfect in various languages, this is a powerful argument from language typology that ancient Greek usage will be similar to it.

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To reiterate, the assumption at work here is that the leluka form is a “perfect.” Since it is a “perfect,” cross-linguistic understandings of the “perfect” enable us to conclude that the Greek perfect is, indeed, a perfect. May I suggest, rather, that we abandon the term “perfect” for this verbal form to clarify the question we are asking. The question is: What does the leluka morphology mean? If Fanning is right, the leluka form will indeed be shown to be a “perfect.” But I am not persuaded that he is right.

4.  Points I Must Challenge In this section, I will restrict my interaction to Fanning’s critique of my position on the Greek perfect.   4.1 Imperfective Aspect and Telic Lexemes. The first point I will challenge has already been answered in my main essay in this volume. Fanning asks, If someone wants to argue that in such instances the perfect expresses a state that is “going on,” how do we get a reference to a state from such telic active verbs in imperfective aspect? If imperfective aspect with such verbs normally denotes the ongoing process, how does it refer to the accomplished state when the perfect is used? How do “she was dying” or “we were deliberating” (imperfect forms) become “she is dead” or “we are decided” in the perfect?”

As I mentioned above, I applaud the question. To ask about how imperfective aspect operates with certain lexical types is the right kind of question to be asking. Nevertheless, part of the answer to that involves our understanding of imperfective aspect. Here, Fanning describes imperfective aspect as normally denoting an ongoing process. As I point out in my essay in this volume, this is not what imperfective aspect refers to, though it is commonly misunderstood this way. Imperfective aspect refers to an internal viewpoint. It is a spatial concept. Progression, or ongoing action, is but one of the functions of imperfective aspect; it is not what imperfective aspect is. To describe imperfect aspect as ongoing would be a parallel error to describing the aorist as punctiliar. Again, that is a common misunderstanding, but it is no less wrong. When Fanning asks how an accomplished state can be communicated with imperfective aspect, the answer is simple: with an internal view of the action. If the action has “ended,” this is no bother since imperfective aspect is not “progressive.” The second part of my response to this critique is to refer to the present indicative. We all agree that the present indicative is imperfective aspect, and I argue that it is parallel in function to the perfect. This being so, we may test

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Fanning’s claims with regard to the present indicative to see if they really do represent a problem for an imperfective perfect.   4.2 Imperfective Aspect and Unbounded Lexemes. Fanning points to the unbounded actions “speak” and “do,” and claims that with imperfective aspect, these could not be translated “have spoken” and “have done.” There are two things to say about this. First, translating such verbs as “have spoken” and “have done” is not the point! Saying that these translations would not be possible with imperfective aspect, and therefore the Greek perfect can’t be imperfective in aspect, reveals the same kind of circularity addressed above. Fanning thinks these perfects in Ezek 37:14 and Luke 17:10 should be translated as “have” perfects, and since this is not possible with imperfective aspect, clearly the perfect is not imperfective. But it’s the very notion that the perfect should be translated with “have/has” that I seek to challenge. In any case, I do not have a problem with translating some perfects with “have/has” in English. As Fanning points out in his essay (and as I  have endorsed in this one), the inclusion or exclusion of “have/has” in English is determined by lexeme and context. If a context demands “have” in the English rendering of a perfect, then so be it. That does not, however, rule out imperfective aspect. But allow me to probe Fanning’s objection further. Is it really the case that a lexeme such as “speak” must refer to an ongoing action when used with imperfective aspect? No. There are dozens of cases in which the present indicative of λέγω is used without any hint of ongoing action, as the following examples demonstrate. Matt 4:6 καὶ λέγει αὐτῷ· εἰ υἱὸς εἶ τοῦ θεοῦ, βάλε σεαυτὸν κάτω and said to Him, “If You are the Son of God, throw Yourself down.” Matt 4:10 τότε λέγει αὐτῷ ὁ Ἰησοῦς· ὕπαγε, σατανᾶ· Then Jesus told him, “Go away, Satan!” Mark 6:38 ὁ δὲ λέγει αὐτοῖς· πόσους ἄρτους ἔχετε; And He asked them, “How many loaves do you have?” Mark 9:5 καὶ ἀποκριθεὶς ὁ Πέτρος λέγει τῷ Ἰησοῦ· ῥαββί, καλόν ἐστιν ἡμᾶς ὧδε εἶναι Then Peter said to Jesus, “Rabbi, it’s good for us to be here!” Luke 11:45 Ἀποκριθεὶς δέ τις τῶν νομικῶν λέγει αὐτῷ· διδάσκαλε, ταῦτα λέγων καὶ ἡμᾶς ὑβρίζεις. One of the experts in the law answered Him, “Teacher, when You say these things You insult us too.”

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Luke 24:36 καὶ λέγει αὐτοῖς· εἰρήνη ὑμῖν. He said to them, “Peace to you!”

None of these present indicatives is treated as an ongoing activity, even though all are examples of the unbounded action, “speak,” used in conjunction with imperfective aspect. There are hundreds of similar examples of such lexemes belonging to the same lexical class. It may be objected, however, that these examples are all historical presents, and as such they are exceptions that should not be considered. Historical presents, however, should not be excluded from consideration, since they represent around 30% of all present indicatives (in the gospels, at least), and their past temporal reference is not the issue at hand. The issue that Fanning has raised is what happens when an unbounded lexeme is combined with imperfective aspect. He claims that this must result in an ongoing action, but these examples prove otherwise. While we may differ on how to interpret the phenomenon of the historical present, the combination of lexeme and aspect is not affected by differing interpretations. In any case, Fanning himself provides an example of a present indicative that bucks his expectation, from Luke 15:29, “for so many years I have served you/have been serving (δουλεύω) you.” He cites this as an example of the traditional category of “past action still in progress.” He acknowledges, therefore, that an unbounded action with imperfective aspect can in fact convey a past action that has continued to the moment of speaking. This acknowledgment seems to undermine his previous point.   4.3 Imperfective Aspect and Bounded Lexemes. Fanning also argues that imperfective aspect is ill suited to bounded actions that have a natural endpoint. With regard to “dying,” Fanning argues that such a verb with imperfective aspect must indicate an ongoing action (“dying”) rather than a completed event (“has died”). He appeals to Luke 8:49, 1 Cor 15:4, and Acts 5:28 as examples of the perfect used for completed events, which would not be viewed as complete if the perfect were imperfective in aspect. This would be a good argument if the following evidence did not undermine it.   4.3.1 Let us first consider Luke 8:49, τέθνηκεν ἡ θυγάτηρ σου· μηκέτι σκύλλε τὸν διδάσκαλον/ Your daughter is dead. Don’t bother the Teacher anymore. Fanning makes a good point that the same lexeme is used as an imperfect indicative in Luke 8:42 and is there rightly understood as incomplete: καὶ αὐτὴ ἀπέθνῃσκεν/ and she was dying. My understanding of this use of τέθνηκεν is that it is an historical perfect. If a present indicative had been used here instead

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of the perfect, the context would flag that it should be read as a completed, past event. A perfect example of this can be found in 2 Samuel 2:23: 2 Sam 2:23 καὶ οὐκ ἐβούλετο τοῦ ἀποστῆναι. καὶ τύπτει αὐτὸν Αβεννηρ ἐν τῷ ὀπίσω τοῦ δόρατος ἐπὶ τὴν ψόαν, καὶ διεξῆλθεν τὸ δόρυ ἐκ τῶν ὀπίσω αὐτοῦ, καὶ πίπτει ἐκεῖ καὶ ἀποθνῄσκει ὑποκάτω αὐτοῦ. But Asahel refused to turn away, so Abner hit him in the stomach with the end of his spear. The spear went through his body, and he fell and died right there.

In this verse we observe a present indicative use of the same lexeme (ἀποθνῄ σκει) that is obviously to be understood as an historical present. My reading of Luke 8:49 is parallel: Your daughter died. This translation is faithful to the bounded nature of the lexeme, and also to the imperfective aspect of the perfect, since it is an historical perfect. I have argued elsewhere that the historical present is parallel to the historical perfect. Similar lexemes and groups of lexemes are found with both forms in parallel contexts. The historical perfect occurs in identical situations, with more or less the same lexemes as are found as historical presents.   4.3.2 Let us next consider 1 Cor 15:4, ἐγήγερται τῇ ἡμέρᾳ τῇ τρίτῃ κατὰ τὰς γραφὰς/ He was raised on the third day. According to Fanning’s argument, the use of this lexeme, “raise,” with imperfective aspect must evoke an ongoing action rather than a completed event. But again, by reference to the present indicative, we see that this is not the case. Consider these examples of historical present uses of ἐγείρω: Mark 4:38 καὶ αὐτὸς ἦν ἐν τῇ πρύμνῃ ἐπὶ τὸ προσκεφάλαιον καθεύδων. καὶ ἐγείρο υσιν αὐτὸν καὶ λέγουσιν αὐτῷ· διδάσκαλε, οὐ μέλει σοι ὅτι ἀπολλύμεθα; So they woke Him up and said to Him, “Teacher! Don’t you care that we’re going to die?” John 13:4 ἐγείρεται ἐκ τοῦ δείπνου καὶ τίθησιν τὰ ἱμάτια καὶ λαβὼν λέντιον διέζωσεν ἑαυτόν· So He got up from supper, laid aside His robe, took a towel, and tied it around Himself.

4.3.3 Let us consider Acts 5:28, καὶ ἰδοὺ πεπληρώκατε τὴν Ἰερουσαλὴμ τῆς διδαχῆς ὑμῶν/ you have filled Jerusalem with your teaching. Again according to Fanning, the use of the lexeme “fulfill” with imperfective aspect must evoke an ongoing action rather than a completed event. First, it is worth considering whether an ongoing action would suit the context here. Would it make sense if the high priest had said to the apostles, “you are filling Jerusalem with your teaching”? Actually, there is nothing in the context to prevent such a reading.

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Nevertheless, the claim is that a continuous action is necessitated by this combination of lexeme and aspect. Unfortunately, there are no instances of the present indicative of πληρόω in the GNT, LXX, or Apostolic Fathers with which to compare this usage. There are, however, five instances in the GNT of πληρόω used with the present participle, infinitive, imperative, and subjunctive (Luke 2:40; 9:31; Eph 1:23; 5:18; Col 4:17). Of these, Luke 2:40 could be understood as an example of πληρόω used with imperfective aspect, yet expressing a “completed” action: Τὸ δὲ παιδίον ηὔξανεν καὶ ἐκραταιοῦτο πληρούμενον σοφίᾳ, καὶ χάρις θεοῦ ἦν ἐπ᾿ αὐτό/ The boy grew up and became strong, filled with wisdom, and God’s grace was on Him. Admittedly, πληρούμενον could easily be understood in a progressive sense (“being filled”), but the major translations take it as “filled,” which also seems to fit the context. While the use of a present participle is not as relevant to the current question as the indicative mood, nevertheless Luke 2:40 supports the evidence adduced so far in support of the claim that imperfective aspect does not necessarily invoke a continuous action with bounded lexemes.   4.3.4 Let us consider Plato, Crito 46a, ἀλλὰ βουλεύου—μᾶλλον δὲ οὐδὲ βο υλεύεσθαι ἔτι ὥρα ἀλλὰ βεβουλεῦσθαι—μία δὲ βουλή/ But decide—rather it is time not to be deciding any longer, but to have decided—and there is only one plan possible. To evaluate this example, which employs a perfect infinitive rather than indicative, consider Isaiah 8:6: Διὰ τὸ μὴ βούλεσθαι τὸν λαὸν τοῦτον τὸ ὕδωρ τοῦ Σιλωαμ τὸ πορευόμενον ἡσυχῇ, ἀλλὰ βούλεσθαι ἔχειν τὸν Ραασσων καὶ τὸν υἱὸν Ρομελιου βασιλέα ἐφ᾿ ὑμῶν Because this people has refused the slowly flowing waters of Shiloah but has desired to have Rezin and the son of Remaliah as king over them.

Here we observe two instances of the present infinitive βούλεσθαι, which are both required by context to be understood as indicating “completed” actions. Once again, this evidence demonstrates that Fanning’s claim is not accurate. Imperfective aspect is capable of expressing a completed action with a bounded lexeme.   4.4 Prominence. Fanning also critiques my claim that the perfect indicative conveys prominence. He is right to say about my “heightened proximity” category that “at times this has the pragmatic effect of making the action more prominent in a discourse.” But then he says, “I think this sometimes holds good, but it seems better to regard it as a secondary effect of referring to the combination of past action and present result.”

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First, as Fanning rightly notes, I claim that the perfect “at times has the pragmatic effect” of prominence; it is not a semantic value, but a pragmatic implicature of the semantic values of the perfect. Second, I do not see how the combination of past action and present result yields prominence—Fanning’s claim makes little sense without further elucidation. Third, Fanning appeals to Hebrews 7:11 and 10:11 as examples of the perfect occurring in “background clauses.” In my view of prominence, parenthetical comments are not “backgrounded,” since they can offer crucial (and therefore highly salient) information. Parenthesis is an example of “structural offline” material in the sense that it is not part of the mainline of a discourse. But, as I  have argued elsewhere, it is a mistake to equate such structural features with prominence or lack of prominence. Any kind of statement can convey prominence, whether it exists on the mainline or offline.   4.5 Imperfective Aspect and Transitive Lexemes. Finally, I  will address Fanning’s treatment of transitive active lexemes. He cites Acts 5:28, which reads: καὶ ἰδοὺ πεπληρώκατε τὴν Ἰερουσαλὴμ τῆς διδαχῆς ὑμῶν καὶ βούλεσθε ἐπαγαγεῖν ἐφ᾿ ἡμᾶς τὸ αἷμα τοῦ ἀνθρώπου τούτου/ you have filled Jerusalem with your teaching and are determined to bring this man’s blood on us! Fanning rightly acknowledges that it seems that the state of the object is in view:  Jerusalem is in the state of having been filled. This is the old category of the resultative perfect, coined by Wackernagel in 1904. The problem with the resultative perfect is that it proposes an illegitimate predication of the (so-called) semantic feature of the perfect to the object, rather than the subject of the verb. Finite verbs predicate an action to their subjects, not their objects—which simply receive the action performed by the subject. So, Fanning is right to want to avoid invoking the resultative perfect in this instance and others. The trouble is that the resultative perfect category is necessitated when the traditional view of the perfect is upheld—a past action with present consequences. Very often, the present consequences pertain to the object, not the subject; hence the resultative perfect is created by the traditional definition of the perfect. Instead of opting for the resultative perfect understanding at Acts 5:28, Fanning prefers the stativity to be attributed to the subject (the apostles). Following McKay’s idea that such uses of the perfect stress the responsibility of the subject for the action, rather than the state of the object, Fanning posits this reading for texts such as Acts 5:28 in order to avoid the resultative perfect. This, however, is disingenuous. While I cannot claim that such perfects

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never draw attention to the responsibility of the subject, that is not the same thing as the “present consequences” of an action that the perfect is supposed to convey. The past action and present consequences conception is meant to refer to an action that produces a state of affairs as a result of the action. But the notion of responsibility precedes both the action and the state of affairs. The subject performs the action, the action occurs, and then the state results. To say that the resulting state flowing out of the action is the responsibility of the subject means that the action’s consequences in the material world are left unexpressed. In reality, however, the results are seen with reference to the object of the verb. Consequently, it is unavoidable to capitulate to the resultative perfect with Fanning’s view of the perfect. Additionally, it’s worth noting that McKay, whom Fanning follows on this “responsibility” reading of transitive perfects, categorically rejected the traditional view of the perfect, in part because of the resultative perfect that it necessitates. Fanning seems to want to have his cake and eat it, in that he follows McKay in rejecting the resultative perfect but not in rejecting the traditional view that creates it. A final point against Fanning and McKay:  the natural way to convey responsibility of the subject in Greek is through use of the middle voice. This fact highlights the category error that the “responsibility perfect” commits. The notion of “responsibility” (a type of subject-affectedness) belongs to the category of voice not aspect. This, then, is a category error parallel to Porter’s mistake of describing stativity as an aspect when it is in fact an Aktionsart.

5.  Conclusion Fanning has made as good a case as one could imagine for an aspectual reconfiguration of the traditional understanding of the Greek perfect. However, the Latin-derived conception of a past action with present consequences fails to account for the full range of usage of this tense-form. There are many perfects that either do not clearly express a past action, and many that do not evoke an abiding present state resulting from the action itself. Those many perfects that do convey a past action and present consequences do so for reasons other than the semantic constituency defended by Fanning. Fanning’s critique of my understanding of the perfect is well put, in that it asks the right type of questions—namely, how imperfective aspect interacts with various lexical types. His claims against imperfective aspect, however, cannot be sustained by comparison with the same lexical types used in concert with the present indicative tense-form. The present indicative provides the

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ideal grounds upon which to test claims about how imperfective aspect interacts with various lexical types, since its imperfective aspect is uncontroversial. I have attempted to demonstrate that the wide-ranging functions of the present indicative constitute the evidence needed to answer Fanning’s objections to an imperfective understanding of the perfect indicative.

7.  Defining the Greek Perfect TenseForm as Stative: A Response to Buist M. Fanning Stanley E. Porter I greatly appreciate the opportunity to respond once more to the work of my longtime colleague Buist Fanning. More particularly, we are discussing—or at least are meant to be discussing—the verbal semantics of the perfect tenseform, which I interpret to mean, at the least, its aspectual semantics. This is not the first time that Buist and I have engaged in debate over Greek, and perhaps it will not be the last. In his constructive proposal, Fanning makes a robust case for what he envisions as the meaning of the perfect tense-form. In fact, I think that this is the most robust case that he has ever made for it, and probably one of the most robust cases for what amounts to what he calls the “traditional consensus” (62) that I have seen.1 For this, he is certainly to be thanked. As a result, I have a much clearer idea what the “traditional consensus” seems to think that the perfect tense-form means and how it is used in the Greek of the New Testament, as well as in some other ancient Greek—or at least what one proponent of what he calls the “traditional consensus” means by it. Or do I? Before I answer that question, I wish simply to say that I do not believe that calling any view simply the “traditional consensus” helps anyone to understand what is meant. What does “traditional” mean in this instance? There is no evidence that it is the view that has always been held. The ancient Greeks themselves seem to have been unclear about the meaning of the perfect tenseform and so the tradition that Fanning seems to indicate does not go back that

1 B.M. Fanning, “Defining the Ancient Greek Perfect:  Interaction with Recent Alternatives to the Traditional View of the Perfect,” in this volume, referred to in this response by means of page numbers in parentheses within the text.

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far.2 How far does it go back? For Fanning, it goes back 125 years (62). That may seem like a long time, but that merely means that there was a time before this (a long time!) when this view did not exist, but it also indicates that there is a very good chance, if not a virtual certainty, that this view will go the way of all “traditional” ideas once they are replaced by others. I would contend that that day has already arrived. Those who put stock in an idea because it is “traditional” indicate that they are simply endorsing someone else’s old idea, one that has probably already had its time of flourishing, and is on the way out. Indeed, that is the case with the “traditional” view of the perfect, as the debate we are involved in indicates. If the traditional view really were the consensus, we would not be having this discussion. This leads directly to the idea of “consensus.” In Fanning’s potted summary of the state of Greek grammar, he cites some recent works endorsing his “traditional” view. What he fails to note is any dissenting opinion—and there has been dissenting opinion aplenty, including such well-known Greek grammarians as J.P. Louw and K.L. McKay, and more recent scholars such as Rodney Decker, Trevor Evans, and David Mathewson (cited elsewhere in this volume). The traditional view can hardly be said to be the consensus of the three of us who are debating this issue—and the fact that we are debating it indicates that it is far from a consensus, or at least a secure one. In the recently published Encyclopedia of Ancient Greek Language and Linguistics, the article on “Perfect” lists three main approaches to the meaning of the perfect tense-form.3 What is interesting to note in this article is that Fanning’s “traditional” view is equated with the first of these, but his view also includes the second one listed as well (I will return to the problem of definition below). The third is the stative approach that I endorse (Constantine Campbell’s approach is not mentioned). The article also discusses two different recent developments, but which seem to include the first two views noted above, and they include in their discussion some of the same people that Fanning includes in what he calls his “traditional consensus.” In other words, what Fanning calls his “traditional consensus” is far from what others define as traditional and even further from being a consensus, but is seen by others as representing a number of different views. This leads me to discussion of Fanning’s definition. Despite his claims to the contrary, Fanning seems to be unclear regarding the meaning of the 2 See S.E. Porter, Verbal Aspect in the Greek of the New Testament, with Reference to Tense and Mood (SBG 1; New York: Peter Lang, 1989), 18–22; D. Haug, “Aristotle’s kinesis/energeia-test and the Semantics of the Greek Perfect,” Linguistics 42.4 (2004): 387–418, esp. 388–89. 3 K. Bentein, “Perfect,” in Encyclopedia of Ancient Greek Language and Linguistics (ed. G.K. Giannakis et al.; Leiden: Brill Online, 2014), esp. 1–2.

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perfect tense-form. He defines it a number of different ways: “it expresses an action done with existing results or the present condition produced by a past occurrence” (62), a generalized summary of the traditional view he endorses (62); it “is an intersection of aspect (perfective/aoristic), temporal location (prior occurrence of the event relative to the state it produces), and procedural character (stative)” (66), Fanning’s own refined definition of the traditional view; it focuses “on an existing result of an action that has been done” (69), the traditional view whose “explanatory power” he endorses (69); it “has a dual reference to a past event as well as the present state it produces” (73), for which he explicitly argues; there is a “dual reference of the perfect (event and resulting condition)” (76); and it has “a reference to the subject’s existence in the condition the verb denotes, but with an implication of the event of coming to be in such a condition” (76); among possibly others. There are several major problems here. The first, and most important, is that the definitions are not consistent, with the view Fanning apparently wants to claim as the “traditional” definition sometimes standing on its own but sometimes being part of a larger definition as indicating “temporal location,” not the meaning of the perfect tense-form per se. The second problem is that even the “traditional” definitions or his refinements are not consistent. Sometimes the definition speaks of “existing result(s)” and others of “present condition” and others of the “state it produces” and others of the “present state it produces” and others of the “event of coming to be in such a condition.” In other words, they variably speak of results, conditions, states, or even events. Further, the definitions sometimes speak of an “action” or “a past or prior occurrence” or “an action that has been done” or a “past event.” Again, it is variably an action, occurrence, or event. Some of these definitions have temporal dimensions (Fanning seems to think that all should have a temporal dimension) and sometimes not. Sometimes they are sequential and sometimes they are not. The third problem is that these definitions, even if we are to find internal harmony, are out of harmony with the two apparent definitions made in the Encyclopedia article. The article labels the “traditional” view as having the “dual orientation” of “denoting completed action and resulting state,” with the second, though admittedly similar view, distinguishing between state of the subject or object. Fanning is apparently not as traditional as he would like to think, since he includes all of this, including the distinction between emphasis upon subject and object (69). Besides that, Fanning adds something that the others do not mention (by drawing on the work of McKay, who argues for the stative understanding)—that transitive instances of what he calls “unbounded” action that do not have emphasis upon the result indicate the “responsibility” of “the subject for having done a

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certain action” (69).4 In other words, Fanning must appeal to the stative aspect view to salvage what he calls his traditional view, which by his own admission has major problems explaining the evidence, and in fact cannot explain it using its own internal categories. The problem of definition alone is enough to call this position, as diffuse as it is, into question. Its admitted failure to explain all that it must explain seems to indicate its failure as a definition in and of itself. All of this points to the further problem that what Fanning has identified is not just a definition of the perfect tense-form but multiple and sometimes contradictory meanings of the form and perhaps other elements. This, however, is not the only problem with Fanning’s position. Another problem is the object of his study. Fanning is supposed to be defining the ancient Greek perfect tense-form, and even offers a number of (though not all do this) definitions of that tense-form. However, as is clear from his chapter, he is not really defining the tense-form but a variety of other elements that he claims to be able to identify. Most of his definitions, as noted above, revolve around how use of the perfect tense-form depicts action, but his fullest definition, and the one he uses to structure his chapter in parts, is that “the Greek perfect is an intersection of aspect (perfective/aoristic), temporal location (prior occurrence of the event relative to the state it produces), and procedural character (stative)” (66). So, is the perfect tense-form the “traditional” definition regarding sequence of action or is it this tripartite definition, in which is embedded the sequence or “temporal location”? Fanning appears to have confused the issue significantly further at this point, and each element is potentially mistaken. I have already dealt briefly with temporal location, and shown that there is an inconsistency in his definition. There is more that can be said, however, regarding this and procedural character. Fanning attempts to define the past dimension of the temporal location, or rather sequence. He appeals to Plato, Crito 46a, which states (in his translation): “it is time not to be deciding any longer (βουλεύεσθαι), but to have decided (βεβουλεῦσθαι)” (64), with what Fanning sees (drawing on the work of Dag Haug) as the implication that “the perfect denotes a present state resulting from a former event that can be expressed by the VP [verb phrase] in the aorist. The perfect, therefore, has a double reference: a present state and a past event that culminated” (64).5 This is, so far as I can see, the extent of Fanning’s defense of both the past 4 K.L. McKay, A New Syntax of the Verb in New Testament Greek (SBG 5; New York: Peter Lang, 1994), 31–32; McKay, “On the Perfect and Other Aspects in New Testament Greek,” NovT 23 (1981): 289–329, here 311–14. 5 Haug, “Aristotle’s kinesis/energeia-test,” 395–96, although he is at least as concerned with debating lexical meaning as tense-form meaning here.

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action and the present result. This bitemporality is not entirely clear, however, even from the example in Plato, Crito 46a, as it opposes the process of deciding with the state of decision, the implication (in Fanning’s discussion) being that the process of deciding precedes the state of decision. The result of the decision follows from the process of deciding, as much a justification of the perfect being dependent upon a previous event that can be expressed by a present/imperfect tense-form as much as of an aorist (as one might argue in τέθνηκα, “I am dead,” which might imply ἔθανον, “I died,” but also ἔθνῃσκον, “I was dying”). In other words, the defense of the previous “aorist” act is compromised, and with it Fanning’s definition. There is another problem, however, and that is that Haug’s definition, which Fanning uses in defense, places emphasis upon a double reference, past and present. Why is it then that Fanning characterizes the perfect as aspectually perfective (aorist tense-form)? Why not imperfective aspect (like Campbell) or even both? He does not say and does not make clear why. Furthermore, Fanning does not take into consideration Haug’s further statement that, at least for “early Greek,” “the notion of state seems to be much more important than the preceding event.”6 This would argue further against Fanning’s position. Fanning appears to rely heavily upon the work of Haug regarding the temporal sequence supposedly captured in the meaning of the perfect tense-form. This is problematic for a number of further reasons.7 Despite the recognition that Aristotle’s comparison of meanings of tense-forms is ontological and not linguistic in nature, Haug nevertheless pursues linguistic ends by means of Aktionsart (relying primarily upon Anthony Kenny and Zeno Vendler) 6 Haug, “Aristotle’s kinesis/energeia-test,” 396. 7 This is not the place to engage in a thorough critique of Haug’s work, except to note that it suffers from several major conceptual problems (besides a lack of terminological precision and organizational clarity): dependence upon cross-linguistic comparison, which creates a number of unnecessary problems; undue reliance upon English translation, even for understanding Greek; failure to define aspect and to conceptualize it thoroughly; lack of clarity regarding the place of Aktionsart within discussion of tense and aspect; and some questionable interpretations (e.g. Haug, “Aristotle’s kinesis/energeia-test,” 392 on the drawing of three circles). I would also contend that Haug fails to consider the perfect tense-form systemically, but that is because of my theoretical orientation (not his, which relies upon the problematic work of E. Gerö and A.  von Stechow, “Tense in Time:  The Greek Perfect,” in Words in Time [ed. R. Eckard, K. von Heusinger, and C. Schwarze; Berlin: de Gruyter, 2002]). I do not think that it constitutes a secure basis for further analysis of the Greek perfect tenseform, as is done by R. Crellin, “The Greek Perfect through Gothic Eyes: Evidence for the Existence of Unitary Semantic for the Greek perfect in New Testament Greek,” Journal of Greek Linguistics 14 (2014): 5–42, even if his conclusions are conducive to a unified view of the semantics of the form.

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and English translation (esp. conceiving of the perfect, whether English or Greek, as meaning something roughly equivalent to “A is φ-ing entails A has (not) φ-ed,” but which does not hold equally for both English and Greek). Fanning endorses on several occasions Haug’s definition of the meaning of the perfect tense-form. Haug contends that there is “general agreement” that “the Greek perfect expresses the present existence of a state resulting from a past event,” but also that “Unfortunately, this is not very precise.”8 There are two problems with use of this definition. One is that Haug uses it to define the early Greek perfect, whereas the post-Homeric Greek perfect has admittedly (by Haug) different characteristics. The second is that he must qualify his definition in two ways: “[t]‌here are some verbs for which this relationship [state results from a past event] never holds,” what he calls “a so-called intensive or abnormal perfect,”9 citing the example of the perfect γέγηθα (in the present γηθέω), “I rejoice” (also οἶδα, “I know”); and what he calls “the situation in Greek: the reference to a past event can often be rather weak or even nonexistent,”10 citing the example of the perfect κέκραγα (present κράζω), “I shout.” In other words, by Haug’s own admission, even in his attempt at a unified theory of the perfect with emphasis upon result, he must admit that there are exceptions at both ends: no previous event and no resultant state. This is a problem, both for Haug and for Fanning. As a result, Haug’s conclusions must die the death of numerous qualifications in order to locate what he sees as a unified sense of the meaning of the perfect tense-form. For example, he notes a number of Greek verbs where the English translations of the present and perfect tense-forms are similar, and claims that this indicates “near-synonymy of the present and the perfect forms”11—although he also states regarding the example of γηθέω and γέγηθα above: “As we do not have ancient Greek informants, we shall probably never know the exact nature of the semantic difference between the perfect and the present in such cases, although it seems probable that there is one” (indeed, I think that there is!).12 He further appeals to what he calls “default aktionsart,” in which a given instance of the meaning of the perfect tense-form may emphasize either perfective or imperfective action (hardly a view that Fanning endorses). Haug also notes the apparent difficulty of so-called telic verb phrases and the Greek perfect tense-form expressing the state of the subject. He does his analysis by in effect downplaying the significance of any past 8 Haug, “Aristotle’s kinesis/energeia-test,” 394–95. 9 Haug, “Aristotle’s kinesis/energeia-test,” 394. 10 Haug, “Aristotle’s kinesis/energeia-test,” 397. 11 Haug, “Aristotle’s kinesis/energeia-test,” 395. 12 Haug, “Aristotle’s kinesis/energeia-test,” 394.

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or preceding action (as he apparently must on the basis of his own evidence; e.g. the perfect of a so-called atelic verb phrase as in the perfect ἀκήκοα, present ἀκούω)13 and noting that in post-Homeric Greek the so-called resultative uses of the perfect “denote states which are hard to formalize.”14 As a result, despite all of this Haug claims to have traced the development of the meaning of the perfect tense-form with the result that stative verb phrases are “ambiguous,” as are he claims (wrongly, I believe) their aorists (either ingressive or complexive) and only resolved lexically (e.g., perfect σεσίγηκα of σιγάω, “I am silent,” indicates the ingressive “event of my falling silent was realized in the past and the result still holds,” versus the perfect ἀκήκοα of ἀκούω, “I hear” indicates “my hearing was realized in the past and the resultant state still obtains”),15 and “resultant state” for atelic verb phrases (perfect βέβηκα of βαίνω, “I walk”) or “target state” (perfect τέτοκα of τίκτω, “I beget”) for telic verb phrases.16 Fanning may have adopted Haug’s unqualified definition of the perfect tense-form, but he does not follow Haug in much else that he discusses. For example, Fanning does not discuss verb phrases when he treats bounded (or telic) or unbounded (or atelic) verbs, but individual verbs. Fanning probably does this to preserve the sense that he is defining the perfect tense-form, and not phrases or larger units. Nevertheless, Haug attempts to show that the verb phrase must be considered, not just the verb. Further, Fanning refers to the perfect as an aspect in his definition, but so far as I can see Haug does not, always distinguishing the meaning of the perfect from perfective and imperfective aspect. Fanning is trying to get even more out of the perfect than Haug will allow, although it is Haug’s view that Fanning relies upon for the temporal sequence basis and extension of his thought. I think, however, that the situation can be greatly clarified if we understand the meaning of the perfect tense-form not as a type of perfective or even imperfective aspect, but simply as stative. By this I mean that the semantics of the perfect tense-form, regardless of the supposed type of meaning of the individual lexical item (in other words, I do not believe that what is sometimes called Aktionsart or lexical aspect or, perhaps better, procedural or situational aspect influences the meaning of the perfect tense-form). I simply note three observations with some examples to make my point that, in fact, Haug has provided an argument for the stative aspect of the perfect tense-form, 13 Haug, “Aristotle’s kinesis/energeia-test,” 410. 14 Haug, “Aristotle’s kinesis/energeia-test,” 405. 15 Haug, “Aristotle’s kinesis/energeia-test,” 410. 16 Haug relies here upon T.  Parsons, Events in the Semantics of English (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1990).

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despite his not labeling it an aspect and his close dependence upon English and the simple binarism of perfective/imperfective. The first is that Haug must admit that the preceding event is in fact not a necessary part of the definition of what the perfect means, as there are numerous examples where no such past action is indicated or implied. The second is that the attempt to distinguish types of states simply does not work, on Haug’s own admission. For example, when he discusses the atelic verb phrase, which should indicate a target state, he begins by noting verbs that he calls “idiosyncratic” because the kind of state that he wishes to see is not readily evident. The example he concentrates upon is τέτοκα, “I beget.” Even though the present and aorist are transitive, the perfect tense-form is intransitive (hence atelic according to his scheme), which he renders as “be a mother” or “be in the puerperal state” (see Xenophon, Cyn. 5.13). Haug clearly recognizes that there is no resultant state. Giving birth does not result from begetting (in fact, one could argue the opposite), he states that “world knowledge tells us that this is the way things normally are, and this is enough to justify a quasi-resultative.”17 (I think that Haug’s example with γέγραφα, of γράφω, in which he tries to argue for the atelic resultative sense is also not persuasive.18) This is hardly convincing on any account, certainly linguistically. Further, Haug has the same type of problem with telic verb phrases indicating a target state. He notes that the verb βέβηκα of βαίνω, “I walk,” as in Euripides, Herac. 62; cf. Sophocles, Oed. Col. 52) indicates a resultant and not a target state. Haug admits as much, and uses the “notion of event realization” as a means of explaining this.19 Simply put, this is a way of stating that the event that is indicated occurs sometime within the scope of the process indicated—in other words, some kind of event occurring within the scope of the entire process itself. This well explains the example that Haug cites and that Fanning uses as important for his case: Plato, Crito 46a: “it is rather the time not ‘to be deciding’ (βουλε ύεσθαι) but ‘to be in a decided state’ (βεβουλεῦσθαι),” that is, the state of being decided, with the act of deciding indicated within this process. I would contend that that is exactly what is meant by stative aspect, a state of affairs indicated by the process invoked. Haug has provided a convincing argument for the stative aspect of the perfect tense-form, despite his best efforts to salvage an Aktionsart-based (procedural) semantics.20 Where does this leave Fanning’s case? Unfortunately, there is not much left of Fanning’s argument. 17 Haug, “Aristotle’s kinesis/energeia-test,” 406. 18 Haug, “Aristotle’s kinesis/energeia-test,” 408. 19 Haug, “Aristotle’s kinesis/energeia-test,” 409. 20 This helps us to understand the comments of a number of other scholars who examine aspect, often cross-linguistically, such as Carlota Smith and others cited in my

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There are, nevertheless, other elements of Fanning’s constructive proposal to consider. The first is that he himself, like Haug, seems to minimize the significance of the prior event when he discusses the three types of procedural characters, which he concentrates upon in his defining of his own view (75–77). He must be assuming it; however, as already discussed above, this is not a consistent defining feature, and so should rightly be minimized (in other words, both the aspectual characterization of the perfect tense-form as perfective and the dependence upon temporal sequence are not part of any unified meaning). When this previous event is eliminated, the definition of the perfect tense-form must rely upon only a single feature, procedural character. Fanning admits that the procedural character of the perfect tense-form is stative:  “procedural character (stative)” (66). This is in fact separated by him from lexical aspect, as is indicated by his differentiation of stative procedural character from bounded, unbounded, and state verbs (although I think that this differentiation is highly problematic, as it seems to make procedural character something other than lexical aspect or situational aspect, a distinction that is hard to maintain). What I think that Fanning is saying is that the use of a perfect tense-form configures a process into a particular procedural character, that is, stative, despite the process type of the lexical item (and without necessarily reference to a preceding event). He goes to some lengths to show that this is true, arguing (whether rightly or wrongly is incidental at this point) that bounded lexemes are used in the perfect tense-form and indicate the state or condition of the action, whether these are intransitive and passive or transitive verbs (he rightly rejects the state of the object in such transitive uses, retaining focus upon the subject), that unbounded lexemes are also used to indicate the state or condition of the action, and that verbs indicating lexical state do the same. There are several observations to make here. The first is that there is an unclear connection between lexical process types (such as bounded/ telic, unbounded/atelic, and state) and procedural character. Many linguists would probably equate the two or see interdependence, whereas Fanning constructive paper in this volume, who see the state or stative semantics as in some way related to the meaning of the perfect tense-form (a point Campbell misses entirely, despite his protestations to the contrary). See C.S. Smith’s comments (The Parameter of Aspect [2nd ed.; Dordrecht:  Kluwer,  1997], esp.  103–11, 147–49), cited by Fanning (6), although Fanning seems to confuse the meaning of the perfect tense-form with what Smith calls “perfect sentences.” This reflects that Fanning tends to confine his analysis to the lexical meaning of the verb alone, whereas much discussion of Aktionsart engages the meaning of the verb phrase or higher ranks (this is still undecided in such discussions).

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differentiates them. I think that he is right in doing this, thereby seeing the process type of the lexeme as not related to the way that the process is aspectually characterized. The second observation is that it appears, in Fanning’s proposal, that it is the use of the perfect tense-form by the author that construes the process as being in a state or condition, not the lexical meaning. If we draw the various strands of this argument together, we find a conclusion that I already posited in my constructive chapter in this volume. The previous action has already been seen not to be part of the definition of the meaning of the perfect tense-form, and the link with the aorist tense-form or perfective aspect has also been seen to be at best an occasional feature. This leaves what Fanning calls “procedural character” as the only major semantic feature of the perfect tense-form. This procedural character, as we have already seen and as Fanning demonstrates, is independent of lexical process types. This leaves the selection of the perfect tense-form, and the perfect tense-form alone, as the means by which an author characterizes a process, and according to Fanning such characterization is the state or condition of the process. I do not see how this is anything other than a definition of the verbal aspect of the perfect tenseform. As I  have already argued in my constructive chapter in this volume, Fanning’s view is in its essentials a stative aspectual view. That is, when the ancient author used the perfect tense-form, he was choosing to characterize the process as a state or condition (I would add with the state incorporating the subject of the predicator). One can choose to give it a label such as procedural character, but this procedural character does not come about as a result of lexical choice but as a result of choice within the Greek verbal system, in that choice of the perfect rather than the aorist or present is used to characterize the process in a particular way. Fanning fails elsewhere to offer a definition of aspect, apparently assuming that there are two grammaticalized aspects; however, his argument shows that there are indeed three grammaticalized aspects, with the third being the one that uses the perfect tense-form. I draw this response to a conclusion by commenting directly on several of the points that Fanning raises regarding my own proposal that the perfect tenseform grammaticalizes stative aspect (a view, we now see, that Fanning himself actually endorses). Fanning claims that recent linguistic studies, contrary to Greek studies, either “qualify their description of the perfect as an aspect” or propose alternatives, such as that the perfect is not an aspect, it is a “quasi-aspect,” or that it is a “sub-type of the perfective” (70-71).21 I do not have 21 I offer a quick response to Fanning’s comments regarding my selective use of B. Comrie (Aspect: An Introduction to the Study of Verbal Aspect and Related Problems [Cambridge:  Cambridge University Press, 1976)  and J.  Clackson (Indo-European Linguistics: An Introduction [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007]). There

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space to respond to every typologist he cites, except to note that typologies themselves are subject to variability and criticism.22 There is no doubt that the Greek perfect tense-form as an aspect has unique characteristics, especially in a tri-aspectual language, something that cross-linguistic typologies often find difficult to understand because of their predilection for binarism. However, we have also already seen that some of these characterizations must be severely qualified if not rejected, just as we did with Haug and Fanning, because in their attempts to be typological or universal they are also prone to misjudgments and misstatements regarding specific languages, such as Greek. We have already seen that any effort to label the perfect tense-form as a type of perfective aspect is a failed attempt. What is needed is less imposition of cross-linguistic typologies and more appreciation of the aspectual character of ancient Greek, studies that do not begin with abstract notions of merely aspectual binarism or English translation or something else that misleads rather than promotes discussion. In further comments, Fanning claims that aspect is not treated as a “viewpoint aspect,” but that this category must be kept separate from “procedural character” (which he defines here as Aktionsart or “situation aspect”). We can see that Fanning is confusing at this point. First, I do not think the term “viewpoint aspect” is helpful (if I have ever used it, I fully repent of having done so), as it loses sight of the fact that verbal aspect is semantic, to be sure, but more than that, it is grammatical and hence part of the verbal system of a language. Viewpoint aspect too readily lends itself to confusion over it is nothing in Fanning’s citation of Comrie that mitigates my analysis of the perfect tense-form as stative aspect (it is admittedly distinct from other aspect; others do, even if I believe mistakenly, question its being an aspect; and it should be included in such a discussion, with its particular characteristics taken into consideration, as I have always done), or of Clackson that changes my perspective (the perfect is “semantically” distinct from the present and aorist, but that does not mean it is not aspectual, and it may “originally” have referred to a previous state, but we have already dealt with that issue). The issue regarding Clackson’s proposing four aspects (also raised in Campbell’s paper) is directly addressed there, except I note that from the beginning of my research I  recognized the unique features of the future form, hence placing it in the ASPECTUALITY system, but as not fully aspectual (hence semanticizing expectation and being aspectually vague). See Porter, Verbal Aspect, 109 and 403–49; and F.G.H. Pang, “Aspect, Aktionsart, and Abduction:  Future Tense in the New Testament,” Filología Neotestamentaria 23 (2010): 129–59, esp. 155. 22 See, for example, W.  Croft, Verbs:  Aspect and Causal Structure (Oxford:  Oxford University Press, 2012), 128–29, a typologist himself. An amusing tale of contradictory typologies is chronicled in A. Scaglione, The Theory of German Word Order from the Renaissance to the Present (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1981)— and German is considered a relatively fixed word order language!

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being of the same character or category as other types of things (mislabeled) aspect, such as situational aspect or procedural character. They are not, as they are parts of different systems of the language and are to be kept separate. However, they are to be kept separate in a different way than Fanning suggests. They are to be kept separate as grammatical meanings are to be kept separate from lexical meanings. As I have already shown, however, Fanning is himself confusing on this point, and hence his discussion of his contribution to the study of the perfect tense-form characterizes the use of it in terms of what he calls, but does not adequately define as, procedural character (which he identifies as “state or condition”), when what he really means is that the perfect tense-form when it construes processes as being in a state or condition (i.e. stative) is speaking of grammaticalized meanings, not lexical meanings. So Fanning’s own analysis, at least at this point, is of the grammar of the language (one of its verbal systems) and not of its lexis, as he thinks or claims. This explanation clarifies Fanning’s third criticism, where he asserts that I have mistakenly cited authors who, perhaps like Fanning, have linked grammatical and lexical aspect, so that they think that they are speaking of one when they are in fact speaking of the other. To reiterate my point, I do not believe that I am the one who has confused the categories, but I believe that many of these authors have conflated the two and then drawn conclusions for what they think is one of them, when they are in fact making claims for the other.23 Fanning thinks that such a distinction is not necessary: “the central point is not whether stativity is expressed lexically or grammatically but whether it pertains semantically to aspect per se … or to procedural character …” (72).24 As I  have directly shown from Fanning’s own work, when the choice of the tense-form results in characterization of the action, as Fanning admits in describing the action in the perfect tense-form as representing state or condition, he can call it whatever he wants to but it is now part of the grammatical and not the lexical system, and hence the aspectual system and not the procedural, Aktionsart or lexical system (whatever term he or others may wish to use). In attempting to problematize my definition (I admit that I  have not always formulated my definitions exactly the same way, but I fail to see that the examples cited are problematic; they seem to me to be surprisingly consistent while not being simply verbatim), Fanning attempts to frame the debate 23 An excellent example of this, cited by Fanning, is J.  Lyons, Semantics (2  vols.; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1977), 706–707. 24 Fanning is referring to “how the Greek perfect interacts with the lexical character of verbs” (5). This raises the question of what in fact the perfect does mean, if it ends up mostly reflecting the lexical character of verbs.

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by demanding that I deal with lexical issues when the major issue is grammatical. Of course I am aware of the lexical issues, as Fanning admits. I simply reject—as Fanning himself should also, on the basis of discussion above—the attempt to do grammatical aspectual study by means of lexical aspect.25 That has been one of the major problems that has continued to confound aspectual studies, Fanning’s included. Finally, Fanning ends on a disappointing note by raising the issue of temporal location of actions. Because his proposal is apparently so caught up in temporal succession (past action and present results, in one characterization), he thinks that it must be difficult to explain use of a perfect tense-form with a “past specific time modifier,” such as 1 Cor 15:4. The reason I label this as a disappointing note is that Fanning rejects my explanation—“that the past time indicator tells us the time of the state only: Jesus was in a resurrected condition on the third day” (73)—apparently because it does not uphold his particular theological view (I imagine I have very similar views of the resurrection as does Fanning, but I do not think that they are strengthened through such arguments). In support, he claims that the same holds true for the example of Plato, Crito 44a, as he says that “I argue that the perfect in both places has a dual reference to a past event as well as the present state it produces” (73). However, he has not argued for the present state (but assumed it), but only for the past event, which we have seen is not essential to the meaning of the perfect tense-form. He further claims that “the verb points also to the condition of the subject at the time of speaking” (73). This he clearly has not argued for, and this late addition presents a host of problems. The example from Plato does not help his case at all, as the meaning he wishes to see would be something like “I deduce this from a dream that I saw (ἑώρακα) a little earlier tonight” and “am in a state of continuing seeing now.” That is not what Plato appears to be saying. Instead, he seems to be saying that “I deduce this from a dream that I was in a state of having seen a little while earlier.”26 25 A.L. Lloyd is right that “aspect [grammatical aspect] is not the same as Aktionsart” and that they “are two entirely different things” (Anatomy of the Verb:  The Gothic Verb as a Model for a Unified Theory of Aspect, Actional Types, and Verbal Velocity [Amsterdam:  John Benjamins,  1979], 10, 8, cited in Fanning, 13), but I  reject Fanning’s or Lloyd’s (it is unclear) assertion that we must deal with both to understand grammatical aspect (indeed, to get the overall sense of a clause [more than simply a verbal predication], but that is not the major issue here). I disagree and claim that we must consider aspect as separate from Aktionsart. Too much confusion has been caused by conflating the two. 26 A similar example is found in an example Haug constructs (“Aristotle’s kinesis/energeia-test,” 396) that “Aristotle ᾤκηκε in Athens,” which I believe could be stated in Greek, even after Aristotle moved away from Athens (contra Haug). This is an

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Thus, the use of the perfect does not, theology notwithstanding, indicate the “abiding results” (a view we all learned to question some time ago), but the state of the subject at the time of the occurrence of the process. I want to thank Buist for giving me the opportunity to revisit many of the issues regarding aspect and in particular the meaning of the perfect tenseform. As a result, I am more firmly convinced of the stative position, believe that he actually endorses it as well, and remain unconvinced by his proposed alternative.

example where English differs from Greek regarding understanding forms both called the perfect.

8.  The Perfect Isn’t Perfect—It’s Stative: The Meaning of the Greek Perfect Tense-Form in the Greek Verbal System1 Stanley E. Porter

1.  Introduction The study of verbal aspect emblemizes a much larger issue within Greek language study. That issue concerns the importance, for any who claim to be students of the Greek New Testament, of understanding and positively responding to recent advances in the study of Greek language and linguistics. Verbal aspect is the most advanced of these areas, with by far the most important and sustained work having been done over the last thirty or forty years, and with my own work perhaps serving as the first comprehensive and innovative English-language treatment of the subject with reference to the Greek of the New Testament.2 However, as much as has been done in study of verbal aspect, there remains a surprising lack of sustained linguistic analysis of other important areas of the Greek language. In fact, I fear that, for the vast

1 This chapter appears as “The Perfect Tense-Form and Stative Aspect: The Meaning of the Greek Perfect Tense-Form in the Greek Verbal System,” in S.E. Porter, Linguistic Analysis of the Greek New Testament: Studies in Tools, Methods, and Practice (Grand Rapids:  Baker Academic, a division of Baker Publishing Group, 2015), 195–215. Used by permission. 2 A brief history of aspect study in New Testament Greek is found in S.E. Porter and A.W. Pitts, “New Testament Greek Language and Linguistics in Recent Research,” CBR 6.2 (2008): 214–55, esp. 215–22. A fuller study up to the time of publication is found in S.E. Porter, Verbal Aspect in the Greek of the New Testament, with Reference to Tense and Mood (SBG 1; New York: Peter Lang, 1989), 17–65.

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majority of New Testament scholars, the importance of Greek linguistics for study of the Greek New Testament remains outside of their purview and possibly even comprehension (apart possibly from a relatively limited understanding of aspect studies). In a recent conversation with a colleague, a New Testament scholar who has written and continues to write commentaries on the Greek New Testament, he said: “Stan, what is that area that you work in again?” To which I replied, somewhat facetiously, “New Testament?” “No, no,” he said, “linguistics, that’s it, linguistics”—for him apparently a foreign territory dedicated to the arcane and unnecessary—at least clearly unnecessary for him as he goes about his exegetical work without recognition that when he engages in exegesis of the Greek text, he is invoking a linguistic conceptual framework that guides the decisions he makes regarding his understanding of the Greek of the New Testament. Most such exegetes probably believe that their use of what is often called “traditional grammar”—which sometimes involves their characterization of themselves as being “grammarians” as opposed to “linguists”—either is sufficient for the work they wish to do or marks out a territory of equal yet distinct validity that is free from the distractions of linguistic theory. I strongly disagree with such a characterization, simply because there is no such thing as theory-neutral language examination. The use of the “traditional” tools of Greek language study simply invokes the often pre-linguistic (in the sense of pre-linguistically informed) language study of an earlier era—that is, without regard for its assumptions and presuppositions or its relationships, whether developmental or incommensurable, with later linguistic thought. I refer to such “traditional grammar” with two different labels. The kind of rationalistic, verbally time-oriented, Latin-based approach still found in (surprisingly) much language discussion, I call 1822 grammar—1822 referring to the date of the first edition of Georg Winer’s grammar, translated many times and still used into the twentieth century.3 The comparative philological approach, with its reliance upon Aktionsart theory, I call 1896 grammar—1896 referring to the date of the first edition of Friedrich Blass’s grammar, still used in either its latest English or German edition.4 There is a lot of 1822 and 1896 grammar 3 G.B. Winer, Grammatik des neutestamentlichen Sprachidioms (Leipzig:  Vogel, 1822), revised several times, most especially by P.W. Schmiedel (8th ed.; Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1894) and translated several times, most especially by W.F. Moulton as A Treatise on the Grammar of New Testament Greek (3rd ed.; Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1882). 4 F. Blass, Grammatik des Neutestamentlichen Griechisch (Göttingen:  Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1896), revised numerous times, first by A.  Debrunner and then F.  Rehkopf (18th ed.; Göttingen:  Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2001), and translated several times, most especially of the 9th/10th edition of Blass and Debrunner by R.W.

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still being produced in New Testament studies. Some of it can be found, disappointingly, in Greek grammars that continue to be published, and much more of it, unfortunately, in the commentaries that continue to be written.5 What we need, I think, is far less 1822 and 1896 grammar, and far more 1992 and later grammar. 1992 grammar refers to the first edition of my Idioms of the Greek New Testament.6 Far from being a perfect grammar, in it I attempt to integrate consciously a modern linguistic framework into New Testament Greek study. Whereas there are some elements in the diachronic progression of traditional grammar that are compatible with subsequent study, there are many areas that are incommensurable—and just because a grammar was written after 1992 does not mean that it is a 1992 grammar: it may be an 1822 or 1896 grammar in disguise.7 Discussion of verbal aspect is part of—or at least should be part of—modern linguistic study of the Greek language of the New Testament. Despite the neglect of it within wider New Testament studies, I believe that we have made significant progress in addressing this particular linguistic issue (among others),8 although I also believe that much room for further discussion remains. The semantics of the perfect tense-form is one such area, as there are three major divergent views of the meaning of this form, propounded in the three major works on the New Testament Greek verbal system from an aspectual standpoint.9 These three major works should themselves indicate that we need to engage in similar sustained and intensive research in other areas of Greek linguistics as well. As will become clear in the remainder of this essay, not every one of these three major works has fully captured the meaning of the Greek perfect-tense form in the Greek verbal system. The reason is that





Funk as A Greek Grammar of the New Testament and Other Early Christian Literature (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1961). 5 For my recent exploration of some of these issues, see S.E. Porter, “The Linguistic Competence of New Testament Commentaries” and “Commentaries on the Book of Romans,” in On the Writing of New Testament Commentaries: Festschrift for Grant R. Osborne on the Occasion of His 70th Birthday (ed. S.E. Porter and E.J. Schnabel; TENT 8; Leiden: Brill, 2012), 33–56 and 365–404. 6 See S.E. Porter, Idioms of the Greek New Testament (2nd ed.; BLG 2; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1994 [1992]). 7 I am tempted to list some of these grammars here, but have resisted that temptation. 8 Some of the others, on which I have written, are word and constituent order, paragraphing, and discourse analysis, among others. 9 Porter, Verbal Aspect; B.  Fanning, Verbal Aspect in New Testament Greek (OTM; Oxford: Clarendon, 1990); and C.R. Campbell, Verbal Aspect, the Indicative Mood, and Narrative: Soundings in the Greek of the New Testament (SBG 13; New York: Peter Lang, 2007)  and Verbal Aspect and Non-Indicative Verbs: Further Soundings in the Greek of the New Testament (SBG 15; New York: Peter Lang, 2008).

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they have not recognized and realized that the use of language, or more specifically linguistic forms that grammaticalize meanings, in this case, the Greek perfect tense-form, is always for or to perform a specific function, such as for communicative purposes or social interaction. Hence, use of each tense-form within the verbal system of a particular language has its own semantic function, each of which is systemically differentiated from others. The use of a particular tense-form, the perfect tense-form, for instance, by the language user indicates his/her reasoned (systemically though not necessarily consciously) subjective choice by which he/she wishes to conceptualize (or not to conceptualize based upon his/her decision to not choose the other tense-forms) the verbal process. Thus, the choice of the perfect tense-form by a language user indicates, in opposition to choice of the other tense-forms, that he/she conceives of the verbal process as stative—the perception of the action as a condition or state of affairs in existence. This has been and is still my contention (and rightly, I firmly believe) since the publication of my 1989 monograph. In what follows, I first address what I see as some of the areas of agreement among the three major theories of verbal aspect that are being discussed in this volume,10 and then outline briefly several points of disagreement. Second, I briefly present and offer a critique of the other two views. I then conclude by reiterating my view of the meaning of the perfect tense-form as encoding stative aspect.

2.  Points of Agreement and Disagreement There are a number of points of agreement among the three major theories of verbal aspect, but perhaps the single most important point of agreement is that the semantic category of verbal aspect is essential for understanding the meaning of the ancient Greek verb, including the Greek of the New Testament. Most who have studied verbal aspect would probably go further 10 There are other views of the semantics of the perfect tense-form, but these are the major ones propounded in New Testament Greek studies. Many of these other proposals, unfortunately sometimes much like the views of Fanning and Campbell (see below), rely far too heavily upon confusion of aspect (grammatical or morphological aspect) and Aktionsart (lexical or procedural aspect), that is, they confuse the meaning of the tense-form with the meaning of the individual verbal lexical item (although see below some statements on Aktionsart, in which I indicate that there are problems inherent in Aktionsart theory to the point of questioning whether it is mostly a discussion of ontology rather than grammar or linguistics). The need to differentiate between aspect and Aktionsart was recognized early on in aspect studies; see, for example, L.J. Brinton, The Development of English Aspectual Systems:  Aspectualizers and Post-Verbal Particles (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988), 3.

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and say that understanding of the Greek verb is an essential component of understanding the Greek language, in a way that most other elements are not as essential, because of how verbs are used in ancient Greek (as components of noun groups, verbal groups, etc.; through rank shifting, etc.). Implications of this statement include the recognition that those who do not include analysis of verbal aspect—and, I would contend, other linguistic elements—within their study of the Greek text are not satisfactorily examining the Greek New Testament. A second point of agreement concerns the definition of verbal aspect. Despite nuances and some variations regarding particular verbal aspects (such as the meaning of the perfect tense-form), it is also commonly agreed that verbal aspect is perspectival in nature, that is, that it is concerned with a grammatical means of enshrining authorial perspectives on processes, whether conscious or otherwise and within the constraints of the resources of the Greek language verbal system. Verbal aspect is not itself a temporal or a spatial/locational category, even if it is related to them, and it is not the same as Aktionsart, which purports to be concerned with action types represented by individual lexical items. A third point of agreement is that verbal aspect is not just occasionally important but it is always important. In other words, verbal aspect is an essential part of the Greek verbal system and hence of the ancient Greek language, and not a secondary or tertiary feature that can be invoked when exegetically convenient or haphazardly played off against other conceptions of how verbs function in Greek. This seems to be a point that some commentators miss when invoking verbal aspect in an ad hoc fashion when it suits their exegetical purposes. A fourth point of agreement is that the aorist tense-form encodes perfective aspect and the present (imperfect) tense-form imperfective aspect, however these aspects are actually defined (and they vary considerably). Most proponents of aspect theory also see some type of binary relationship between the perfective and non-perfective aspects. A fifth point of agreement is that verbal aspect has textual and hence exegetical significance, even possibly discourse significance. This exegetical significance may vary, with aspect’s scope having clausal to discourse functionality, but it is seen to be exegetically significant in any case. This means that substantiated exegetical discussions will be grounded in linguistically informed understanding of the Greek verbal system, as well as other features of the Greek language. These points of agreement (there may be others) are fundamental, because they set the broad parameters within which discussion of verbal

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aspect occurs, and form the parameters in which analysis of the Greek New Testament should occur. I am not convinced that all of those who engage in study of aspect—including the other two major proponents discussed here— are always aware of their implications or the constraints that these fundamental points of agreement place on their overall analysis (e.g., that if verbal aspect is fundamental, then temporal reference or Aktionsart cannot be, or that promoting binary opposition between perfective/imperfective aspect does not exclude other binary choices), but that leads to a number of points of disagreement. There are also a number of points of disagreement among the major theorists with reference to understanding of Greek verbal aspect. This should not overly worry those who are looking at aspectual studies from the outside, as these are the kinds of disagreements that obtain in any intellectual discourse—although there is always the hope of and effort expended toward resolution. I will briefly list such disagreements here. These include:

(1) The role of linguistic theory in aspect studies. As indicated above, Porter clearly advocates that linguistic theory is fundamental to linguistic understanding and utilizes a particular linguistic theory, while Fanning and Campbell are less explicit about it and possibly do not really have an articulable theory. Porter adopts a defined model of systemic-functional linguistics.11 Fanning adopts some of the terminology and concepts of recent aspectual studies (e.g. perfective vs. imperfective aspect, binarity, among others), but he nowhere states what his linguistic theory is and I cannot determine whether there is an explicit one, apart from his adapting some of the orientations of those he draws upon and his fundamental move of bringing aspect and Aktionsart together.12 He eclectically draws upon various linguistic thoughts and traditional grammar, as will be shown below.

11 Porter, Verbal Aspect, 7–16, 75–109, in which see the major theorizers within systemic-functional linguistics (SFL). 12 Fanning, Verbal Aspect, 29–50, which Campbell seems also to endorse (see C.R. Campbell, Basics of Verbal Aspect in Biblical Greek [Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2008]). Fanning (420–21) outlines how aspect interacts with other components, and Campbell presents this as a formal equation (semantics of aspect + lexeme + context = Aktionsart). This formula is highly misleading, apart from acknowledging that the category of Aktionsart is different from and cannot be equated with aspect (on which we all apparently agree). It however makes Aktionsart a category that is larger than context—whatever that can possibly mean—and does not recognize the complexity of any of the individual components. Fanning and Campbell were both anticipated by J.  Mateos, El Aspecto Verbal en el Nuevo Testamento (Estudios de Nuevo

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Campbell briefly identifies the opposition between Chomskyan and functional viewpoints, and claims to endorse a “functional approach,” but he does not state what this exactly means apart from the fact that language is “a communicative tool.”13 Without a linguistic theory as the basis of examination of the language, it is very difficult to determine what counts as evidence and how any such evidence should be interpreted. (2) The concept, importance, and place of binarism or binary opposition. Porter has a more differentiated understanding, while Fanning and Campbell seem to apply it in a narrow sense, to the point of claiming that there is one fundamental binary opposition in Greek, perfective/imperfective. Porter’s more robust theory of binary opposition provides for gradated binary choices that together form systems within a systemic network. Thus, Porter differentiates aspectual from non-aspectual systems, and then within such systems differentiates perfective/non-perfective aspect and then imperfective/stative aspect.14 So far as I can tell both Fanning and Campbell simply refer to the perfective/imperfective opposition, without defining it within the larger verbal network and as if this is the only binary opposition permitted within the Greek verbal edifice. This by definition excludes the treatment of anything other than the forms that grammaticalize these aspects, to a large extent creating (unnecessarily, I  contend) their problem with the perfect tense-form and its aspect. (3) The specific definitions of the aspects. Porter is less concerned to define them independently but wishes to define them systemically, while Fanning and Campbell rely heavily upon Bernard Comrie’s definitions, to the point of stereotyping actions on the basis of Comrie’s metalanguage.15 The systemic dimension is crucial, as it examines the

Testamento 1; Madrid: Ediciones Cristiandad, 1977), 22, but who does not attempt to create a formula. 13 Campbell, Verbal Aspect (SBG 13), 19. He fails to note that there is a variety of functional models, including SFL, but others as well, such as tagmemics, stratificational grammar, and continental functionalism. 14 See Porter, Verbal Aspect, 109, for the Greek verbal network. 15 See B.  Comrie, Aspect:  An Introduction to the Study of Verbal Aspect and Related Problems (CTL; Cambridge:  Cambridge University Press, 1976), whose work has been fundamental in this discussion, even though he himself tends to confuse aspect and Aktionsart, a tendency among many linguists who have followed him. The result of use of his definitions by Fanning and Campbell is a focus upon viewpoint, to the extent of characterizing aspect as simply confined to internal vs. external “temporal

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aspects as part of a coordinated systemic network, not as individual entities. (4) The role of semantics and the relationship between semantics and pragmatics. Porter emphasizes semantics in at least a modified SFL sense, in which semantics includes much that is often placed under the category of pragmatics, and hence wishes to differentiate discussion of aspect from other complicating factors (such as Aktionsart).16 Fanning and Campbell seem to want to hold to a firm line between semantics and pragmatics, even if they often end up conflating the categories and muddying the discussion of aspect. This becomes clear in discussion of the meaning of the perfect tense-form (see below).17 (5) Temporal reference in the Greek verbal system. Porter and Campbell reject temporality as a grammaticalized feature,18 while Fanning argues for it in the indicative, with bleeding of it over into the non-indicative, especially for the perfect tense-form, which, for him, enshrines past and present reference (see below).

constituency” (3), and attempting to find such a conception in translation of every example. 16 See Porter, Verbal Aspect, 15, where semantics is applied to meanings in context. On semantics in an SFL framework, see, for example, M.A.K. Halliday and C.M.I.M. Matthiessen, Construing Experience through Meaning:  A Language-based Approach to Cognition (London: Continuum, 1999), 4. I realize that there are problems with the systemic-functional (Hallidayan) conception of tense and aspect, due to a variety of factors, including the fact that the basic SFL architecture was developed before aspect became a major category in general linguistic theory (i.e. pre-Comrie). For a critique of SFL’s handling of tense and aspect, see C. Bache, English Tense and Aspect in Halliday’s Systemic Functional Grammar: A Critical Appraisal and an Alternative (London: Equinox, 2008), esp. 18. 17 The more rigid divide between semantics and pragmatics that has continued in much discussion of verbal aspect was apparently introduced by D.A. Carson in “An Introduction to the Porter/Fanning Debate,” in Biblical Greek Language and Linguistics: Open Questions in Current Research (ed. S.E. Porter and D.A. Carson; JSNTSup 80; Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1993), 18–25, esp. 24–25, where he endorses a more radical distinction between the two, apparently followed by Fanning (even if not explicitly), Decker, and Campbell, among others. I owe this insight (among others) to my colleague Francis Pang. For some of the difficulties with contemporary thought in pragmatics, see M. Ariel, Defining Pragmatics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 23–89. 18 I argue that temporal reference is indicated at the clausal level and above through deictic indicators, syntax, and other clausal and beyond features, but that the semantics encoded by the perfect tense-form are stative, as noted below. For discussion of temporality and nontemporality in the Greek verbal system, see S.E. Porter, “Three Arguments Regarding Aspect and Temporality,” in Porter, Linguistic Analysis of the Greek New Testament, ch. 11, where Fanning’s and Campbell’s theories are discussed.

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(6) Spatial location in the Greek verbal system. Porter has a limited role for it, especially in relation to the meaning of the imperfect tenseform and the pluperfect tense-form,19 while Campbell replaces temporality with spatiality simply on the basis of an assumption,20 and Fanning does not utilize it at all. (7) The place of Aktionsart in discussion of verbal aspect. Porter minimizes the role of Aktionsart and considers it to involve a (problematic) debate about lexis, not aspect, and hence to not be important for defining aspectual semantics.21 Fanning embraces it fully as an “inherent” feature of the meaning of the Greek verb, and, though distinguishing aspect and Aktionsart, believes that they must be considered together.22 Campbell includes it among other features,23 with both Fanning and Campbell confusing discussion of aspect and its central role by their attention to Aktionsart and, to a large extent, making their discussion focus upon Aktionsart.

There may be other points of disagreement among the major proponents, but these illustrate some of the fundamental differences. They are sufficient, however, to illustrate that there are major issues that separate the three major proponents, and that account for three distinctly different definitions of the meaning of the perfect tense-form.

