Syntax of the Moods and Tenses in New Testament Greek

by Ernest De Witt Burton

Publisher:

T&T Clark

, 1898

Overview

Of Syntax of the Moods and Tenses in New Testament Greek, the author writes:

Classified according to its intent, it belongs among the aids to the interpretation of the New Testament. It is designed to assist English-speaking students in the task of translating the Greek New Testament into English forms of thought and expression. The work has not been undertaken under the impression that grammar is an end in itself, or that a knowledge of it is the sole qualification for successful interpretation, but in the conviction that grammar is one of the indispensable auxiliaries of interpretation. The book is written, therefore, in the interest not of historical but of exegetical grammar, not of philology as such, but of philology as an auxiliary of interpretation. If it has any value for historical grammar, this is incidental. Its main purpose is to contribute to the interpretation of the New Testament by the exposition of the functions of the verb in New Testament Greek, so far as those functions are expressed by the distinctions of mood and tense.

Contents

Top Highlights

“Rem. The term ‘Present for Future’ is sometimes objected to, but without good reason. The arguments of Buttmann, pp. 203 f., and Winer, WT. pp. 265 ff.; WM. pp. 331 ff., are valid only against the theory of an arbitrary interchange of tenses. It is indeed not to be supposed that Greek writers confused the Present and the Future tenses, or used them indiscriminately. But that the form which customarily denoted an act in progress at the time of speaking was sometimes, for the sake of vividness, used with reference to a fact still in the future, is recognized by all grammarians. See, e.g., J. 397; K. 382, 5; G.MT. 32. The whole force of the idiom is derived from the unusualness of the tense employed.” (Page 10)

Product Details

• Title: Syntax of the Moods and Tenses in New Testament Greek
• Author: Ernest De Witt Burton
• Publisher: T&T Clark
• Publication Date: 1898
• Pages: 198

About Ernest De Witt Burton

Ernest DeWitt Burton (1856–1925) graduated from Denison University in 1876, then from Rochester Theological Seminary in 1882. His studies also carried him to Germany at Leipzig and Berlin. Burton taught at the seminaries in Rochester and Newton before becoming head of the department of New Testament Literature and Interpretation at the University of Chicago—where he was president from 1923–1925.