Looking At Greek "Tense" From An Internal Perspective (Emic Approach)

1) The ancient Greek writers were no more hyper-grammatical than we moderns are today when uttering our own native languages. For instance, most English speakers do not stop and think about nit-picky distinctions between inceptive, customary or iterative present-tense verbs. We simply speak according to the conventions of our respective speech community and normally get our message across just fine. Similarly, ancient Greek speakers did not usually stop and ask whether the verbs they read or heard were durative presents, conative presents, or ingressive aorists (an emic perspective). We "outsiders" use these categories to make sense of what we are reading (an etic perspective). The same principle applies to Latin where one encounters ablatives of specification or datives of possession. I do not think most ancient Romans had to stop and think about what kind of ablative or dative a certain construction was. But the Greeks obviously did use tenses and aspects to communicate with other Greek speakers as the Romans employed various cases in their writing and speech.

2) I think we need to differentiate between the Bible writers' grammar and the way we perceive their use of grammar. While I believe a knowledge of aspect morphology or Aktionsart can benefit the modern-day Bible student or exegete, I do not suppose the Bible writers always employed certain verb "tenses" or aspects to make theological points. Maybe the Bible writers did not use verbal tenses to formulate theological nuances at all: that is a larger question in this debate.