Wednesday, December 25, 2019

Does Revelation 20:4 Contain an Inceptive Aorist?

Greek: Καὶ εἶδον θρόνους, καὶ ἐκάθισαν ἐπ' αὐτούς, καὶ κρίμα ἐδόθη αὐτοῖς, καὶ τὰς ψυχὰς τῶν πεπελεκισμένων διὰ τὴν μαρτυρίαν Ἰησοῦ καὶ διὰ τὸν λόγον τοῦ θεοῦ, καὶ οἵτινες οὐ προσεκύνησαν τὸ θηρίον οὐδὲ τὴν εἰκόνα αὐτοῦ καὶ οὐκ ἔλαβον τὸ χάραγμα ἐπὶ τὸ μέτωπον καὶ ἐπὶ τὴν χεῖρα αὐτῶν· καὶ ἔζησαν καὶ ἐβασίλευσαν μετὰ τοῦ χριστοῦ χίλια ἔτη.

I would humbly suggest that ἔζησαν in Revelation 20:4 is probably an occurrence of the inceptive aorist, but I would say that the "inceptive" is how the aorist is being used, not necessarily a grammatical feature of the aorist. See Wallace, GGBB, page 558ff.

It seems that the future was not used inceptively by ancient Greek writers/speakers. The aorist is imperfective aspect, but its Aktionsart will depend on lexical, grammatical and contextual features (i.e. its affected meaning). See http://www.ibiblio.org/bgreek/archives/97-05/msg00196.html

Another possibility is that Rev. 20:4 contains a constative aorist, which would depict activity in toto. See https://fosterheologicalreflections.blogspot.com/2018/08/the-greek-aorist-and-its-diverse-uses.html

No comments: