Studies in Biblical Greek – serie

In recent decades it has been increasingly recognized that the forms of the verb in ancient Greek, including that of the New Testament, do not signal time (past, present, future), but aspect (the way each activity is viewed in relation to its context). Applying the new insights, this book offers a concise and clearly stated account of the way the verb works in the syntax of New Testament Greek. Its approach is pragmatic, with emphasis on context rather than theory. It can be read as a coherent account, and its four indexes also make it a handy reference book.

New Testament lexicons of today are comprehensive, up-to-date, and authoritative. Behind them lies a tradition dating back to the sixteenth century, whose characteristics are not well known. Besides giving a history of this tradition, A History of New Testament Lexicography demonstrates its less satisfactory features, notably its dependence on predecessors, the influence of translations, and its methodological shortcomings. John A. L. Lee not only criticizes the existing tradition, but stimulates thought on new goals that New Testament lexicography needs to set for itself in the twenty-first century. This book caters to the non-specialist as well as those interested in philological detail.

This book examines in detail the use of the pronominal adjective πας («all, each, every») in the Greek New Testament, focusing on how syntactical patterns and the semantic value of words or phrases it modifies are factors determining its sense and scope. These findings are applied to the interpretation of several debated passages in the New Testament.

Verbal aspect in Ancient Greek has been a topic of significant debate in recent scholarship. In this book, Constantine R. Campbell investigates the function of verbal aspect within New Testament Greek narrative. He argues that the primary role of verbal aspect in narrative is to delineate and shape the various ‘discourse strands’ of which it is constructed, such as mainline, offline, and direct discourse. Campbell accounts for this function in terms of the semantic value of each tense-form. Consequently, in the search for more effective conclusions and explanations, he challenges and reassesses some of the conclusions reached in previous scholarship. One such reassessment involves a boldly innovative approach to the perfect tense-form.

The end of the twentieth and the beginning of the twenty-first centuries have involved much discussion on overhauling and refining a scholarly understanding of the verbal system for first-century Greek. These discussions have included advances in verbal aspect theory and other linguistic approaches to describing the grammatical phenomena of ancient languages. This volume seeks to apply some of that learning to the narrow realm of how prohibitions were constructed in the first-century Greek of the New Testament. Part 1 «The Great Prohibition Debate» seeks to demonstrate that verbal aspect theory has a better explanation than traditional Aktionsart theory for authorial choices between the negated present imperative and the negated aorist subjunctive in expressing prohibitions in the Greek New Testament. Part 2 «All the Prohibitions in the Greek NT» continues to examine prohibitions, but is more of an exercise in functional linguistics. That is, rather than apply verbal aspect theory to the grammar of prohibition constructions, Part 2 seeks only to survey the (initially surprising) wide variety of ways prohibitions can be expressed in koine Greek: more than a dozen different constructions. To do this, the NT prohibitions are grouped in their varying grammatical-syntactical and/or pragmatic constructions, all of which function – in varying degrees – in a prohibitory fashion. This taxonomy may prove to be the beginnings of further investigations into how biblical Greek communicates commands.

The end of the twentieth and the beginning of the twenty-first centuries have involved much discussion on overhauling and refining a scholarly understanding of the verbal system for first-century Greek. These discussions have included advances in verbal aspect theory and other linguistic approaches to describing the grammatical phenomena of ancient languages. This volume seeks to apply some of that learning to the narrow realm of how prohibitions were constructed in the first-century Greek of the New Testament. Part 1 «The Great Prohibition Debate» seeks to demonstrate that verbal aspect theory has a better explanation than traditional Aktionsart theory for authorial choices between the negated present imperative and the negated aorist subjunctive in expressing prohibitions in the Greek New Testament. Part 2 «All the Prohibitions in the Greek NT» continues to examine prohibitions, but is more of an exercise in functional linguistics. That is, rather than apply verbal aspect theory to the grammar of prohibition constructions, Part 2 seeks only to survey the (initially surprising) wide variety of ways prohibitions can be expressed in koine Greek: more than a dozen different constructions. To do this, the NT prohibitions are grouped in their varying grammatical-syntactical and/or pragmatic constructions, all of which function – in varying degrees – in a prohibitory fashion. This taxonomy may prove to be the beginnings of further investigations into how biblical Greek communicates commands.

Many New Testament Greek grammarians assert that the Greek attributive participle and the Greek relative clause are "equivalent." Michael E. Hayes disproves those assertions in An Analysis of the Attributive Participle and the Relative Clause in the Greek New Testament, thoroughly presenting the linguistic categories of restrictivity and nonrestrictivity and analyzing the restrictive/nonrestrictive nature of every attributive participle and relative clause. By employing the Accessibility Hierarchy, he focuses the central and critical analysis to the subject relative clause and the attributive participle. His analysis leads to the conclusion that with respect to the restrictive/nonrestrictive distinction these two constructions could in no way be described as "equivalent." The attributive participle is primarily utilized to restrict its antecedent except under certain prescribed circumstances, and when both constructions are grammatically and stylistically feasible, the relative clause is predominantly utilized to relate nonrestrictively to its antecedent. As a result, Hayes issues a call to clarity and correction for grammarians, exegetes, modern editors, and translators of the Greek New Testament.

Usage of the adnominal genitive (one or more genitive substantives in relationship to a head noun) is one of most ambiguous aspects of the Greek language of the New Testament, and thus the source of contentious debate among exegetes. This study finds a way forward in the understanding of the genitive case by examining concatenations of single and multiple genitives, testing methods on the Pauline corpus as a representative sample of adnominal genitive usage in the whole New Testament. The results are offered with a set of rules that are vital in assisting the interpreter in clarifying these often difficult expressions. This book offers fresh insight especially where genitives appear in concatenation, and examines the syntactical configurations of genitive constructions with a view to untangling their semantics.

Aspectual Substitution: Verbal Change in New Testament Quotations of the Septuagint examines quotations where the New Testament author quotes the Septuagint but changes the tense-form of the verb, substituting one aspectual value for another, often in furtherance of a typological, prophetic, or theological connection. Taking into account various models of the verb in Koine Greek, including tenseless and aspect-prominent proposals, this study employs contrastive substitution to analyze the significance of aspectual substitution in quotations, concluding that the future tense-form encodes perfective aspect and is marked for future temporal reference.

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.

This book argues that the verbal aspect of the Greek Perfect is complex, involving not one but two aspects, where the perfective applies to events and the imperfective applies to states. These two aspects are connected to specific morphemes in the Perfect tense-form. This study analyses Perfect tense-forms in discursive text by focusing on the Pauline Corpus. The method is grounded in grammaticalisation studies and informed by morphology, comparative linguistics, and historical linguistics. The argument is further supported by a corpus-based study showing both the Greek Perfect tense-form use in letters over an 800-year period and adverb collocations of the Perfect tense-form. The adverb collocations establish when a Perfect is used for an event or for a state. This study challenges other verbal aspect studies that find only one verbal aspect to explain the Greek Perfect. This study situates the Pauline Perfect tense-form usage within a spectrum of other letter writers, and finds that within the Pauline Corpus the Perfects within supplemental clauses are more likely to use active lexemes than other letter writers. This study also finds that most of the Perfects used in letters are supplemental to the mainline and are often backgrounded rather than foregrounded.

Studies in the Greek New Testament: Theory and Practice is a collection of essays illustrating the relevance of Greek for understanding the New Testament. The essays, combining theory and practice, grow out of the author's abiding concern for the study of Greek utilizing the best insights of modern linguistics and biblical exegesis. The first part of the volume, devoted to theory, concentrates on fundamental linguistic questions. Although grammar is emphasized in these essays, including the topic of verbal aspect, lexicography is also discussed. The second part of the volume, devoted to practice, contains essays on crucial passages such as Matthew 16:19, Luke 18:35 and its parallels, Mark 15:2 and the language of Jesus, the speeches in Acts, Romans 5, Galatians 3:28-29, and 1 Timothy 2:15. In these chapters, the author defends provocative positions by utilizing close study of the Greek text.