3.  Fanning and Campbell on the Meaning of the Perfect Tense-Form When we turn to discussion of the perfect tense-form among the three major advocates,24 there are also a number of specific areas of disagreement to note, 19 Porter, Verbal Aspect, 95. 20 Campbell, Verbal Aspect (SBG 13), 14–16. 21 Porter, Verbal Aspect, 87. By this, I do not mean that grammatical and lexical aspect (if this is even the right terminology) are to be examined on the same plane, as if in order to understand a clause one simply (simplistically!) adds aspect plus Aktionsart (and perhaps other components) to arrive at interpretation. This seems to be the way aspect and Aktionsart are sometimes handled by Fanning and Campbell. This is particularly difficult when Aktionsart-studies cannot decide whether Aktionsart functions at the rank of word, word group, clause, or even larger unit. 22 Fanning, Verbal Aspect, 50. 23 Campbell, Verbal Aspect (SBG 13), 33–34. 24 I realize that there is a certain fragility to debating an individual node in a systemic network, as it can neglect the larger questions of system. We must remember that discussion of stative aspect must be seen in relation to perfective and imperfective

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in addition to the broader linguistic differences noted already above. I will not at this point discuss in detail my understanding of the perfect tense-form and stative aspect (which I do below), but will respond to some more specific disagreements with Fanning and Campbell on the meaning of this important element within the larger Greek verbal structure. These disagreements revolve around both major differences in theory and method, and major differences in formulation and interpretation. I treat Fanning first, as his work appeared soon after and independently of mine. Fanning does not define or utilize a linguistically robust theory of aspect, or even display a particularly clear linguistic theory at all. I  would characterize his view of aspect as extensional, that is, he divides the linguistic terrain into a number of different sub-fields, and, for some reason (not clear to me), selects one.25 To determine the aspectual meaning of both the aorist and the present tense-forms, he surveys the three or four major views as found in the traditional grammars and a few other works, and then decides which one seems right to him. He then re-defines the particular aspect using Comrie’s terminology for perfective or imperfective aspect.26 Fanning also appears to have a very limited notion of binary opposition, as he confines it to the aorist/present or perfective/imperfective opposition. This means that the perfect does not neatly fit and is technically excluded from this binary system. And indeed for him it does not fit and is unnecessarily excluded. Fanning contends that the perfect grammaticalizes a combination of tense, aspect, and Aktionsart. However, each area is suspect in this formulation. Regarding tense, Fanning recognizes an “inherent” temporal ordering between occurrence and consequence. He then says that this “works its way out in actual expression as a temporal one, producing a dual time-reference of ‘past and present’ together.”27 In other words, this is not part of the semantics of the perfect tense-form at all. Regarding Aktionsart, Fanning relies upon the philosopher Zeno Vendler’s well-known characterization of actions as of four types, one of which is state.28 I have argued, and others more recently have

aspect, as well as other features of the Greek verbal network. See also Halliday and Matthiessen, Construing Experience through Meaning, 466. For other views of the meaning of the perfect tense-form, besides those of Fanning and Campbell, see A. Sauge, Les degrés du verbe: Sens et formation du parfait en grec ancien (Berlin: Peter Lang, 2000). 25 Ö. Dahl, Tense and Aspect Systems (Oxford: Blackwell, 1985), 9. 26 Fanning, Verbal Aspect, 97–98, 103. 27 Fanning, Verbal Aspect, 112. 28 Z. Vendler, “Verbs and Times,” Philosophical Review 66 (1957):  43–60; repr. in Vendler, Linguistics in Philosophy (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1967), 97–121.

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confirmed this (especially Francis Pang),29 that Aktionsart characterizations are inherently problematic and not features of the Greek verbal system, but at best phenomena that may be analyzed at word, group, clause, or even higher levels.30 Even though Fanning appears to rely upon them as part of what an aspect means, when it comes to the perfect he refers to “the Aktionsartfeature of stative situation.”31 This is clearly not at all what Vendler’s typology of action means, but appears to indicate that one feature of use of the perfect tense-form, that is, its semantics, is a “stative situation” regardless of the individual lexeme used. Regarding aspect, Fanning sees the perfect as perfective, probably reflecting his failure to move beyond simple binary opposition or indicating his adoption of the supposed resultative action as determinative. In other words, when all is said and done, despite some rough edges where he attempts to salvage the traditional definition of the perfect tense-form, once we move beyond trying to fit the perfect into the perfective/imperfective opposition, Fanning’s definition (but which is unsubstantiated by his theoretical framework, if he indeed has one) is in many ways simply an affirmation of the perfect as encoding stative aspect. This is seen in his own characterization of the perfect as indicating a stative situation. Campbell’s definition of the perfect takes a different approach but ends up with a similar extensional definition.32 On the one hand, he seems to want to use what he calls a “functional approach,”33 but on the other hand,

The other three are activities, achievements, and accomplishments. The problems with all typologies are discussed in W.  Croft, Verbs:  Aspect and Clausal Structure (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), 128–29. 29 F.G.H. Pang, “Aktionsart as Epiphenomenon:  A Stratal Approach to Process Typologies,” in Greeks, Jews, and Christians:  Historical, Religious and Philological Studies in Honor of Jesús Peláez del Rosal (ed. L.R. Lanzillotta and I.M. Gallarte; Córdoba: Ediciones El Almendro, 2013), 449–74. 30 See also Halliday and Matthiessen, Construing Experience through Meaning, 466– 506, where they take Aktionsart (or the equivalent) as “epiphenomenal” (475), that is, beyond the systems of language. I  wonder whether it is not simply a matter of debate over philosophical categories. The result is that much discussion of Aktionsart (or lexical aspect as it is often called) is a debate over ontology (the nature of being) rather than over linguistics. 31 Fanning, Verbal Aspect, 119. 32 For another critique of Campbell, within a larger linguistic context, see S.E. Porter, “Greek Linguistics and Lexicography,” in Understanding the Times: New Testament Studies in the 21st Century. Essays in Honor of D.A. Carson on the Occasion of His 65th Birthday (ed. A.J. Köstenberger and R.W. Yarbrough; Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2011), 19–61, esp. 46–54. 33 Campbell, Verbal Aspect (SBG 13), 19.

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this appears to mean simply a comparison of translations. In other words, Campbell clearly does not have an explicit linguistic method, but relies heavily upon translation (that is, English).34 He unfortunately makes all-too-frequent appeal to what he calls the “natural” meaning of a passage; the problem is that we are trying to figure out the “natural” meaning, and so we cannot appeal to it as a judge (in fact, there are no such things as natural or plain meanings, only interpreted meanings!). Translation is a very poor indicator of meaning (even if we must inevitably use it), since translation should not determine meaning but should only come after the meaning has been decided. Campbell rejects the notion of stative aspect as the meaning of the perfect tense-form for a number of highly questionable reasons. One of these is that he contends that “stativity is regarded by most linguists as an Aktionsart value rather than an aspect,” what he calls a “consensus among both Greek linguists and general linguists alike.”35 This is a bizarre reason to use by someone who then proceeds to define the perfect tense-form in a way not defined by any Greek or general linguist ever before (or probably since—there are good reasons for this, as I will show below). Furthermore, he is clearly wrong (even in his formulation he contends it is only “most”), as there are a number of general linguists who use this very category in their discussions of aspect (whether they end up accepting it or not, and whether they are always entirely clear on the difference between aspect and Aktionsart)36 and some (in New Testament 34 Translation is the focus of his essay, C.R. Campbell, “Breaking Perfect Rules:  The Traditional Understanding of the Greek Perfect,” in Discourse Studies and Biblical Interpretation:  A Festschrift in Honor of Stephen H.  Levinsohn (ed. S.E. Runge; Bellingham, WA: Logos Bible Software, 2011), 139–55. 35 Campbell, Verbal Aspect (SBG 13), 172. 36 See Porter, “Greek Linguistics,” 48. These “general linguists” include the following (by no means an attempt at a comprehensive list): N.E. Collinge, “Some Reflexions on Comparative Historical Syntax,” Archivum Linguisticum 12 (1960):  79–101, esp.  95–96, who says the “perfect (set apart by stem metaphony and internal apophony and special endings) denoted simple state”; D.  Cohen, L’aspect verbal (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1989), 67, 110–11, where he speaks of Greek as having three aspects (present, aorist, and perfect) and defines the perfect as indicating “statif” as opposed to process by the present and aorist (111); H.J. Verkuyl, A Theory of Aspectuality: The Interaction between Temporal and Atemporal Structure (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), 11, where Verkuyl, though questioning the ability to differentiate between aspect and Aktionsart, states that “one may describe one and the same situation as a state, a process or an event,” reflecting language of subjective authorial choice very much in keeping with standard aspectual terminology; T.F. Mitchell and S.  el-Hassan, Modality, Mood and Aspect in Spoken Arabic:  With Special Reference to Egypt and the Levant (London:  Kegan Paul International, 1994), 65, 78–90, where, in a chapter specifically on aspect, they

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Greek studies) who are open to its being used of the Greek perfect.37 There is, however, a more important issue at stake in this discussion that makes such a (false) claim moot. The fact that Vendler used the term “state” to describe speak of Arabic as grammaticalizing stativity in especially the participle (though there is some confusion between aspect and what I  would call Aktionsart, this is not a distinction that they make; they speak of grammaticalizing the stative in a particular form, the participle); L.A. Michaelis, Aspectual Grammar and Past-Time Reference (London:  Routledge, 1998), 172–88, where she evaluates “an aspectual property attributed to the general perfect construction:  stativity” (172), where stativity is clearly an aspectual category even if she attributes it to the English perfect (“have x” construction); and J.  Clackson, Indo-European Linguistics:  An Introduction (CTL; Cambridge:  Cambridge University Press, 2007), 119–21, where, after noting the distinction between imperfective and perfective aspect, he states: “[t]‌he perfect principally denotes a state: for example, the perfect [τέθνηκε] means ‘he is dead’, distinct from present [θν007), 119–21, where, after noting the distinction between imperfective and perfective aspect, he states: “[t]he perfect principally denotes a state: for example, the perfect [ the English perfect endorse the notion and use it in their discussions of aspect, such as they are. J. Lyons in his Semantics (2 vols.; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1977), 706–707, which admittedly tends to confuse aspect and Aktionsart, distinguishes between lexicalized features (lexical aspect or Aktionsart) and grammaticalized aspect (morphological aspect as being discussed here), with stativity as a category he attributes to each, but including grammatical aspect (“Whether a language grammaticalizes either stativity or progressivity [or both, or neither] is something that cannot be predicted …”); cf. Lyons, Introduction to Theoretical Linguistics (Cambridge:  Cambridge University Press, 1968), 314, who says “The Greek perfective [by which he means the perfect tense-form] refers to the state which results from the completion of the action or process.” See now also K.  Bentein, “Perfect,” in Encyclopedia of Ancient Greek Language and Linguistics (ed. Georgios Giannakis with Vit Bubenik, Emilio Crespo, Chris Golston, Alexandra Lianeri, Silvia Luraghi, and Stephanos Matthaios; Leiden:  Brill Online, 2014), 2, where he recognizes “stativity” as a recent major view of the meaning of the perfect (including McKay [see note below], Porter [see note below], and C.M.J. Sicking and P. Stork, “The Synthetic Perfect in Classical Greek,” in their Two Studies in the Semantics of the Verb in Classical Greek [Leiden: Brill, 1996], 119–298). Even A.L. Sihler, New Comparataive Grammar of Greek and Latin (New  York:  Oxford University Press, 1995), 564–79, in his treatment of stative verbs (as opposed to eventive and punctual stems, the latter associated with the aorist form), links it directly with the Greek perfect tense-form (572–79). 37 See Porter, “Greek Linguistics,” 48. These include (among others): P. Chantraine, Histoire du parfait grec (Paris:  Champion, 1927), 4 et passim (with some reservations); P. Friedrich, “On aspect Theory and Homeric Aspect,” International Journal of American Linguistics, Memoir 28, 40 (1974):  S1–S44; K.L. McKay, Greek Grammar for Students: A Concise Grammar of Classical Attic with Special Reference to Aspect in the Verb (Canberra: Australian National University, 1974), 146–47; McKay, A New Syntax of the Verb in New Testament Greek: An Aspectual Approach (SBG 5;

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a type of action (or Aktionsart) does not mean that the terms “state” or “stative” are the exclusive purview of Aktionsart or lexical aspect. Such a claim is ridiculous, and limits the scope of our linguistic terminology simply either to the terms we already know or to those who claim them first. This is not the case. Aspects must be defined on their own terms and within their own systems, and, as an aspect, “stative” means something different than it does within discussion of Aktionsart. Campbell then defines the aspect of the perfect tense-form on the basis that it is used at the discourse level in a way similar to that of the present tenseform, that is, within what he calls discourse as opposed to narrative,38 and therefore it functions similarly to the present tense-form and hence reflects imperfective aspect. But this clearly cannot be right, since, even at the discourse level, the appearance or presence of both the present tense-form and the perfect tense-form requires an explanation with reference to their specific function(s) in the discourse. Otherwise, why would speakers/writers use both forms, if both forms are merely functioning in the same manner? Campbell gives the following analysis, but I find it highly unpersuasive. He arrives at this conclusion by, among other things, completely ignoring the use of κέκραγεν in the narrative of John 1:15 so as to concentrate upon γέγονεν as opposed to uses of the present tense-form in John’s statement (discourse); hence his extensive definition. (He also seems to ignore, but perhaps is in fact relying upon, the supposition that the perfect was originally an intensive present,

New  York:  Peter Lang, 1994), 31–34 (as well as a number of articles; see below); J.P. Louw, “Verbale Aspek in Grieks,” Taalfasette 15 (1971): 13–26, esp. 26; Louw, “Die Semantiese Waarde van die Perfektum in Hellenistiese Grieks,” Acta Classica 10 (1967):  23–32, esp.  23–24; R.J. Decker, Temporal Deixis of the Greek Verb in the Gospel of Mark with Reference to Verbal Aspect (SBG 10; New York: Peter Lang, 2001), 103 et passim; P.L. Fernandez, L’aspect verbal en grec ancien:  Le choix des thèmes verbaux chez Isocrate (Louvain-la-Neuve:  Peeters, 2003), 53–54; and D.L. Mathewson, Verbal Aspect in the Book of Revelation:  The Function of Greek Verb Tenses in John’s Apocalypse (LBS 4; Leiden: Brill, 2010), 29–39. See also T.S. Foley, Biblical Translation in Chinese and Greek: Verbal Aspect in Theory and Practice (LBS 1; Leiden: Brill, 2009), 140; J.-H. Lee, Paul’s Gospel in Romans: A Discourse Analysis of Rom 1:16–8:39 (LBS 3; Leiden: Brill, 2010), 68–69; W.V. Cirafesi, Verbal Aspect in Synoptic Parallels: On the Method and Meaning of Divergent Tense-Form Usage in the Synoptic Passion Narratives (LBS 7; Leiden: Brill, 2013), 49–45; along with Porter, Verbal Aspect, 245–90; Porter, Idioms, 21–24, 39–42. This is not to say that any of these argue for the same verbal structure as any other, only that they employ the term “stative” as a means of characterizing the meaning (aspect) of the perfect tense-form. 38 There are better terms for this, such as non-narrative or exposition. The term discourse is ambiguous.

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according to some linguists.)39 Yet surprisingly, after defining the meaning of the perfect on the basis of its parallel use with the present tense-form in discourse, Campbell then acknowledges that there is a difference between the two tense-forms and gives the perfect tense-form the designation of heightened proximity but still imperfective aspect (unfortunately, he simply assumes without argument or external support that spatial relations best describe the entire Greek verbal edifice instead of time or anything else). Besides the circularity, his definition is fundamentally flawed because it fails to acknowledge the morphology of the three tense-form Greek verbal system (the future excluded, due to its irregular paradigm) and is instead based upon a tenuous discourse theory and procedure. Moreover, what exactly is the meaning of “heightened proximity”? Two things are either proximate to each other, or they are not; the “heightened” qualifier is both senseless and superfluous. Campbell, like Fanning, seems constrained by the failure to move beyond binarity. However, even more problematic is that his definition of aspect, on the basis of his own conception of it in discourse, is not transferable to non-indicative usage. Campbell contends that indicative usage applies to discourse, but that non-indicative usage applies to the clause (a dubious distinction at best). Having defined the semantics of the perfect tense-form on the basis of discourse usage, Campbell has no means of defining it for non-indicative (or non-discourse) usage—so he simply assumes and asserts it.40 However, if Campbell had recognized the tri-aspectual nature of Greek, and had had a more robust definition of binarity (rather than only accepting one binary opposition in the Greek verbal system between perfective and imperfective, as does Fanning), he could have arrived at three aspects, with the imperfective and the more than imperfective (we can probably call this stative) fitting well within the Greek verbal network. Campbell as much as admits that the stative aspect is a satisfactory explanation of the use of the Greek perfect when, in his analysis of translations of instances of the Greek perfect (and finding the stative explanation much to be preferred to Fanning’s explanation), he admits that stativity explains 91.5% of the uses of the Greek perfect in the New Testament. The 8.5% that he questions, however, he questions simply 39 According to E.  Schwyzer, Griechische Grammatik auf der Grundlage von Karl Brugmanns Griechische Grammatik (4 vols.; vol. 2 ed. A. Debrunner; Munich: Beck, 1939–71), 2:263. 40 Campbell, Verbal Aspect (SBG 15), 24–29. I find it odd that Campbell defines the perfect participle as encoding imperfective aspect, and discusses it in these terms, only invoking the idea of the “enhanced” imperfective with heightened proximity after discussing examples (28–29). As for the examples, he admits that stative aspect can account for most of the same examples.

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on the basis that they should be translated with the English past tense, something that he believes that stative aspect does not provide.41 He is wrong in this regard. Instances of the Greek perfect tense-form can have past reference when various cotextual indicators place the process within such a past-time context, as demonstrated by the example in John 1:15 above.42 With recognition of the capability of the perfect tense-form and stative aspect being used in past contexts, 100% of Campbell’s examples—according to his own analysis—can be explained by stative aspect. This both eliminates the need for his peculiar imperfective analysis and supports stative aspect as in fact being the best explanation according to his own formulation of the issues.43 This summarizes the two major other views of the meaning of the perfect tense-form among the three major views within New Testament Greek study, with extended critique of the theories of Fanning and Campbell. The major shortfall of their theories is that they fail to recognize the tri-aspectual structure of the Greek verbal system, which necessitates that they contrive unconvincing explanations of what is in fact more easily explainable in other ways, especially in terms of stative aspect. In fact, their own arguments reveal that they come close to formulating such a view, despite their best efforts to avoid it.

4.  Defining the Semantics of the Perfect Tense-Form From what I have said above, one can probably gain a clear idea where I am proceeding in defining the semantics of the perfect tense-form. However, I must also note that, even though I am defining the aspectual value encoded by the perfect tense-form, one should also consider one such aspect always in (opposite) relationship to the other aspects. This fundamental systemic orientation underlies the following discussion.44 41 Campbell, “Breaking Perfect Rules,” 148. 42 See Porter, Verbal Aspect, 260–65, where numerous such examples of past usage of the perfect tense-form are presented. 43 In a review of Campbell’s Basics of Verbal Aspect, R. Crellin, “Basics of Verbal Aspect in Biblical Greek,” JSNT 35.2 (2012): 196–202, criticizes Campbell’s use of spatiality and definition of the meaning of the perfect tense-form as imperfective. Crellin’s own solution on the basis of lexical aspect confuses the notion of grammatical aspect (see R. Crellin, “The Greek Perfect Active System 200 BC—AD 150,” TynBul 64.1 [2013]: 157–60). 44 See Porter, Verbal Aspect, 7–16, 75–109, esp. 109. The independence of the aspect system from other systems of the Greek verbal network is shown in S.E. Porter and M.B. O’Donnell, “The Greek Verbal Network Viewed from a Probabilistic Standpoint: An Exercise in Hallidayan Linguistics,” FilNeot 14 (2001): 3–41; and the independence

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First, one needs a clear linguistic model that provides for robust and principled thinking about language in general and Greek in particular. I am a firm advocate of what Nigel Gotteri calls “formal Systemic Functional Grammar,”45 in which there is a relation between form and meaning, within a systemic and functional (SFL) framework. This framework can be expressed by means of semantic system networks that capture the meaning potential of the language and graphically display the meaning choices. Such system networks recognize that meaning implies choice and that choice indicates meaning especially as captured within series of binary oppositions.46 Complex choices can be understood—and are profitably defined—as series of broader to more delicate binary choices. The Greek verbal edifice comprises a series of such binary choices, displayed in systems and networks. Hence choice of perfective aspect (realized by the aorist tense-form) implies not choosing the other alternatives (the non-perfective aspects). If non-perfective aspect is chosen, this then requires a choice between imperfective (realized by the present tense-form, including the imperfect) or stative aspect (realized by the perfect tense-form, including the pluperfect). Second, a paradigm-function morphological framework best describes Greek morphology,47 and the Greek language has three clearly defined morphologically determined tense-form systems48 (the future form is excluded of the aspect system from lexical choice (i.e., from Aktionsart) in Porter, “Aspect Theory and Lexicography,” in Biblical Greek Language and Lexicography:  Essays in Honor of Frederick W. Danker (ed. B.A. Taylor, J.A.L. Lee, P.R. Burton, and R.E. Whitaker; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2004), 207–22. 45 N. Gotteri, “Toward a Systemic Approach to Tense and Aspect in Polish,” in Meaning and Form:  Systemic Functional Interpretations. Meaning and Choice in Language:  Studies for Michael Halliday (ed. M.  Berry, C.  Butler, R.  Fawcett, and G. Huang; Norwood, NJ: Ablex, 1996), 498–507, here 505. 46 See W.B. McGregor, “Attribution and Identification in Gooniyandi,” in Meaning and Form, 395–430, esp.  425, where he also notes that functional categories “are also established whenever there is a contrast at the level of form.” 47 See G.T. Stump, Inflectional Morphology:  A Theory of Paradigm Structure (Cambridge:  Cambridge University Press, 2001), esp.  32–34. This morphological approach essentially states that morphology is meaningful within its respective paradigms. 48 Besides Collinge stated above, for a recent exposition, see Clackson, Indo-European Linguistics, 119, 121, who says that the “three-way split between a present, aorist and perfect stem seems to be an original distinction [in Greek and Sanskrit] which has been lost in other languages” (119). Cf. Comrie, Aspect, 62, who states that “In Ancient Greek, the morphology of the Perfect precludes combination with the Aorist/Imperfect aspectual distinction since different stems are used for the three verb forms.”

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from this as it is not as clearly defined morphologically, and hence not fully aspectual and thus aspectually vague). A sophisticated set of binary choices can graphically explain the relationships among these morphologically based paradigms. I believe that the perfective/non-perfective binary choice is the primary aspectual choice, and that the non-perfective choice results in the more delicate choice between imperfective/stative, realized by the present and perfect tense-forms.49 In this sense, Campbell is right (but not because he only recognizes the imperfective aspect), but for the wrong reasons, regarding the meaning of the perfect tense-form: it is systemically and hence semantically related to the present tense-form, but not simply a “heightened proximity” or hyper imperfective (regardless of its possible diachronic origins). Third, in defining the semantics of the perfect tense-form, we need to be careful not to confuse a number of issues. These include translational descriptions, various discourse functions, Aktionsart categories (a particular area of conflation and hence misunderstanding), and the like, all of which have confused other efforts. In one sense, as I have previously suggested, I would be content with the tense-forms simply being numbered, as their names often confuse their meanings and function.50 However, there is sufficient precedent—even in Fanning and Campbell—to warrant the designation of state or stativity as the best means of labeling the semantic category of the perfect tense-form. By this I do not mean the category found in Aktionsart, even if there is some possible similarity. What I mean is that—as with all aspects—the use by an author of the perfect tense-form encodes the action as reflecting a complex state of affairs of the subject. This may involve a previous action (although this may be true for the action encoded by any of the aspects), but the emphasis is upon this subject-related state of affairs.51 In this sense, there 49 See the systemic network in Porter, Verbal Aspect, 109. 50 S.E. Porter, “Tense Terminology and Greek Language Study:  A Linguistic Re-Evaluation,” Sheffield Working Papers in Language and Linguistics 3 (1986): 77–86. I do not actually suggest numbering the tense-forms, but indicate their complexity. 51 This is stated clearly by Louw, “Die Semantiese Waarde van die Perfektum,” esp. 31; argued at length in various ways by McKay, Greek Grammar, 146; McKay, New Syntax, 31; McKay, “The Use of the Ancient Greek Perfect down to the Second Century A.D.,” Bulletin of the Institute of Classical Studies 12 (1965): 1–21; McKay, “On the Perfect and Other Aspects in the Greek Non-Literary Papyri,” Bulletin of the Institute of Classical Studies 27 (1980): 23–49; McKay, “On the Perfect and Other Aspects in New Testament Greek,” NovT 23 (1981): 289–329; and recently restated in D. Pastorelli, “La formule johannique (Jean 14:25; 15:11; 16:1, 4, 6, 25, 33): Un exemple de parfait transitif,” FilNeot 19 (2006):  73–88. Campbell makes far too much of trying to play McKay and Louw off of each other regarding stativity and its relation to the subject and the process (Campbell, Verbal Aspect [SBG 13], 169–70),

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may be some overlap with Aktionsart theory in that they are both using the notion of state or stativity. However, what the use of grammatical aspect (as opposed to lexical aspect or Aktionsart) says is that, by using this particular tense-form, the author chooses to describe the particular process—regardless of the lexeme selected and its supposed Aktionsart—as a state or stativity. Fourth, we can do a better job of defining the meaning of the perfect tense-form if we examine it systemically and through the categories of markedness. As I noted above, the perfect tense-form is the realization of (at least) two meaningful semantic choices. The non-perfective choice is marked in relation to the perfective, and the stative (realized by the perfect) in opposition to the imperfective (realized by the present). The perfect tense-form is distributionally marked in relation to the present and aorist, occurring the least frequently. The perfect tense-form also has material markedness, with its unthematic root, endings, and reduplication integral to the stem as part of its paradigm. The perfect, regarding implicational markedness, has the greatest morphological regularity (as opposed to the thematic and nonthematic roots and various types of augmentation and suffixes of the aorist and present tense-forms) but also the greatest defectivation. This defectivation results in few instances of the perfect subjunctive and loss of the optative, in which these tense-forms are formed periphrastically.52 Semantic markedness forms a cline, from the semantics of the aorist to the present to the perfect. This is the movement from the undifferentiated whole or complete action grammaticalized by the aorist to the contoured (whether internally or not) or progressive action of the present to the most highly defined, complex, and contoured of the perfect, what I have labeled the stative. Campbell is correct in noting—even though he does not formulate it this way—that the most heavily marked tense-form occurs more frequently in the most heavily marked contexts, including exposition (his discourse), even if he does so by neglecting its use in narrative. We can see this distribution not as the sole means to a definition but probably as an instance of markedness assimilation, in which marked forms tend (though not invariably) to appear in marked contexts.53 Sixth, the definition of stative aspect that I have offered is similar to the definitions that have been proposed by a number of previous scholars. These include, to some extent, M.S. Ruipérez, who speaks of a “resultant state,”

when they both essentially argue for the stative aspect with regard to the subject as opposed to the object or result. 52 See Porter, Verbal Aspect, 246–48. 53 See E.L. Battistella, The Logic of Markedness (Oxford:  Oxford University Press, 1996), 61–65.

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that is, a state (C) that results from action AB, different from the action itself and not the event itself.54 In this sense, the stative aspect in some ways subsumes either aspect or both the perfective and imperfective aspects, hence its markedness and semantic complexity (note that this is not the so-called resultative perfect, where the result rests on the object of the action, a category that does not in fact exist).55 Perhaps most important is the work of J.P. Louw— not used by Fanning on the perfect, and cited though not clearly understood by Campbell. Louw defines the aspect of the perfect as stative (“statief” or “statiewe aspek” in Afrikaans).56 Louw points out that there are a number of examples that simply cannot be explained by the traditional explanation of the perfect, and, I would contend, cannot be explained by either perfective or imperfective aspect on their own. Examples that Louw cites include the following verbs.57 For example, ἐλπίζω, in the perfect ἤλπικα, means “I have set my hope on,” or “I hope,” or I am in a hopeful state (whether based upon another event or not—and it cannot be resultative because it is intransitive). οἶδα means “I know,” indicating the knowing state of the subject (Louw notes one never translates the verb as “I discovered [εἶδον] and now it is discovered,” but always in terms of knowing—“I know”). A further example is John 16:30: νῦν οἴδαμεν ὅτι οἶδας πάντα (“now we know that you know all things”), where the knowing states of the subjects are contrasted, not the result of knowing. There are similar examples with γίνωσκω or, in the perfect, ἔγνωκα, such as John 8:52: νῦν ἐγνώκαμεν (“now we know”) that you have a demon. The verb κράζω, in the perfect κέκραγα (and κέκραγεν in John 1:15), indicates “I shout” (or in John 1:15 “he shouts”),58 which in no way can be explained as indicating a state of the subject or object as the result of a completed action. The verb δέχομαι, in the perfect δέδεγμαι, means “I receive,” as in Acts 8:14, where the Jerusalem apostles heard that the Samaritans δέδεκται (“received,” or were in a state of reception of) the word of God (note the 54 M.S. Ruipérez, Estructura del Sistema de Aspectos y Tiempos del Verbo Griego Antigua: Análysis Funcional Sincrónico (Salamanca:  Colegio Trilingue de la Universidad, 1954), 45. 55 See Porter, Verbal Aspect, 257–59. 56 Louw, “Verbale Aspek in Grieks,” 26; cf. Louw, “Die Semantiese Waarde van die Perfektum,” 27. Contra those who wish to minimize its aspect (perhaps because it falls outside of their preconceived framework of what aspect entails, or because they simply cannot understand it), Louw, “Verbale Aspek in Grieks,” 26, says that aspect is particularly strong in the perfect tense-form. 57 Louw, “Die Semantiese Waarde van die Perfektum,” 23–24. The following examples are taken from Louw’s article and Porter, Verbal Aspect, 253–56. 58 Louw, “Die Semantiese Waarde van die Perfektum,” 27, prefers the translation “scream” to capture the intense meaning of the perfect in this instance.

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past context). Finally, the verb κρίνω, in the perfect κέκρικα, indicates a state of judgment, as in John 16:11: the ruler of this world κέκριται (“is judged,” or stands judged). Other examples can be cited, but they indicate the same thing—that any previous action or any idea of an object-oriented result is not part of what the perfect means in its stative aspect. This stative aspect (grammatical aspect) is found whether the perfect tense-form is used in the indicative or in the non-indicative, and whether it is found in narrative or non-narrative. Examples of narrative use include:59 John 1:15, noted above; John 12:40: τετύφλωκεν αὐτῶν τοῦς ὀφθαλμούς (“he blinded their eyes”), used in parallel with a subsequent aorist with perfective aspect (καὶ ἐπώρωσεν αὐτῶν τῆν καρδίαν, “and hardened their heart”), quite possibly an instance of tense-form reduction (and a quotation of Isa 6:10); 2 Cor 2:13: οὐκ ἔσχηκα ἄνεσιν τῷ πνεύματί μου (“I did not have rest in my spirit,” i.e., I was not in a restful state), used in parallel with a subsequent aorist with perfective aspect (ἀλλὰ ἀποταξάμενος αὐτοῖς ἐξῆλθον εἰς Μακεδονίαν, “but taking leave of them, I went into Macedonia”), again possibly an instance of tense-form reduction; Rev 5:7: ἦλθεν καὶ εἴληφεν (“he came and took”), in parallel with an aorist tense-form and followed by an aorist in the narrative (καὶ ὅτε ἔλαβεν τὸ βιβλίον, “and when he took the book”). I note that there are instances where the perfect and the aorist are used in parallel in narrative. Perhaps there is a further correlation in narrative to the one that Campbell claims to have found in non-narrative, in which the perfect tense-form encoding stative aspect is used in contrastive parallel with the mainline tense-form in each of these basic text types. This claim, however, rightly moves from the semantics of the perfect tense-form to its discourse function, and one that, I believe, establishes the priorities correctly for discussion. The semantics of the form within the Greek verbal system is established first (at the level of code), before extended application to various discourse contexts (in text). Otherwise, one will not be looking at the meaning of the perfect tense-form itself, but will instead be looking at the meaning of its usage in context—two different things. Some other examples worth considering include the following.60 The verb ἐγγίζω, in the perfect ἤγγικα, is used to speak of a near state: the kingdom stands near or is at hand (Matt 3:2//Mark 1:15; Matt 4:17; 10:7; Luke 10:9, 11); Jesus tells his disciples that his hour or his betrayer stands near (Matt

59 See Porter, Idioms, 40–41. Campbell’s explanation of this as a “historical perfect” similar to a “historical present” is unnecessary and misleading (Campbell, Verbal Aspect [SBG 13], 187, 208–10). 60 See Porter, Verbal Aspect, 255–56.

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26:45, 46//Mark 14:42); Paul says that the night is cut short and the day is near (Rom 13:12); and Jas 5:8 says that coming of the Lord is at hand. The verb θνῄσκω, in the perfect τέθνηκα, indicates a dead state. In John 11:44, Lazarus, ὁ τεθνηκώς (“the dead one”), came out of the tomb (so much for any abiding state of death indicated by the perfect tense-form according to traditional views). The verb πιστεύω, in the perfect πεπίστευκα, is used in John 6:69 (along with γινώσκω): καὶ ἡμεῖς πεπιστεύκαμεν καὶ ἐγνώκαμεν ὅτι σὺ εἶ ὁ ἅγιος τοῦ θεοῦ (“and we believe and know that you are the holy one of God”). C.K. Barrett renders the verbs this way: “we are in a state of faith and knowledge; we have recognized the truth and hold it.”61 The verb διανοίγω, in the perfect διήνοιγα, is used in the participle form in Acts 7:56: τοὺς οὐρανοὺς διηνοιγμένους (“the open heavens,” that is, the heavens standing open). Other examples include Gal 5:11, where, after dismissing charges that he is preaching circumcision, Paul affirms that in this way the scandal of the cross κατήργηται (“stands abolished”). In Heb 7:6, Melchizedek, the author states, δεδεκάτωκεν (“tithed”) Abraham, though the two men were not related, and εὐλόγηκεν (“blessed”) the one possessing the promise. This admittedly brief exposition of the semantics of the perfect tenseform shows how it relates to the larger issue of the Greek verbal system, defines stative aspect of the perfect tense-form as a clear aspectual category, and provides a range of examples of how to understand its semantics in context. From these examples, it should now be clear which theory among the three major views stands out as the most plausible one in defining the meaning of the perfect tense-form.

5.  Conclusion There is much in common among leading advocates regarding the verbal structure of the Greek of the New Testament. However, there are also crucial points of difference. Included within these is the meaning of the perfect tense-form. In fact, the meaning of the perfect tense-form has been a point of continuing disagreement among the scholars discussed above. However, much of the recent disagreement is simply the result of misunderstanding by those who fail to differentiate and define the appropriate semantic categories (and even a casualness in their own definitions that shows that they are not too far from the stative truth). These categories especially include the difference between aspect and other semantic or pragmatic categories (such as Aktionsart), the importance of thinking beyond simple binarism, the need 61 C.K. Barrett, The Gospel According to St. John (2nd ed.; London: SPCK, 1978), 306.

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to formulate understanding not simply on the basis of translation, and, most importantly, the need to have a robust linguistic theoretical framework upon which analyses and arguments are based—all of these are major shortcomings of other theories. There is, however, a more plausible and defensible semantic characterization of the meaning of the perfect tense-form. I argue on a number of fronts—not least because of the failure of these other theories, but also on the basis of formal and functional aspectual semantic categories—that stative aspect is a useful functional category to describe the meaning of the perfect tense-form.

9.  Response to Porter Constantine R. Campbell

1.  Introduction As with my response to Fanning, this essay is structured around points I can affirm, questions I would put, and points I must challenge. Regrettably, the majority of the essay fits in the third category. Negativity is not my preferred mode of interaction, and an explanation is offered at the outset—with an apology to the reader who does not enjoy seeing two scholars fighting in the mud. Most of the negativity expressed here is defensive in nature: Porter seeks to undermine the integrity of my scholarship—going beyond the engagement of ideas—and this (along with my main essay in this volume) constitutes my right of reply. Defensiveness is not my preferred mode of interaction either, but it is necessary in this case. Porter raises several points of criticism that must be answered. Some of these are serious, though many are not. While I would rather ignore trivial criticisms, Porter seems intent to build a cumulative case for error. As such, some of the trivial criticisms will be engaged here following more serious charges. The essay is not wholly defensive, however, as several points of Porter’s positive argument also require scrutiny. First, we turn to points I can affirm.

2.  Points I Can Affirm I resonate with Porter’s despair over New Testament scholars’ lack of interest and knowledge about Greek linguistics. This is a lamentable state of affairs, since there are no areas of New Testament investigation that do not, in some way, relate to Greek. While the disagreements between Greek linguists are sometimes touted as a reason not to engage with current research (“the dust has not settled”), disagreement is a sign of life and can lead to clarification and

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robust argumentation. Thus, the current volume’s debate ought to encourage engagement with issues within Greek scholarship, rather than put others off. I also affirm Porter’s acknowledgment that there are many areas of agreement between this volume’s three contributors, not least of which is the high degree of importance that aspect holds for the interpretation of Greek verbs. Furthermore, there are several tense-forms about which we agree, and these are by far the most commonly used in the New Testament. It is important, therefore, to put the current debate in perspective. It is simply not the case that “we just can’t agree about anything,” as casual observers might be tempted to think. Debated issues rightly receive most attention, since our common desire is to seek resolution for the good of all. The intensity of debate is not, therefore, a reason to remain disengaged from Greek scholarship. It is, rather, an exciting opportunity to watch scholarly discourse unfold.

3.  Questions I Would Put This section does not directly challenge Porter’s essay, but pulls at some loose threads. I do not expect the garment to fall apart, but I trust this will offer some food for thought.

3.1 Binary Oppositions One of the very common assertions about viewpoint aspect in the literature is that it constitutes a binary opposition:  +perfective/+imperfective. That Fanning and I  also endorse such a binary opposition is not controversial. Because Porter, however, claims there are three aspects in Greek, a natural assumption would be that he posits a tertiary opposition—perfective vs. imperfective vs. stative. This is not the case. Instead, Porter endorses a “more robust theory of binary opposition,” in which the first opposition is +perfective/– perfective, and within the non-perfective branch, +imperfective/+stative. I will return to this schema shortly, but first I will note that it is a strange criticism to claim that Fanning and I have a narrow view of binary oppositions, as though +perfective/+imperfective is somehow overly simplistic. Any definition of a “binary opposition” is “simple” in the sense that it is an opposition of two choices. This does not exclude further oppositions beyond that fundamental choice between perfective and imperfective aspects. According to my view of the aspectual network, for instance, both perfective and imperfective aspects lead to subsequent oppositional choices that extend each network branch. Porter’s understanding of the aspectual network is represented in the following schematic.

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Response to Porter 3.1.1  Porter +perfective (aorist)

–remoteness (present) +imperfective +remoteness (imperfect)

–perfective

–remoteness (perfect) +stative +remoteness (pluperfect)

Porter describes this as a “more differentiated” type of binarism, but it is simply one binary opposition (+perfective/–perfective), with -perfective leading to another binary opposition. What Porter is trying to say is that one binary opposition leads to another in a series of oppositions, which constitutes a systemic network. In Porter’s network the opposition +perfective/+imperfective does not exist, and in this regard he is out of step with general linguistic theory about aspect. My conception of the aspectual network in the indicative mood is represented in the following schematic. 3.1.2  Campbell1 +remoteness (aorist) +perfective +future temporal reference (future) 1 It is also possible to configure the network according to the schematic below. The disadvantage of this version, however, is that present/imperfect and perfect/pluperfect stems are both separated, so that we see perfect/present and pluperfect/imperfect. An advantage of this schematic, however, is that it is possible that +proximity/+remoteness is a more fundamental opposition than -heightened/+heightened. Campbell (2) +remoteness (aorist) +perfective +future temporal reference (future) +heightened proximity (perfect) +proximity –heightened proximity (present) +imperfective +heightened remoteness (pluperfect) +remoteness –heightened remoteness (imperfect)

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Constantine R. Campbell +proximity (present) –heightened +remoteness (imperfect)

+imperfective +proximity (perfect) +heightened +remoteness (pluperfect)

The binary opposition +perfective/+imperfective yields further oppositions in both branches of the network. Thus, while the original opposition is simple (as are all binary oppositions), the overall network is not simple, since it contains a series of binary oppositions. In positing the opposition +perfective/–imperfective, Porter avoids a tertiary opposition +perfective/+imperfective/+stative. However, Porter’s major linguistic influence, M.A.K. Halliday, questions the approach that Porter’s network represents: Reducing systems of more than two terms to sets of binary oppositions, which is always possible as a formal operation, can be arbitrary and misleading semantically. For example, the English tense system past/present/future patterns in some respects as past/non-past, in some as present/non-present and in some as future/non-future (but in most respects as a system of three terms). Any form of binary representation of such a three-term system is equally arbitrary.2

Thus, according to Halliday, it is possible to reduce systems of more than two terms to sets of binary oppositions, like Porter’s +perfective/–imperfective, +imperfective/+stative, but it is an arbitrary configuration. It is better to recognize it is a system of three terms, +perfective/+imperfective/+stative. As such, the anomalous nature of this tripartite system becomes all the more apparent.

4.  Points I Must Challenge The remainder of this essay addresses points that require direct challenge. These represent a mix of methodological, theoretical, and “phenomenological” issues. The final subsection (“Remaining items”) is a collection of the more trivial matters addressed.

2 M. A.  K. Halliday and Christian M.  I. M.  Matthiessen, Halliday’s Introduction to Functional Grammar (4th rev. ed.; London: Routledge, 2014), 68, n. 6.

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4.1 Relying on English Translation? Porter claims that my functional approach to the perfect “appears to mean simply a comparison of translations.” It is difficult to know whether Porter is deliberately misrepresenting my work or not. In my primary research on the Greek perfect, a major plank of argumentation is developed along the lines of macro patterns within narrative.3 One of the distinct patterns of indicative verb distribution is that the perfect and the present are consistently found in parallel situations, either within reported discourse (reported speech), or as introducers of discourse (speech margins), or on the narrative mainline as historical presents/perfects. The implications of this pattern constitute but one plank of argumentation about the Greek perfect, while others draw on morphology, diachronic analysis, and interaction with wider linguistic research. I fail to see how the complex combination of these approaches represents a “comparison of translations.” Porter references my essay in a Festschrift for Steven Levinsohn, in which I examine the English Standard Version (ESV) translation of all perfect indicatives in the New Testament. In the essay, I explicitly acknowledge that Of course it is methodologically problematic to argue for the meaning of Greek forms by citing translations of them. This is hopelessly circular, and does not prove anything. However, I believe that translation-based evidence may be useful as a corroboration of the results of rigorous academic investigation that is guided by linguistic methodological principles.4

Since Steven Levinsohn has dedicated his life’s work to assisting Bible translators, it seemed a fitting contribution to his Festschrift to point out that the traditional view of the Greek perfect indicative does not serve translators well. They are forced to “break the rules” approximately 60% of the time— the ESV does so, at least. I agree wholeheartedly with Porter that “translation is a very poor indicator of meaning,” as I  acknowledged in the Levinsohn essay. While I  did indeed draw attention to the translational problems caused by the “traditional” perfect in that essay, to claim that I have derived my understanding of the perfect from translation is an egregious error.

3 Constantine R. Campbell, Verbal Aspect, the Indicative Mood, and Narrative: Soundings in the Greek of the New Testament (SBG 13; New York: Peter Lang, 2007), 175–87. 4 Constantine R. Campbell, “Breaking Perfect Rules,” in Discourse Studies & Biblical Interpretation: A Festschrift in Honor of Stephen H. Levinsohn (ed. Steven E. Runge; Logos Bible Software, 2011), 140–41.

