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The Logos Academic Blog

Why Verbal Aspect Improves Preaching, Part 3: Case Study

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By Donald C. McIntyre

See also Part 1 and Part 2.

A Case Study in Matthew 2:1–12

There are forty-seven verbal forms in this pericope; all but 10 verbal forms are perfective aspect. Of those ten forms that are not perfective, one is stative, two are future, and the remaining six are imperfect or present tense. Porters method combines the aspect found in the tense of the verbs with associated elements that are attached to the mood. Applying his theory will begin with the most basic argument of his theory, that imperfective aspect is “defined foreground” information, and then proceed to his views on the perfect tense, where he finds the aspect to be stative, and “well defined foreground information” for discourse purposes. The analysis will end with a discussion of Porter on mood before explaining the future tense, since Porter does not give the future tense an aspect but leaves it as a mood of expectation. It should be noted that since the aorist is “main line” to the discourse, the aorist tense verbs should be seen as the basic plot structure, which is slowed down by the foregrounding devices.

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Why Verbal Aspect Improves Preaching, Part 1: Apprehension

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by Donald C. McIntyre

Verbal Aspect is Critical to an Accurate Apprehension of the Text

Verbal aspect theory arose to prominence in 1989 and 1990 with the simultaneous work of Stanley Porter and Buist Fanning, who both sought to show how linguistics could further effect exegesis of the Greek New Testament (GNT).1 Upon the publication of the dissertations, a debate sprang forth between the two views, with Dr. Fanning’s views being more conservative to previous methods, and Dr. Porter’s being a hard break from previous grammatical theory. Thirty years later, their works are still cited in all relevant works on the subject.

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Greek Sentence Diagrams: From Bibleworks to Logos

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Randy Leedy is known as the “NT Greek Guy” (that’s actually the name of his website) whose work in Greek sentence diagramming was previously published in Bibleworks. Although Bibleworks sadly no longer exists as a company, Randy’s work has found a new home in Logos Bible Software (did you know Logos 9 is out now?).

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On Mastering Koine Greek: A Response to Bohlinger and Nguyen

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by Christoph Heilig*

Introduction

Two weeks ago, Tavis Bohlinger wrote a blogpost in which he encouraged students and scholars of the New Testament to focus on the “common dialect,” ἡ κοινὴ διάλεκτος of the Greek language—that is, the Greek spoken roughly between 300 BCE and 300 CE.  In the German-speaking sphere, from which I come, many students of theology still learn “Classical Greek” as it was used between 500 and 300 BCE (well, at least the Attic dialect of that time). [Read more…]

Dethroning Grammar for Mastering Greek: A Rejoinder

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by Vinh T. Nguyen

In his recent post Four Reasons to Master Koine (and to Leave Attic Alone), Tavis Bohlinger made a plea to specifically focus on Koine in order to master “this particular type of Greek as thoroughly as possible.” This post continues a collegial dialogue about studying Greek which includes an article from Shawn Wilhite on the importance of reading background texts of the New Testament. [Read more…]

Four Reasons to Master Koine (and to Leave Attic Alone)

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Learning to read Koine (or biblical) Greek is essential, if you are training for church ministry, an academically focused career in biblical studies, or simply as a means to reading the New Testament in its original language.

Even while I was in seminary, however, there was pressure to learn to read Attic, or Classical Greek. I was inspired to expand my narrow horizons beyond the NT, to begin reading Homer, Sophocles, and Plato. Indeed, even on this blog, we recently posted an article encouraging people to read widely throughout the corpus of Classical Greek literature. [Read more…]

The Influence of the LXX

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by Tavis Bohlinger*

Yesterday we celebrated International LXX Day by publishing an essay on The Origin of the LXX. Today we are pleased to present the second half of that essay, because, well, we just love the Septuagint here at Logos (this proves it).

Plus, this gives us the chance to extend the 30% discount on select LXX resources, so you can boost your Logos digital library (see list below; if you don’t yet have Logos Bible Software, check this out). Don’t forget that today is the last day of the sale. [Read more…]