Monday with Mounce

I was reading in Romans this morning and came across a passage that uses ἄνθρωπος in a totally generic sense. I thought that all the translations would use some generic word or phrase. Well, all but one.

I would guess that most Greek students think of the aorist tense as a general, nondescript tense. In one sense, this might be somewhat accurate. The aorist is certainly the default tense. If you want to describe an action occurring normally in the past and you don't want to say anything else about it, the Greek writer defaults to the aorist. When the writer wants to make a specific point, the other tenses come into play.

However, the aorist can be more nuanced than that. While its basic meaning is to look at an event as a whole from the outside, it can also carry specific meanings that are indicated by context.

Someone asked me the other day about the angel’s address to Mary. In the King James it reads, “Hail, thou that art highly favoured, the Lord is with thee: blessed art thou among women.” The person said that the address “Hail” indicates that the angel viewed her as a high personage, probably a queen.

I am sure that all languages have abbreviated ways of expressing meaning, and for a native speaker interpretation is probably quite automatic. It is something else for someone who is not a native speaker.

Pete wrote me the other day about commas and how they can affect the meaning of a passage. Acts 20:28 does have a lot of phrases, and the commas are the translators’ way of trying to help convey the meaning of the verse. But what modifies what? And perhaps, more importantly, are your elders appointed by the Holy Spirit or by people?