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4.2 Past-Referring Perfects Porter attempts to defend his view of perfect semantics from my critique regarding past-referring perfects. He claims that I question 8.5% of perfects “simply on the basis that they should be translated with the English past tense.” This is patently false. First, in the essay he cites, I state, “This is not simply reflective of the difficulties of translating one language into another; in these instances, the context makes it clear that the perfect refers to a simple past action without an ongoing state on view.”5 Furthermore, the point is not that these perfects are past-referring, but that they do not yield an ongoing state. The English translations of these perfects as simple past events are illustrations of that point, but the translations do not make the point. The irony is that Porter has made the exact same point: “This decisive and yet only representative number of past-referring uses of the Perfect is sufficient to dispel the traditional conception of the Perfect as representing the present result of a past event …”6 In other words, Porter draws attention to past-referring perfects to demonstrate that they do not convey a “present result.” My wording may differ, but the point is clearly the same. Thus, it seems rather rude to criticize me for affirming the conclusion that Porter himself arrived at earlier. Finally, the fact that Porter acknowledges that the perfect can be past-referring in certain contexts does not mean that his description of the perfect successfully accounts for these. He claims that stative aspect does account for past-referring, telic lexemes, but this is not the case. As I have noted in my essay in this volume, the only way Porter can claim that stativity arises out of such actions is by predicating stativity to “the situation.” This violates the purpose of a finite verb, which is meant to predicate something about its subject. This is an obvious fact of Greek grammar. If, rather, the perfect’s stativity predicates “the situation,” it has violated the basic purpose of a finite verb. Porter’s stative aspect theory fails with transitive lexemes in the active voice, as several of his examples of past-referring perfects demonstrate, since the stativity is normally attributed to the situation, not the subject of the verb.7 In his current essay, however, it seems that Porter has changed his definition of stative aspect, presumably in order to avoid the above critique. Though he has previously described stative aspect as conveying a “state of

5 Campbell, “Breaking Perfect Rules,” 148 [emphasis added]. 6 Stanley E. Porter, Verbal Aspect in the Greek of the New Testament with Reference to Tense and Mood (SBG 1; New York: Peter Lang, 1989), 265. 7 Porter, Verbal Aspect, 261–65.

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affairs,”8 which is extremely general (and vague), in this essay he says, “the perfect tense-form encodes the action as reflecting a complex state of affairs of the subject.”9 The qualification “of the subject” is now included in order to avoid the criticism that his definition splits the semantic expression of the form from the subject of the verb, as do previous versions of the definition. The trouble with this newly tweaked definition is that it is now afflicted by the same problems that afflict Louw and McKay’s stative aspect (he calls it perfect aspect). McKay argues that the subject is in a “state” of being responsible for the action performed. I  have critiqued this notion elsewhere, and also in my response to Fanning in this volume. Porter does not address the problem here, but if he wishes to retain his newly tweaked definition of the perfect, he will need to defend it against the significant problem it introduces (for more on this problem, see below under “confusion with voice semantics”). Another attempt to deal with “past-referring perfects” is offered later in Porter’s essay, in which he claims that some perfects that appear to be parallel to aorists could be instances of “tense reduction.” With this solution, it seems that Porter’s settled answer regarding perfects that appear in parallel contexts with aorists is that they have effectively lost their semantic meaning. Tense reduction is the last resort of grammarians who can’t explain why a form is behaving the way it does. It is a simple solution and means that Porter does not need to account for such perfects through stative aspect. However, he and I  both agree on two methodological principles that make this solution the least satisfying of all. First, semantic values are encoded in the form regardless of usage. To resort to tense reduction is to admit that the semantic constituency of the perfect has been canceled. Second, it contradicts the principle of power of explanation. The best theory is the one that has the greatest power to explain usage. Porter has all but admitted that some perfects are not explained by his theory; rather, they are instances of tense reduction. My understanding of the perfect is that perfects that occur in mainline narrative contexts with aorists are parallel to the historical present. The historical present often occurs on the narrative mainline alongside aorists. However we may understand the historical present, so we may also understand the

8 “The perfect and pluperfect tense-forms occur in context where the user of Greek wishes to depict the action as reflecting a given (often complex) state of affairs.” Stanley E. Porter, Idioms of the Greek New Testament (2nd ed.; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic, 1994), 39 [italics are original]. 9 Emphasis added.

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historical perfect. This solution retains the semantic constituency of the perfect, rather than canceling it, and it offers greater power of explanation than tense reduction.

4.3 Morphology and the Number of Aspects A central point in Porter’s defense of stative aspect for the Greek perfect is that the number of aspects (three) matches the number of verbal stems in Greek. I have addressed this issue in my essay in this volume, pointing out that there are, in fact, four verbal stems in Greek, not three. Thus, if Porter wishes to align a different aspect for each morphoparadigm, he must acknowledge four aspects, not three, else abandon the unproven assumption that each stem must indicate a separate aspect. In his essay in this volume, Porter seems to anticipate this critique, and tries to evade it with the following quip: the Greek language has three clearly defined morphologically determined tense-form systems (the future form is excluded from this as it is not as clearly defined morphologically, and hence not fully aspectual and thus aspectually vague).

The truth, however, is that there are four verbal stems in Greek, as Clackson and others recognize. The future form can hardly be excluded on the grounds that “it is not as clearly defined morphologically.” That is an empty statement with no support offered except Porter’s own opinion. But of course, Porter must make this move because the number of verbal stems is critical for his understanding of the perfect. If he is wrong about this, he loses his most potent defense for the abnormal number of aspects that he attributes to the Greek verbal system. This issue raises the methodological flaw that I have pointed out in my essay in this volume. That is, Porter decided what the morphological forms mean first, and only then observes their functions in context: The semantics of the form within the Greek verbal system is established first (at the level of code), before extended application to various discourse contexts (in text). Otherwise, one will not be looking at the meaning of the perfect tenseform itself, but will instead be looking at the meaning of its usage in context— two different things.

As I have already argued in this volume, this methodology is the key to understanding Porter’s approach. He has decided, on the basis of three verbal stems, that there are three aspects, and this is then applied to the use of the

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perfect in text. There are at least three major flaws with this approach. First, to assume what a form means before observing its functions is the worst kind of methodology. I need not say more about that. Second, Greek has four verbal stems, not three, so the assumption of three aspects on the grounds of verbal stems is based on a false premise. Third, even if there were three verbal stems, and even if these for some reason indicated three different aspects, how do we know (before looking at usage) that this supposed third aspect is stative? Porter’s approach is based on a series of assumptions, one built on another.

4.4 Confusion with Voice Semantics Porter follows Louw in asserting that the semantics of the Greek perfect refer to the state of the subject of the verb, even when there is no “state” otherwise clearly indicated in the context. This understanding of the perfect is seen to be most vulnerable when the perfect operates with transitive lexemes in the active voice. I stress active voice, because the problem is masked in the middle and passive voices. A passive voice perfect can easily be regarded as stative, as in the example of κέκρικα in John 16:11—the ruler of this world “is judged.” In truth, any passive voice perfect (and many middle voice perfects) will be stative in function. But this is due to the semantics of voice, not the semantics of the perfect. Consider the use of the same lexeme, κρίνω, as a present indicative in Acts 23:6: Paul says, “I am judged (κρίνομαι) because of the hope of the resurrection of the dead!” Here, the present indicative is stative in function, even if translated “I am being judged,” but voice is the major contribution to such stativity (if not the sole contribution). Contrast this with the active voice use of the same lexeme: “Does our law judge (κρίνει) a man without first giving him a hearing and learning what he does?” The act of judging is not stative, since it is a transitive action with its object clearly indicated (“a man”). The point is that a transitive lexeme can appear to be stative when used in the passive voice. This is true for the present indicative, and it is also true for the perfect. No one would take this phenomenon as evidence that the present is stative in aspect; nor should it be taken as evidence that the perfect is stative. Porter, like Fanning, claims that the perfect stresses the responsibility of the subject when the lexeme does not naturally convey a state, as is the case for transitive lexemes in the active voice. The claim is that the perfect stresses the involvement of the subject. Notwithstanding the lack of evidence for the claim, such an understanding represents another case of confusion of categories. Subject involvement, with its “responsibility” subcategory, is the core

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semantic feature of the middle voice, as Rutger Allan has demonstrated.10 If an author desires to stress the involvement or responsibility of the subject of a verb, he or she chooses the middle voice to do so, not the perfect in active voice. I say this represents “another case of confusion of categories” because it is akin to the mistake of claiming that stativity is an aspect rather than an Aktionsart feature. Readers may appreciate the irony, since Porter is prone to accuse others of such category errors.

4.5 Remaining Items Finally, Porter’s essay contains a series of irresponsible, or plainly incorrect, statements. Most of these are passing comments, seemingly offered in hope that they will lead to a death by a thousand cuts. All that is achieved, however, is the deepening realization that Porter relies on ad hominem quips in order to undermine his opponents. 4.5.1 Porter notes that I  identify the distinction between Chomskyan and functional linguistic approaches, adopting the latter without stating further what this means apart from the fact that language is a communicative tool. In a following footnote, Porter states, “He [Campbell] fails to note that there are a variety of functional models, including SFL, but others as well, such as tagmemics, stratificational grammar, and continental functionalism.” This is a strange criticism. First, I explicitly discuss systemic functional linguistics,11 and I  indicate that “a functional systemic approach is adopted rather than a formal generative approach.”12 Admittedly, my application of a systemic functional approach is not overt throughout the body of work, but it is the methodological framework upon which the study rests. This can be detected implicitly throughout, if the reader is paying attention. The point of the first chapter on methodology was to make that explicit. Furthermore, Porter finds it a weakness that other functional approaches are not also addressed. I do not see why they should be. They are not relevant to my study, since a systemic functional approach is preferred. The goal of the book is to address the Greek indicative mood in narrative, not to provide a survey of linguistic methodologies. In a case of pure irony, in Porter’s monograph he adopts a systemic approach without any discussion of competing 10 Rutger J.  Allan, “The Middle Voice in Ancient Greek:  A Study in Polysemy,” Dissertation presented to the University of Amsterdam, 2002. http://dare.uva.nl/ record/108528. 11 Campbell, Verbal Aspect, 17–19. 12 Campbell, Verbal Aspect, 33 [emphasis added].

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functional models. In the section in which he introduces systemic linguistics, there is no discussion of tagmemics, stratificational grammar, nor continental functionalism.13 4.5.2 Porter claims that I adopt Comrie’s understanding of verbal aspect as internal versus external “temporal constituency.” This claim is false. While I endorse the internal vs external opposition, which is an extremely common understanding of aspect, I have explicitly rejected Comrie’s “temporal constituency” formulation: Comrie’s now standard definition of imperfective aspect as ‘the internal temporal structure of a situation’ is not adopted here, as the reference to temporality is potentially misleading, especially as we distinguish aspect from tense. While Comrie’s approach has its own logic, defining aspect in terms of internal time— values, as opposed to the external time-values of tense, it is more useful to avoid temporal descriptions of aspect altogether. Rather, aspect is here regarded as a spatial phenomenon.14

4.5.3 Another critique is raised in relation to my association of the perfect with the present in terms of their parallel distribution within narrative discourse. Porter claims that my recognition that perfect and present indicative forms both occur overwhelmingly in reported discourse contexts cannot point to the perfect encoding imperfective aspect, because how would that be different from the present? Porter is wrong in several respects here. My claim is that the shared imperfective context (reported discourse) of both forms suggests a shared aspect. Not only are perfects and presents found overwhelmingly in discourse, but when they occur outside discourse (either as speech margins or on the narrative mainline), they do so in similar ways with similar lexical types (forming the historical present and the historical perfect, respectively). Thus, the claim is based on the observable and objective patterns of distribution (not translation, obviously). I do not claim that the perfect and present are therefore the same, but that they share the same aspect. A systemic approach requires that a distinction be posited between the two forms, and in my chapter on the perfect that is exactly what I attempt through the discussion of “heightened proximity.” Whether or not one accepts my arguments there, it is clear that I do not regard the perfect and present to mean the exact same thing. Porter’s critique is misinformed. 4.5.4 Yet another example is found in the parenthetical comment, “He also seems to ignore, but perhaps is in fact relying upon, the supposition that the perfect was originally an intensive present, according to some linguists.” 13 Porter, Verbal Aspect, 7–16. 14 Campbell, Verbal Aspect, 36.

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This is bizarre. First, am I ignoring that supposition or relying on it? How can Porter critique someone for ignoring something when he himself is not sure if they are in fact relying on the very thing supposedly ignored? Second, I explicitly do draw on this supposition, and I don’t understand how Porter could miss the fact; there are two pages dedicated to that discussion.15 4.5.6 The strange commentary continues with the offhand comment that the term “heightened proximity” is senseless, since “two things are either proximate to each other, or they are not.” However, the existence of the colloquial phrase, “in close proximity” is enough to dispel this criticism, evidenced by its acknowledgment in most English dictionaries. Of course “proximity” can be qualified. 4.5.7 Porter thinks that my understanding of the indicative mood “applies to discourse,” while non-indicative usage applies to the clause. Again, Porter has misunderstood and/or misrepresented my point. Here is what I actually say on this topic: The indicative mood is associated with the discourse strands of narrative, but non—indicative verbs function on a different level to this. Non-indicative verbs operate primarily on the level of the clause. Indicative verbs operate on the clausal level too, usually found within independent clauses, but they also operate on the structural, discourse-strand level, whereas non-indicatives operate only on the level of the clause.16

Clearly, my claim is that both indicatives and non-indicatives operate on the level of the clause, but that the indicative mood also functions at an additional discourse level. By and large, aorists mark out the narrative mainline, imperfects and pluperfects are found on narrative offline, and presents and perfects are generally found within direct and indirect discourse. Nonindicative verbs are not distributed according to such patterns. 4.5.8 Porter critiques my “formal equation” of aspect + lexeme + context = Aktionsart, claiming that it “makes Aktionsart a category that is larger than context—whatever that can possibly mean.” This is a silly claim. In the book to which he refers (Basics of Verbal Aspect in Biblical Greek), by the context component of the “equation” (his word, not mine), I refer to elements within the context that might have some bearing on how the verb is to be understood. It is no different from saying “function within context.” 4.5.9 Finally, Porter claims that “Campbell’s explanation of this as a ‘historical perfect’ similar to a ‘historical present’ is unnecessary and misleading.” 15 Campbell, Verbal Aspect, 199–200. 16 Constantine R. Campbell, Verbal Aspect and Non-Indicative Verbs: Further Soundings in the Greek of the New Testament (SBG 15; New York: Peter Lang, 2008), 5.

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Unfortunately, Porter does not specify how this correlation between historical perfect and historical present is misleading. No explanation is offered whatsoever; it is an offhand dismissal lacking substance and evidence. Porter also seems to miss the fact that I draw on the work of Ruipérez, whom Porter cites approvingly. These examples suffice to demonstrate the nature of Porter’s interaction with my own material. Sadly, his essay is riddled with irresponsible statements that range from misrepresentative to plainly incorrect.

5.  Conclusion The sharp disagreements between Porter and me on the issue of the Greek perfect do not undermine the fact that we share many areas of agreement regarding verbal aspect in general. Though I find many flaws in Porter’s conception of the perfect, there is no question that I am indebted to his contribution to our understanding of the Greek verbal system. Nevertheless, I have attempted to demonstrate that Porter’s approach to the perfect is built on unproven assumptions, confuses semantic categories, is out of step with linguistic discussion, and does not adequately account for the full sweep of perfect usage. His interaction with my scholarship posits some worthwhile questions, but is also riddled with misrepresentation and weak criticisms. It is left to the reader to adjudicate who has best handled the evidence of perfect usage and offered careful interaction with the views of others.

10.  Response to Porter’s Stative View of the Greek Perfect Buist M. Fanning I want to record my appreciation for Porter’s essay in this book and his reminders of the wider importance of linguistic studies of ancient Greek for competent biblical interpretation. I am grateful also for the attention he pays to the areas of agreement between the three contributors because there is a lot that we have in common. This response will center on four areas of discussion stimulated by his essay, somewhat in the order in which he brings them up. These move from more general to more specific issues, and they are interrelated topics as will be seen. I hope that these will promote further dialogue and lead to progress in understanding.

1.  Conflicted Relationships The first area concerns Porter’s conflicted relationship with contemporary biblical studies as well as contemporary linguistics. This is an awkward and broad topic to start with, but this is where Porter’s essay starts, the “much larger issue” he mentions in his opening line. This conflicted relationship surfaces in his self-absorbed claim to be the ground-breaking figure in bringing linguistic studies of Greek language to bear on the world of biblical scholarship. Porter can take justifiable pride for what he has contributed personally and through his wider influence to the efforts in recent decades to aid biblical study through careful linguistic work. His personal output of books, articles, essays, and editorial work as well as his influence on universities, publishers, and research groups operating within the standard professional societies is astounding and immeasurable in its contribution. He is to be gratefully commended for all of this. But the construct presented in his essay that places his own modest intermediate grammar (Idioms 1992) alongside the work of Winer (1822) and Blass

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(1896) is a step too far. Surely the better course is to leave it to others to pass out such commendations if they are appropriate.1 Unfortunately this is part of a larger, contrived narrative often found in works by Porter and a few who follow his approach. The storyline goes something like this: “Scholars once thought that Greek verb tenses expressed time, but we now know that is not true. Then they thought the tenses expressed Aktionsart, but that’s wrong. Sadly no one understood aspect in Greek until about 1989 when a glorious intellectual revolution took place that swept away all the nonsense that came before.”2 This narrative is wrong on three counts in my opinion: that earlier scholars had it all wrong, that time and Aktionsart must be excluded if aspect in the ancient Greek verb is to be properly understood, and that 1989 or 1992 brought a transformation by which all later work in the field must be measured. Porter’s conflicted relationship consists on the one side in his impatience with NT Greek grammars and commentaries that fail to reflect his views despite the passage of some twenty-five years since the publication of his book on verbal aspect. Such frustration might be justifiable if it concerned the failure of others to see the value of what he has contributed in adding to and refining earlier research. But Porter is convinced that his work should largely replace all that has come before. In his essay here he allows that “there are some elements … of traditional grammar that are compatible with subsequent study,” but insists “there are many areas that are incommensurable” (Porter, 3). In his two cited essays evaluating NT commentaries, he is much less generous. He judges as linguistically incompetent not only those commentaries “that do not show awareness of the latest research into Greek linguistics” but 1 A less problematic alternative would be to associate his work with a larger group of scholars who represent a turning point in the field. This is the approach Porter takes in “The Linguistic Competence of New Testament Commentaries,” in On the Writing of New Testament Commentaries:  Festschrift for Grant R.  Osborne on the Occasion of His 70th Birthday (ed. Stanley E. Porter and Eckhard J. Schnabel; Leiden: Brill, 2013), 38–40. There he cites James Barr’s Semantics of Biblical Language (1961) as an influential book signaling a new approach in comparison to the two previous periods of grammatical study as laid out in his essay here. 2 Porter never articulates this narrative in such stark terms, but it is implicit in his penchant for connecting his work with the “scientific revolutions” that Thomas Kuhn describes. See his “In Defense of Verbal Aspect,” in Biblical Greek Language and Linguistics:  Open Questions in Current Research (ed. Stanley E.  Porter and D.  A. Carson; Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1993), 26; “Linguistic Competence of New Testament Commentaries,” 52). See also the comment in his “Commentaries on Romans,” in On the Writing of New Testament Commentaries: Festschrift for Grant R. Osborne on the Occasion of His 70th Birthday (ed. Stanley E.  Porter and Eckhard J.  Schnabel; Leiden: Brill, 2013), 395, about pre-1989 ideas being “flat-earth” views.

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also those that “continue to cite older grammatical works, especially that of Blass and Debrunner in Funk’s translation.”3 He describes as “optimistic” the view that grammatical work done in the past “continues to have relevance to contemporary study, and [that] contemporary research serves the purpose of enhancing and building upon previous work” and dismisses it outright by citing a commentator who attempted to mix insights from Porter’s approach to the Greek verb with contributions from earlier works. In arguing against this, Porter traces the contrived “narrative” mentioned above (the temporal view was replaced by the Aktionsart view but is now replaced by the aspect view) and then asserts that these three are “fundamentally … incommensurable paradigms.”4 The conclusion of the two essays is that sadly almost no one has seen the light, at least not in the way Porter has defined it. Commentators are largely not incorporating his views into their treatment of the NT text. This is unfortunate especially because Porter has elsewhere articulated, as a linguist concerned for biblical studies, a sense of pedagogical responsibility to explain linguistic insights to the wider community of biblical scholars. This is an important task and one that biblical scholarship can certainly benefit from, particularly in the sense that Porter articulates: that of “approaching familiar texts with new methods and categories of analysis, designed to aid our understanding by teaching us new ways of thinking about the text.”5 Porter signals his awareness that there is a great need to explain linguistic jargon to non-specialists in terms that are readily understandable and to indicate wherever possible the actual interpretive help that linguistic insights can provide for biblical exegesis.6 But a further facet of the pedagogical goal, it seems to me, would be to mediate the consensus of current linguist scholarship to the biblical studies guild rather than an idiosyncratic view. If NT interpreters have not utilized the linguistic insights on verbal aspect that Porter has offered, perhaps it is because the linguistic principles have not been explained adequately for “non-initiates” to grasp their rationale or because those insights have not offered the kind of aid that seems useful for interpretation or because the 3 Porter, “Linguistic Competence of New Testament Commentaries,” 51. See also pp. 42–48 and “Commentaries on Romans,” 385, 401 where recent commentators are criticized for citing “older” NT grammars like Moule, Moulton, and Zerwick, as well as BDF. 4 Porter, “Linguistic Competence of New Testament Commentaries,” 52. 5 Stanley E.  Porter, “Introduction,” in The Linguist as Pedagogue:  Trends in the Teaching and Linguistic Analysis of the Greek New Testament (ed. Stanley E. Porter and Matthew Brook O’Donnell; Sheffield: Sheffield Phoenix Press, 2009), 6–7 6 Ibid., 1–2.

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theory seems idiosyncratic despite its claims to be the new standard that has swept away all previous views. As I will try to show, Porter’s essay shows that all three of these problems exist for his view. The other side of Porter’s conflicted relationship with contemporary scholarship is his failure to engage responsibly with recent linguistic studies of verbal aspect. His massive book on verbal aspect published in 1989 seems, of course, to engage with everything ever written on Greek verbal semantics up to that date.7 But even that work reflects flaws in linguistic method, a tendency to ignore or peremptorily dismiss broad areas of recent aspect studies as unimportant, and a fundamental aloofness from the wider field.8 In subsequent defense of his views Porter has displayed minimal interaction with wider studies of aspect in contemporary linguistics except to cite them sporadically—and sometimes erroneously—in support of his approach.9 His writings on aspect almost completely ignore the work of other contemporary linguists in favor of insisting that biblical scholars simply accept his system and its results. A quick example of this failure to engage other aspect studies (which we will return to later) is his charge that Campbell and I and others are confusing aspect with Aktionsart by working with the frequent interactions between aspect and procedural character (i.e., Aktionsart) for analyzing aspect usage in specific contexts.10 It would be helpful to his biblical studies audience for Porter to acknowledge more clearly that on this issue he is out of step with the widespread consensus of contemporary aspectology and then to mount a greater defense of his minority view by direct engagement with linguists who 7 Stanley E. Porter, Verbal Aspect in the Greek of the New Testament, with Reference to Tense and Mood (New York: Peter Lang, 1989), 594 pages long, much of it in very small font with a bibliography that runs to 51 pages and with notes that seem to discuss every possible previous approach and alternative view. 8 Steven E. Runge, “Contrastive Substitution and the Greek Verb: Reassessing Porter’s Argument,” NovT 56 (2014): 154, 163–65, 171–72; Buist M. Fanning, “Approaches to Verbal Aspect in New Testament Greek:  Issues in Definition and Method,” in Biblical Greek Language and Linguistics:  Open Questions in Current Research (ed. Stanley E. Porter and D. A. Carson; Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1993), 60–62. 9 Buist Fanning, “Greek Presents, Imperfects, and Aorists in the Synoptic Gospels:  Their Contribution to Narrative Structuring,” in Discourse Studies and Biblical Interpretation:  A Festschrift in Honor of Stephen H.  Levinsohn (ed. Steven E. Runge; Bellingham, Wash.: Logos, 2011), 163–67; Steven E. Runge, “The Verbal Aspect of the Historical Present Indicative in Narrative,” in Discourse Studies and Biblical Interpretation:  A Festschrift in Honor of Stephen H.  Levinsohn (ed. Steven E. Runge; Bellingham, Wash.: Logos, 2011), 208, 217–21; Campbell, essay, 9–12; Fanning, essay, 10–13. 10 Porter, essay, 4, 8, 17, 19.

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disagree.11 Instead he implies that if others would simply adopt a consistent linguistic theory or if they adopted his systemic functional approach or if they were after all trained in linguistics of any kind, they would see the correctness of his view. This aura of linguistic “authority” is dispelled quite a bit when one reads, for example, the wide-ranging survey of “recent activity in the theory of aspect” by Sasse (2002). His goal is to discuss agreements and disagreements in aspect studies from “various approaches, in order to come to grips with the aspectological landscape” and he begins with “three points on which most aspectologists today agree.”12 Two of these points pertain to categorical interaction: first that “aspectuality (including tense and “Aktionsart”, where it is distinguished) is a larger “domain” strongly characterized by the interaction of categories both within the grammar and between grammar and lexicon.”13 The second point is this: “There is general agreement … that explicit, formalizable, theories of syntactic structure; of the contribution of syntax and the lexicon to semantic interpretation; and of the deployment of contextual information, are all required if the phenomena of tense and aspect are to be understood.” This is, of course, strongly related to the previous point:  the observation that there are many interacting factors that contribute to “aspectuality” necessitates a theoretical approach that transgresses the boundaries of linguistic subdisciplines.14

Sasse and others acknowledge that we must think carefully about how to analyze this categorical interaction and that differences of opinion exist on how 11 As seen all too often, Porter’s citation of Brinton (1988) in his essay (footnote 10) is a misuse, either deliberate or careless, of his linguistic source. In alluding to “other proposals” in linguistics that “confuse” aspect and Aktionsart, he cites her book (p. 3) ostensibly to support his view about “the need to differentiate between aspect and Aktionsart.” As a matter of fact, Brinton represents the view that Porter opposes. It is true that she advocates a clear semantic distinction between the two (citing Carlota S. Smith, “A Theory of Aspectual Choice,” Language 59 [1983]: 479–501, for example), but the last line of her p. 3 reads as follows: “This work will argue that the distinction between aspect and aktionsart is crucial, and that the aspectual interpretation of a sentence depends on an interaction between these two categories (see 1.6).” In 1.6 she surveys “the compositional nature of aspectual meaning” (36–50), including a section on how Aktionsart features affect the interpretation of the perfect (43–45). This is preceded by a valuable section on the Vendler-Kenny lexical typology: its problems, refinements, and vital importance for working with aspect-usage (23–36). 12 Hans-Jürgen Sasse, “Recent Activity in the Theory of Aspect:  Accomplishments, Achievements, or Just Non-Progressive State?” Linguistic Typology 6 (2002): 201. 13 Ibid. 14 Ibid., 202. The first sentence is a quotation from James Higginbotham’s introduction to Pier Marco Bertinetto, et al., eds., Semantic and Syntactic Perspectives (vol. 1 of Temporal Reference, Aspect and Actionality; Torino: Rosenberg & Sellier, 1995), 5.

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this is to be done,15 but almost no one in the wider field regards this as unimportant or outside the bounds of grammar or linguistics as Porter does.16

2.  Agreements and Disagreements over the Greek Perfect Moving from these very broad issues of linguistics and biblical studies to more specific questions about the Greek perfect tense, I am happy to affirm along with Porter (5–6) a wide area of consensus among the three contributors to this book. His five points of agreement relating to aspect and its importance to Greek verbal meaning capture quite well how close we are in many essential ways. A further point of agreement, I think, centers on some kind of stative sense for the perfect, although each of us arrives at a stative meaning in a different way. We also disagree on whether there is more to the perfect than this and how the stative sense relates to the aspectual system of Greek. It is also true that within his five areas of consensus debatable points still remain, as Porter also notes. In his brief allusion to several of these points, he phrases the differences as a false dichotomy. To say (6) “if verbal aspect is fundamental, then temporal reference or Aktionsart cannot be” and “promoting binary opposition between perfective/imperfective aspect does not exclude other binary choices” misrepresents the range of choices. I agree that aspect is fundamental, but to include time or actional characteristics in the complex of Greek verbal meaning shows their importance but does not make them fundamental. To affirm a binary opposition between perfective and imperfective does not exclude other binary choices, but it leaves open the question of how the perfect relates to that aspectual system. Does the perfect come in as a further purely aspectual contrast or do other components enter into the choice at that point? To pursue several debated points further, I want to take up three of the areas of disagreement that Porter mentions (6–10). The first is “the role of linguistic theory in aspect studies.” Porter says that theory is “fundamental to linguistic understanding” and implies that following some particular theory 15 Sasse, “Recent Activity in the Theory of Aspect,” 202–8. On pp. 211–19 he discusses developments in the Vendler-Kenny taxonomy and debates about what level of analysis should include such elements, then he concludes (219), “The order of compositional steps is not seldom unclear or controversial …. [but] the compositional idea has by now become an integral part of almost all contemporary approaches to aspect.” 16 See also Henriëtte de Swart, “Verbal Aspect,” in The Oxford Handbook of Tense and Aspect (ed. Robert I. Binnick; Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), 752–54, who begins with the basic principle that grammatical aspect and aspectual class or situation aspect (i.e., Aktionsart) are independent categories but there are clear interactions between them and this “give[s]‌rise to different inference patterns” (754) in usage.

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is essential:  “Without a linguistic theory as the basis of examination of the language, it is very difficult to determine what counts as evidence and how any such evidence should be interpreted” (6–7; note the indefinite article, “a linguistic theory”). He declares his own approach as systemic-functional linguistics (SFL) and speculates about what specific theory Campbell and I follow. He perceives that I have adopted an eclectic mix of “various linguistic thoughts and traditional grammar,”17 and seems dissatisfied that Campbell claims a functional approach but does not specify which strand of functional linguistics he follows (7). It seems to me that the specific theory one adopts is not as important as the broader linguistic principles that are followed in one’s analysis. For the cross-disciplinary and non-specialist linguistic work that biblical scholars will find most helpful, I  see no need to espouse one theory over others.18 Across various current theories one can find “underlying principles … held in common by the wide variety of scholars practicing linguistics … which help them to observe and evaluate the data” of language usage, and these must be followed. I believe Porter’s articulation of such principles in his 1989 article just quoted are a valuable expression of the appropriate general approach.19 Rather than imply that one’s choice of theory will in and of itself validate or invalidate the results, Porter should articulate the specific points of method or argumentation that he finds determinative. As a matter of fact the two scholars that I have found most helpful in my understanding of verbal aspect as a linguistic phenomenon come from opposite ends of the contemporary theoretical continuum:  Carlotta Smith (a formalist Chomskyan following a type of government and binding theory)20 and Carl Bache (more eclectic, influenced by formalists but essentially a functional linguist of the later Hallidayan or Systemic Functional Grammar school).21 Even within various 17 This is actually quite a good description of how I have conceived of what I am doing. See Buist M.  Fanning, Verbal Aspect in New Testament Greek (Oxford:  Clarendon Press, 1990), v–vi. 18 See John A. Cook, Time and the Biblical Hebrew Verb: The Expression of Tense, Aspect, and Modality in Biblical Hebrew (Winona Lake, Ind.: Eisenbrauns, 2012), 190–91, for similar sentiments. 19 Stanley E.  Porter, “Studying Ancient Languages from a Modern Linguistic Perspective:  Essential Terms and Terminology,” Filologia Neotestamentaria 2 (1989): 151–55; quotation from p. 151. 20 Carlota S. Smith, The Parameter of Aspect (2nd ed.; Dordrecht: Kluwer, 1997), 1–2. 21 Carl Bache, The Study of Aspect, Tense and Action: Towards a Theory of the Semantics of Grammatical Categories (2nd ed.; Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 1997), 9–12; Carl Bache, English Tense and Aspect in Halliday’s Systemic Functional Grammar: A Critical Appraisal and an Alternative (London: Equinox, 2008), 1–5, 195.

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theoretical approaches to linguistics there can be great differences between how particular details of aspectual usage are handled. Porter alludes only in passing to variations in how SFL adherents analyze verbal aspect. He cites Halliday and a few associates for points amenable to his views, but fails to cite other SFL theorists who approach aspect differently, especially regarding its interaction with Aktionsart.22 I will have more to say about this issue below. A second area of disagreement concerns Porter’s comments on binary oppositions and the need to define the choices they encode not independently but “within the larger verbal network” and thus “systemically,” that is, “as part of a coordinated systemic network, not as individual entities” (7–8). I heartily support the linguistic principles he articulates here, but I dispute the minimalist way in which he applies them. For Porter this produces definitions that are decidedly vague, abstract, and virtually non-falsifiable. He then argues on supposedly principled grounds that we must not go beyond these broad definitions. So the imperfective aspect means “the action is conceived of by the language user as being in progress” and the perfective (aorist) “the action is conceived of by the language user as a complete and undifferentiated whole.” The perfect aspect means “the action is conceived of by the language user as reflecting a given (often complex) state of affairs.”23 Such descriptions by themselves provide little help for the interpreter of texts.24 But in addition, leaving the tense-aspects at this level of abstraction grossly over-simplifies the complexity of Greek verbal predication. This is one of the main lines of critique that Bache levels against the standard SFL approach to tense and aspect as articulated by Halliday (1994) and by Halliday and Matthiessen (2004), which is the SFL approach that Porter

22 See Robin Fawcett, The Functional Syntax Handbook: Analyzing English at the Level of Form (London: Equinox, 2011), 121, 171–74; and Bache, English Tense and Aspect in Halliday’s Systemic Functional Grammar, 73–78, 108–14, 171, who discuss the categories of procedural character (Aktionsart) and regard them as essential to analyzing tense-aspect usage. Porter cites Bache briefly but not on this point. See further discussion below. 23 Stanley E. Porter, Idioms of the Greek New Testament (2nd ed.; Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1994), 21–22. 24 Notice how Porter in this essay (18–19) struggles to provide any clear description about what the basic aspects actually mean beyond explaining that they occur in a series of binary oppositions that can be graphically displayed in a system network and that a speaker chooses first between “perfective” and non-perfective and then between “imperfective” and “stative.” If this is what constitutes “defining the semantics” of the aspect forms, it is no wonder that biblical commentators have largely not availed themselves of his help (see first section of his essay).

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has followed.25 Bache argues that this approach is too simplistic and system focused:  it stops at the level of systemic analysis alone and (ironically for a functional linguistics approach) fails to analyze tense-aspect at the complex, interactive level of linguistic usage or function. What is needed he suggests is an SFL approach that is “more sensitive to function, to the specific role of context, and to the basic semiotics of the individual tense markers.” He adds: We need a more genuinely functionalist account of choice relations as part of our description of the tense category. The concept of choice should be understood literally as having to do with the factors affecting the Performer’s selection of a particular tense in a text. A mere description of the inventory of the tense category (as reflected in system networks) is not enough …. Although it is of course important to provide a survey of the various options available to the Performer, this should not be an aim in itself but a first step towards a more adequate account of why a Performer uses one tense rather than another in any given case.26

I reiterate my agreement that the sense of aspect itself and of the individual aspects in relation to each other must be defined in broad, somewhat abstract terms, and we must be careful not to confuse what aspect itself expresses with what is expressed by its interactions with related features of meaning (lexical, adverbial, compositional, discourse, etc.).27 Porter’s theoretical construct in this essay about how the perfect may have a discourse function is exactly how I conceive of aspect in its interaction with the procedural character of the verb or verb phrase (i.e., with Aktionsart): The perfect tense-form encoding stative aspect is used in contrastive parallel with the mainline tense-form in each of these basic text types [i.e., narrative vs. 25 Bache, English Tense and Aspect in Halliday’s Systemic Functional Grammar, 18–23. Porter (8) briefly mentions Bache’s book but specifies only one minor dimension of his criticism:  the fact that “the basic SFL architecture was developed before aspect became a major category in general linguistic theory (i.e. pre Comrie)” (referring to Bache, p. 18). Porter does not go into Bache’s summary of other problems with the standard SFL approach (pp. 19–23), including the considerable limitation that it is intended to apply only to English tenses rather than to tense-aspect in a wider range of languages. 26 Bache, English Tense and Aspect in Halliday’s Systemic Functional Grammar, 63. On pp. 196–97 he adds, “the [SFL] tense description seemed to be aimed more at devising a technical model for the derivation of an inventory of tense forms than at determining the exact nature of the choice relations involved as they present themselves to the Performer. There was too little focus on what motivates the Performer to select a given tense form in a particular context …. It lacked some of the attractiveness which characterizes SFL more generally .… [It] needed functional tuning, both observationally, descriptively and explanatorily.” 27 Fanning, “Approaches to Verbal Aspect,” 47–50.

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non-narrative]. This claim, however, rightly moves from the semantics of the perfect tense-form to its discourse function, and one that, I believe, establishes the priorities correctly for discussion. The semantics of the form within the Greek verbal system is established first (at the level of code), before extended application to various discourse contexts (in text). Otherwise, one will not be looking at the meaning of the perfect tense-form itself, but will instead be looking at the meaning of its usage in context—two different things.28

This is exactly the view I hold29 about aspect’s interactions with various other features: such contextual interactions must not be allowed on the one hand to alter the essential definitions we give to the aspects themselves. On the other hand, they must inform our understanding of the specific range of meanings the aspects can enter into as they combine with other features in particular contexts. It is a puzzle why Porter can allow this consideration regarding discourse functions for the aspects but cannot allow it regarding aspect’s interaction with Aktionsart features (of verbs, verb phrases, or of larger sentences). His arguments against this fall short as discussed in the next paragraphs. My third area of disagreement arising from Porter’s debated points (6–10) relates to his rationale for excluding Aktionsart features from consideration. One line of thought refers dolefully to their “complicating” (8), “problematic” (9), or “inherently problematic” (11) character. With this third description he refers to Croft (2012) for a discussion of “the problems with all typologies.” However, as Croft himself shows throughout his book, this is not an argument for abandoning such classifications but for refining and improving them. After noting some difficulties with the Vendler-Kenny taxonomy, Croft seeks to refine it and continues to rely on such a typology, in a more sophisticated form, for working with aspect.30 Not only is Aktionsart complicated, but according to Porter it concerns things that are “not features of the Greek verbal system,” that are “beyond the systems of language” (11), “mostly a discussion of ontology rather than grammar or linguistics” (4). If he had said “beyond the grammatical system,” I could agree with him (see the next paragraph), but surely the verb’s lexical

28 Porter, essay, 23. 29 A view shared by Bache, Smith, Fawcett, and virtually all linguists who write about verbal aspect. See above and Fanning, “Approaches to Verbal Aspect,” 60–62. 30 For example, William Croft, Verbs:  Aspect and Causal Structure (Oxford:  Oxford University Press, 2012), 31–69; and his section on lexical features and the English perfect (162–64). See also Sasse, “Recent Activity in the Theory of Aspect,” 214– 22, for a wider discussion of how recent studies of aspect have approached these “problems.”

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sense and associated meanings carried by features like adverbials and core constituents like subjects and objects used with the verb are not beyond the systems of language or linguistics.31 To allude to ontology “(the nature of being)” and suggest that working with distinctions of procedural character is “a matter of debate over philosophical categories” (4, 11–12) betrays a fundamental misunderstanding on Porter’s part of what linguists are dealing with when they discuss Aktionsart. To analyze differences between stative and active verbs or between non-telic and telic verbs of action is not an attempt to investigate objective distinctions in real-world events. Distinguishing momentary from durative action is not a matter of quantitative measurement. It pertains to typical ways that humans and their language systems conventionally perceive of and construe such distinctions. This is a point repeatedly made by linguists who discuss such procedural characteristics, including several whom Porter himself consulted in his work on aspect.32 The valid point that Porter does make along the way regarding the interaction of aspect and procedural character is that we must be careful how and when we intermingle the two elements of meaning to come up with the overall sense. Porter rightly says that these are not “to be examined on the same plane” and that features of procedural character “are not important for defining aspectual semantics” (9). I take this to mean that aspect as a grammatical category must be defined and understood as semantically distinct from features of stative versus active, non-telic versus telic, momentary versus durative and so forth.33 On this point we firmly agree. Beyond this essential issue Porter raises other questions about what level of analysis is appropriate and notes that linguists who study Aktionsart dispute whether it functions at the word, phrase, clause, or higher level (9). On the matter of linguistic level 31 It is fascinating to see the term “epiphenomenal” bandied about among linguists as Porter does on p. 11. As Östen Dahl, The Growth and Maintenance of Linguistic Complexity (Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 2004), 36–38 observes, linguists of both formalist and functionalist schools tend to label the other side’s most central concepts as “epiphenomenal” (i.e., unnecessary or secondary). Of course, attaching a label to something in order to dismiss it is not the same as advancing a cogent argument against it. 32 See Bernard Comrie, Aspect: An Introduction to the Study of Verbal Aspect and Related Problems (Cambridge:  Cambridge University Press, 1976), 42–44; Carl Bache, “Aspect and Aktionsart: Towards a Semantic Distinction,” Journal of Linguistics 18 (1982): 65–66, 70–71; Smith, “A Theory of Aspectual Choice,” 480, 494; Smith, Parameter of Aspect, 6–7, 10–11; and Croft, Verbs, 13–19. 33 This is the main methodological point of J.  P. Louw’s article that Porter refers to frequently: “Die Semantiese Waarde van die Perfektum in Hellenistiese Grieks,” Acta Classica 10 (1967): 23–32.

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I am open to instruction. I do not see it as a pressing matter once the essential issue of definition mentioned above is clear. If Porter wants to make a case for where it should be appropriately engaged beyond that basic issue, this would be a welcome contribution, could advance our collective understanding, and could provide real help for biblical interpreters. But setting it aside completely as irrelevant or “complicated” is not a persuasive stance.

3.  Problems with “Stative” as an Aspect A third area of discussion stimulated by Porter’s essay is his use of “stativity” as an aspect category in defining the Greek perfect. In earlier treatments both Campbell and I disputed the validity of this, arguing that “stative” is an Aktionsart feature not an aspect, and Porter responded to these criticisms with certain arguments in a 2011 essay. In our essays in this book both of us then responded further to those arguments.34 I do not intend to go over those points again here, but I  want to touch briefly on the further line of defense he has now added in his present essay. His further line of defense is that we must understand “stative” as a linguistic term in connection with the system in which it operates and in opposition to the other members of that system with which it stands in contrast.35 So he says, “[A]‌spects must be defined on their own terms and within their own systems, and, as an aspect, “stative” means something different than it does within discussion of Aktionsart” (15). The linchpin of the argument is that, since aspect denotes the speaker’s conception of the occurrence, stative must be understood in those terms and this makes all the difference. Thus Porter can say that with the perfect the language user “conceives of the verbal process as stative—the perception of the action as a condition or state of affairs in existence” (4). Later he adds in regard to using the term stative for the perfect (20): By this I do not mean the category found in Aktionsart, even if there is some possible similarity. What I mean is that—as with all aspects—the use by an author of the perfect tense-form encodes the action as reflecting a complex state of affairs of the subject …. The author chooses to describe the particular process—regardless of the lexeme selected and its supposed Aktionsart—as a state or stativity.

It is certainly a fair point that terms must be understood in the frame of reference in which they are intended, not in some other mode foreign to it. But focusing in this way on the language user’s “conception” of an 34 See my essay, 10–12, and Campbell’s essay, 9–12 for details. 35 Porter stated this point quite briefly also in his “In Defense of Verbal Aspect,” 32 n. 2.

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occurrence or “how one chooses to describe” the occurrence does not by itself validate calling something an aspect. One of the most important principles of recent advances in aspect studies is that aspect properly understood is of a different semantic order than procedural characteristics like duration, repetition, telicity, stativity and so forth.36 Aspect as “viewpoint” certainly does center on what perspective a speaker takes on an occurrence rather than on some procedural characteristic of the occurrence itself.37 One of the early partial steps toward this understanding is the reference by some traditional grammars to the Greek tenses “conceiving of” or “regarding” an action in a certain way, but they were nevertheless only partial steps because they still used Aktionsart terms to describe what the tense was “conceiving.” Burton (1898), for example, says that the aorist “represents the action indefinitely as an event or single fact.” Moulton writes (1908), “the Aorist has a ‘punctiliar’ action, that is, it regards action as a point.” Moule (1959) describes the contrast of present and aorist as “conceiving of [the action] as protracted or as virtually instantaneous.”38 Porter himself is consistently critical of such descriptions of the Greek tense forms and regards them to be vestiges of the old Aktionsart system.39 But how can it be wrong to describe the imperfective as “conceiving of the action as durative” or the perfective as “conceiving of the action as a point” but acceptable to describe the perfect as “conceiving of the action as a state”? It seems to me that Porter’s insistence on “stative” as a proper member of the category of verbal aspect stretches to the breaking point his own definition of aspect as the “conception of a process”40 and risks taking a step backward towards a genuine confusion of aspect and Aktionsart at the core of his system. Aspect as the speaker’s “conception of the occurrence” or as “the way one regards the occurrence” is a valid semantic understanding of aspect only if it denotes the user’s choice to view the occurrence externally or internally, in whole or in part, without regard for the procedural character of the occurrence itself. Whether the occurrence or situation is stative or active,

36 Fanning, “Approaches to Verbal Aspect,” 48–50. 37 Note Porter’s emphasis on this in Verbal Aspect, 88–91. 38 Ernest DeWitt Burton, Syntax of the Moods and Tenses in New Testament Greek (3rd ed.; Edinburgh: T. and T. Clark, 1898), 6; James Hope Moulton, Prolegomena (vol. 1 of A Grammar of New Testament Greek; 3rd ed.; Edinburgh: T. and T. Clark, 1908), 109; C. F. D. Moule, An Idiom Book of New Testament Greek (2nd ed. Cambridge: at the University Press, 1959), 5. 39 Porter, Verbal Aspect, 52–59. 40 Ibid., 88, 91: aspect gives us “the author’s reasoned subjective choice of conception of a process” and not “any characterization of the process itself.”

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non-telic or telic, extended or momentary, single or repeated and so forth, aspect can take either an external or internal view of it. Why not acknowledge the real difference between “stative” on the one hand and the viewpoint aspects (perfective and imperfective) on the other? Porter could then treat the perfect as he does the future, that is, as a quasi-aspect, “related to a way of viewing the action although it is not best seen as fully aspectual.”41 The perfect is clearly related to the aspect system of Greek, but is it a purely aspectual choice like the perfective (aorist) and imperfective (present and imperfect) are? I think not.

4.  Explanation of New Testament Texts Porter’s final few pages where he takes up examples of perfect usage from the NT reveal, I  think, the value as well as shortcomings of his approach to the Greek perfect. Seeing the perfect as “stative” is valuable, but it gives only a partial and all-too-abstract description. It is so vague that it is virtually invulnerable to falsification—all the examples he cites are clearly stative to be sure. But this description is painted with such a broad brush and with almost no sensitivity to other important features of verbal predication that it gives little specific help for interpreting actual texts of Greek usage. A bit of further explanation about how this stative sense works in combination with various other features would be valuable. For example, many of his texts involve verbs that are lexically stative in their general sense (γινώσκω, ἐλπίζω, ἔχω, κράζω, πιστεύω).42 To take these as stative in their perfect forms is easy enough to see—almost no one would dispute this:  they refer to a condition of the subject. What is not so clear, however, is how their perfects should be distinguished in meaning from their corresponding present forms. Linguists and interpreters would be interested to pursue such a question when pondering several of the verbs and texts Porter cites (e.g., John 6:69; 8:52; 11:26–27; 1 John 5:10). Why specifically would a speaker choose the perfect in these cases instead of the present (can we say anything more than “it is conceived of as a state of affairs rather than as being in progress”)? Are the perfects “intensive” uses, expressing a stronger or heightened sense compared to the presents? Unfortunately Porter does not 41 Ibid., 95. 42 The verb κράζω is used in Greek as a stative even though it seems in English to be a verb of action. This is true of several verbs of undifferentiated or sustained “noise,” perceived as a condition rather than an action even when an agent is expressed. See Basil Lanneau Gildersleeve, Syntax of Classical Greek from Homer to Demosthenes (New York: American Book Company, 1900), 100.

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pursue such finer points. I think he unwittingly gives the best answer (p. 126) with his quotation from C. K. Barrett that John 6:69 ἡμεῖς πεπιστκαμεν καὶ ἐγνώκαμεν means, “we are in a state of faith and knowledge; we have recognized the truth and hold it,” that is, the past act of acknowledging the truth has led to their current conviction. Because the perfect refers to both the act of entering the condition and the condition itself, it is a stronger statement than the present tense expression that focuses on the condition alone. Some of his examples are intransitive verbs of action such as ἔγγίζω, (ἀπο)θνῄσκω. These also are not widely debated, because an intransitive predication involves only a subject (no object) and some state or condition of the subject that is related to that intransitive action is usually quite clear. These, however, consistently imply an occurrence of the intransitive event that has put the subject in that condition. Other examples are passives of verbs of action with a telic or bounded sense (they inherently refer to an action leading to a natural endpoint). See verbs like διανοίγω, καταργέω, κρίνω in his discussion. These likewise are easy enough to see as describing a state of the subject, but they also clearly include a reference to the event that produced that state. In Gal 5:11, for example, the scandal of the cross (cf. 1 Cor 1:23) would stand abolished if he were guilty of preaching circumcision (a practice Paul denies). Preaching circumcision is the act that would produce this result.43 Porter includes a few instances of verbs of action (either telic or nontelic) that occur in the active voice (e.g., δεκατόω, δέχομαι, εὐλογέω, τυφλόω). These are naturally more difficult examples:  do they refer to a state of the subject or the object? Porter insists that it is the state of the subject that is in view (123-4), but many would take John 12:40 as referring to the object’s condition (“he has blinded their eyes”). But what kind of state of the subject do we look for in these cases? How is the agent affected by an action upon another entity? What does the speaker have in mind in focusing on the condition of the subject in such cases? What suggestions can he give based on his experience in paying attention to details of such usage? For δέδεκται in Acts 8:14 it is not too hard to discern the subject’s state (“Samaria has received the word of God”), but it certainly seems to incorporate also the prior act of acceptance. Porter’s gloss in attempting to avoid this is decidedly awkward: to be “in a state of reception” (124). For his other three examples (John 12:40 τετύφλωκεν and Heb 7:6 δεδεκάτωκεν and εὐλόγηκεν) he ventures no explanation of how they are stative and his glosses use verbs of action 43 Porter seems to misconstrue the sense of Gal 5:11 (p. 126), but his wording leaves the matter unclear.

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(“he blinded,” “Melchizedek tithed and blessed Abraham”). These are not transparently stative senses. It leaves one hard put to agree with Porter’s conclusion that his work with NT examples “defines stative aspect of the perfect tense-form as a clear aspectual category, and provides a range of examples of how to understand its semantics in context” (24).

5.  Conclusion The fifth point of agreement that Porter mentions in his essay is our mutual commitment to NT exegesis “grounded in linguistically informed understanding of the Greek verbal system, as well as other features of the Greek language.” I affirm that commitment and reaffirm my appreciation for Porter’s enduring and extensive contribution to this effort. My criticisms of his view of the perfect are not intended to diminish such appreciation but to promote this shared commitment.

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Index of Names

Allan, Rutger J. 138, 138n10 Ariel, Mira 46n4 Aristotle 29–30, 30n17, 103n26 Bache, Carl 13, 13n23, 28n11, 50–1, 50n12, 68, 68n25, 68n28, 71n36n37, 72n40, 112n16, 149–51, 149n21, 150n22, 151n25-n26, 152n29, 153n32 Barr, James 144n1 Barrett, C. K. 126, 126n61, 157 Battistella, E. L. 123n53 Bentein, Klaas 3n10, 54n17, 92n3, 117n36 Bertinetto, Pier Marco 147n14 Bhat, D. N. Shankara 28n13 Blass, F. 62, 62n5, 106, 106n4, 143, 145 Brinton, L. J. 108n10, 147n11 Burton, Ernest de Witt 17, 17n38, 155n38 Buth, Randall 28n13, 66n16, 71n36 Bybee, Joan 27, 27n7, 32n22, 33n23-n25, 34n28, 35n33, 36n37, 37n38, 40n50-n51, 41n53, 42n57 Campbell, Constantine R. 1–2, 2n4, 4, 6n3, 8, 9n12, 11n16, 11n16, 11n18-n19, 16, 22–3, 25–8, 25n1, 26n2–5, 27n6, 27n8-n9, 28n12, 29n14, 30–31, 31n18-n20, 32n21, 34, 34n27-n28, 35n30, 37n41, 38, 38n44, 43n66,

44–6, 45n2, 46n4, 47–59, 49n8, 53n14-n15, 54n16, 55n20-n22, 56n23-n25, 61, 61n2, 64–5, 64n11, 65n12-n13, 67–8, 67n23, 68n24, 68n26-n27, 70–1, 70n31, 71n38, 75, 75n52, 76n55, 77, 92, 95, 99n20, 101n21, 107n9, 108n10, 110–6, 110n12, 111n13, 111n15, 112n17-n18, 113n20, 113n23, 114n24, 115n32n33, 116n34-n35, 118–20, 119n40, 120n41, 120n43, 122–5, 122n51, 125n59, 131n1, 133n3-n4, 134n5, 138, 138n11-n12, 139n14, 140, 140n15-n16, 146, 146n9, 149, 154, 154n34 Caragounis, Chrys C. 34n26, 35n32, 39n47, 41n56, 42, 42n59-n61, 43n64-n65 Carroll, Susanne 47n6 Carson, D. A. 16, 46n3, 112n17 Chantraine, Pierre 33n26, 34n28, 37n39, 38, 38n45, 42n58-n59, 117n37 Cirafesi, Wally V. 5n1, 118n37 Clackson, James 18, 20, 20n57, 35n31, 42n58, 54, 70n33, 77n59, 100n21, 101n21, 117n36, 121n48, 136 Cohen, D. 116n36 Collinge, N. E. 116n36, 121n48 Comrie, Bernard 13, 13n24, 28n11, 41n53, 41n55, 50n11, 58, 58n27, 67n21, 68, 68n25, 70n33, 72n40,

170 75n53, 76n56, 100n21, 101n21, 111, 111n15, 121n48, 139, 151n25, 153n32 Cook, John A. 32n22, 63, 63n7, 67n22, 149n18 Crellin, Robert 3–4, 4n13, 28n10, 28n12, 32n22, 34n26, 35n32, 36n36, 37n42, 40n51, 42n58, 44n67, 63, 65n12, 68n27-n28, 95n7, 120n43 Croft, William 101n22, 115n28, 152, 152n30 Curtius, Georg 13–4, 14n26-n27, 16, 16n36, 22, 26, 52, 52n13 Dahl, Östen 33n23, 114n25, 153n31 Davidson, A. B. 12n20 Debrunner, A. 33n26, 35n31, 62, 62n5, 106n4, 145 Decker, Rodney J. 2n6, 92, 112n17, 118n37 Demosthenes 42 Dunn, James D. G. 61, 61n1 El-Hassan, Shahir 18–9, 19n54-n56, 116n36 Emig, Elodie Ballantine 1n1 Euripides 98 Evans, T. V. 10, 10n15, 11n17, 17, 17n45, 26, 64n11, 92 Fanning, Buist M. 1–2, 2n4, 4, 6–7, 6n2, 6n4-n5, 7n6-n8, 11, 17, 17n45, 28n12, 30, 32n22, 33n26, 36n34-n36, 39n46, 39n48, 45–6, 46n3, 48, 69n29, 71n37-n38, 73n48, 76n57, 79–104, 91n1, 99n20, 100n21, 101n21, 102n23-n24, 103n25, 107n9, 108n10, 110–5, 110n12, 111n15, 112n17-n18, 113n22, 114n24, 114n26-n27, 115n31, 119–20, 122, 124, 129–30, 135, 137, 146n8-n9, 151n27, 152n29, 155n36 Fawcett, Robin 150n22, 152n29 Fernandez, P. L. 118n37 Foley, T. S. 118n37 Fortson, Benjamin W. 35n31 Friedrich. Paul 58n27, 67n21, 71, 71n35, 117n37 Funk, Robert W. 62, 106n4, 145

Index

of

Names

Gerö, Eva-Carin 32n22, 39n47, 40n50, 41n53-n54, 41n56, 42n58, 63, 95n7 Gesenius, W. 12n20 Gildersleeve, Basil Lanneau 156n42 Goodwin, W. W. 58n27, 62 Gotteri, N. J. C. 47, 47n6-n7, 55, 121, 121n45 Graham, Daniel W. 29n15 Greenburg, Moshe 12n20 Gregory, Michael 47n6 Halliday M. A. K. 112n16, 114n24, 115n30, 132, 132n2, 150 Hartmann, Hans 17, 17n40 Hatina, Thomas R. 17, 17n42, 53n14 Haug, Dag 28n11, 29n15, 33n26, 36n36, 37n39-n40, 37n42, 38, 38n43, 39n47, 40n51, 41n54, 41n56, 42n58, 63–5, 63n8-n9, 64n10, 65n12, 66n15, 67n21, 69n30, 71n36, 74n51, 75n53, 76, 76n54, 76n56, 76n58, 92n2, 94–9, 94n5, 95n6-n7, 96n8-n12, 97n13-n16, 98n17-n19, 101, 103n26 Hermann, Eduard 71n37 Higginbotham, James 147n14 Holt, J. 58n27 Horn, Laurence R. 46n4 Horrocks, Geoffrey 2, 30n17, 42, 42n62, 42n59, 43n64 Kenny, Anthony 95, 147n11, 148n15, 152 Kimball, Sara E. 14, 14n31, 26n4 Klein, Wolfgang 3 Kuhn, Thomas 144n2 Kurylowicz, Jerzy 20, 20n59 Lambdin, Thomas O. 12n20 Lee, J. H. 118n37 Levinson, Stephen C. 46n4, 132 Lindstedt, Jouko 33n23, 36n37, 40n50, 42n57 Lloyd, Albert L. 20, 20n58, 71n34, 71n37, 73, 73n49, 103n25 Louw, J. P. 8n10, 58, 92, 118n37, 122n51, 124, 124n56-n58, 135, 137, 153n33

Index of Names Lyons, John 18, 21, 21n62-n65, 46n4, 58n27, 71–2, 72n40, 72n44, 102n23, 117n36 Mandilaras, Basil 14, 14n30, 17, 17n45, 42n60, 43n63-n64 Mansoor, Menahem 12n20 Martin, J. R. 47n5 Maslov, Jurij S. 35n31, 37n38, 40n49, 42n57 Mateos, Juan 76n55, 110n12 Mathewson, David 1n1, 5n1, 43n66, 92, 118n37 Matthiessen, C. M. I. M. 112n16, 114n24, 115n30, 132n2, 150 McGregor, W. B. 121n46 McKay, Kenneth L. 2, 8n10, 34n28, 37–38, 38n43, 38n45, 43n63, 54n17, 58, 69, 69n29-n30, 71, 88–9, 92–3, 94n4, 117n36, 117n37, 122n51, 135 Menander 42 Michaelis, Laura A. 18, 18n47-n50, 72, 72n41, 117n36 Mitchell, T. F. 18–9, 19n54-n56, 116n36 Moorhouse, C. 67n21 Moule, C. F. D. 145n3, 155, 155n38 Moulton, James Hope 145n3, 155, 155n38 Moulton, W. F. 106n3 Nedjalkov, Valdimir P 34n29, 36n36, 41n53 O’Donnell, M. B. 120n44 Olsen, Mari Broman 17, 17n45 Orriens, Sander 62–3, 62n4, 65n12 Osborne, Grant R. 23n66 Pagliuca, William 27, 27n7, 32n22, 33n23-n25, 34n28, 35n33, 36n37, 37n38, 40n50-n51, 41n53, 42n57 Pang, F. G. H. 49n10, 101n21, 112n17, 115, 115n29 Parsons, Terence 40n51, 97n16 Pastorelli, D. 122n51 Pennington, Jonathan 8 Perkins, Revere 27, 27n7, 32n22, 33n23-n25, 34n28, 35n33, 36n37, 37n38, 40n50-n51, 41n53, 42n57 Plato 42, 42n60, 64, 73, 87, 94–5, 98, 103 Polybius 42

171 Porter, Stanley E. 1–2, 2n4–2n5, 4–5, 8–10, 9n11, 9n13-n14, 16–23, 16n33-n35, 17n44, 18n46, 18n51, 21n61, 30, 43n66, 45n1, 46, 46n3, 47n6, 49n9, 53n14-n15, 54, 54n17-n18, 55n19, 61, 61n2, 70–3, 70n32-n33, 71n39, 72n42-n43, 72n45-n46, 73n47-n48, 73n50, 77, 80, 89, 92n2, 101n21, 105n1-n2, 107n5-n6, 107n9, 110–3, 110n11, 111n14, 112n16, 112n18, 113n19, 113n21, 115n32, 116n36, 117n36-n37, 118n37, 120n42, 120n44, 121n44, 122n49-n50, 123n52, 124n55, 125n59-n60, 129–41, 134n6-n7, 135n8, 139n13, 143–6, 144n1-n2, 145n3-n6, 146n7, 146n10, 147n11, 148–58, 149n19, 150n22-n24, 151n25, 152n28, 153n31, 153n33, 154n35, 155n37, 155n39-n40, 156n41, 157n43 Porzig, Walter 71n37 Rijksbaron, Albert 17, 17n41, 38, 38n43, 62–3, 65n12, 67n21, 69n30 Robar, Elizabeth 3n9 Robertson, A. T. 14, 14n28-n29, 17, 17n39 Rehkopf, F. 106n4 Ross, Allen P. 12n20 Ruipérez, Martín S. 15, 15n32, 17, 17n45, 123, 124n54, 141 Runge, Steven E. 32n22, 146n8-n9 Sasse, Hans-Jürgen 147, 147n12-n14, 148n15, 152n30 Sauge, André 17, 17n43, 114n24 Scaglione, A. 101n22 Schmidt, Daryl 46n3 Schwyzer, E. 33n26, 35n31, 62, 119n39 Seouw, C. L. 12n20 Sicking, C. M. J. 62–3, 62n3, 117n36 Sihler, A. L. 117n36 Silva, Moisés 46n3 Smith, Carlota S. 18, 28n11, 32n22, 40n52, 63, 63n7, 66–67, 66n16-n18, 67n19-n20, 71n36-n37, 76n56, 81, 82, 98n20, 99n20, 147n11, 149, 149n20, 152n29, 153n32 Smyth, Hebert Weir 17, 17n37 Socrates 73

172 Sophocles 42, 98 Stechow, Arnim von 32n22, 39n46, 40n50, 41n53-n54, 41n56, 42n58, 63, 95n7 Stork, P. 62–3, 62n3, 117n36 Stump, G. T. 121n47 Swart, Henriëtte de 148n16 Szemerényi, Oswald 13, 13n25, 20, 21n60, 26, 35n31 Taylor, Bernard A. 8, 8n9 Thrax, Dionysius 8 Thuycydides 42

Index

of

Names

Vendler, Z. 95, 114–5, 114n28, 117, 147n11, 148n15, 152 Verkuyl, Henk J. 18–9, 19n52-n53, 116n36 Wackernagel, Jacob 9, 33n26, 34n28, 38, 38n45, 57, 88 Ward, Gregory 46n4 Willi, Andreas 57n26 Winer, G. B. 106, 106n3, 143 Zerwick, Maximilian 39n46, 145n3

Index of Scripture

Judges 21:25

2

2 Samuel 2:23

86

Isaiah 6:10 8:6

125 87

Ezekiel 37:14

69, 84

Matthew 1:22 3:2 4:6 4:10 4:17 9:18 10:7 13:46 19:8 21:4 22:4 24:21 25:6 26:45–46 26.56

43 125 84 84 125 41n55 125 43 41 43 39 41 43 126 43

Mark 1:15 4:11

125 39

4:38 6:38 7:37 9:5 9:13 9:21 12:26 41n55, 14:42

86 84 38 84 39 41 76 126

Luke 1:1 41n55, 2:40 4:18 5:23 5:26 8:42 8:49 8:52–53 9:31 10:9 10:11 11:45 13:27 15:29 17:10 24:36

76 87 38 74 41n55 64, 85 64, 74, 85, 86 64 87 125 125 84 41n55 41n55, 69, 85 69, 75, 84 85

John 1:15 1:18 1:41 4:36 4:38

118, 120, 124, 125 41 39 76 69, 75

174

Index

6 6:25 6:69 7:22 8:52 9:37 11:26–27 11:34 11:44 12:18 12:29 12:40 12:49–50 13:4 13:12 15:24 16:1 16:11 16:33 17:6 19:28 19:36 20:25

76 43 74, 126, 156, 157 38 124, 156 39 156 39 126 38 41 125, 157 38 86 41 74, 77 39 125, 137 39 38 74 43 39

Acts 5 5:28 7:56 8:14 8:24 10:45 13:2 13:34 17:28 21:28 22:15 23:6

75 64, 75, 85, 86, 88 126 124, 157 41 74 38 38 41 38 38 137

Romans 3:23 5:1 5:2 7:1 13:12 16:6

41n55 77 74, 77 69 126 43

of

Scripture

1 Corinthians 1:23 157 7:15 39 7:17 39 9:1 38 9:8 69 11:25 41 15:4  42n60, 64, 73, 74, 85, 86, 103 2 Corinthians 2:13 125 12:9 38 Galatians 5:11

126, 157n43

Ephesians 1:23 5:18

87 87

Colossians 4”17

87

2 Timothy 3:15 4:6–7 4:7

41 25n1 75

Hebrews 1:13 2:18 4:3 4:4 7:6 7:11 7:13 8:13 10:9 10:11 10:14 13:5

41 69, 75, 76n55 41 41 126, 157 88 41 39 41 88 39 41

James 5:8

126

175

Index of Scripture 1 John 5:10

156

Revelation 5:3–4 5:7

43 43, 125

7:14 8:5 19:3

43 43 43, 43n66

Studies in Biblical Greek

D. A. Carson

General Editor

This series of monographs is designed to promote and publish the latest research into biblical Greek (Old and New Testaments). The series does not assume that biblical Greek is a distinct dialect within the larger world of koine, but focuses on these corpora because it recognizes the particular interest they generate. Research into the broader evidence of the period, including epigraphical and inscriptional materials, is welcome in the series, provided the results are cast in terms of their bearing on biblical Greek. Primarily, however, the series is devoted to fresh philological, syntactical, text-critical, and linguistic study of the Greek of the biblical books, with the subsidiary aim of displaying the contribution of such study to accurate exegesis. For additional information about this series or for the submission of manuscripts, please contact: [email protected] To order books, please contact our Customer Service Department at: [email protected] (within the U.S.) [email protected] (outside the U.S.) Or browse online at W W W . P E T E R L A N G . C O M