I’ll have to chew on this a bit more.

I think what’s missing is that I don’t anywhere argue that future temporal reference ‘always conveys remoteness’. Now, that might be true, and I’m open to the possibility, but it’s not something that I’ve argued, and quite deliberately. I think the problem, from my point of view, is that in Greek spatial metaphors can convey temporal meanings, but temporal meanings don’t convey spatial metaphors. But I’m happy to pushed on this.

Thanks for stopping by, and thanks for your work in this very fine book.

I appreciate your clarification, but I’m afraid I don’t see how you can avoid concluding that the future tense-form does indeed grammaticalize remoteness (though I can certainly see why you don’t want to say that :)). If the future tense-form grammaticalizes future time, and if future time always conveys remoteness, then the future tense-form always conveys remoteness. And if it always conveys remoteness, then the future tense-form grammaticalizes remoteness. The same logic you use in your comment above to conclude that the future tense-form grammaticalizes future time could be applied to show that the future tense-form grammaticalizes remoteness, right? I’m not sure what I’m missing.

Well, I don’t know how much sophistication you attribute to the writers of Scripture, so it’s hard for me to answer that question. ;)

I think I know what you’re getting at though. I don’t think Peter or Paul thought in these terms about their language. That doesn’t mean that our thinking in these terms can’t help us understand the NT writers’ use of the Greek language. Yes, we should avoid hard and fast rules that don’t make room for exceptions, but thinking in organized ways about language like this doesn’t have to equate to thinking that Peter and Paul where expert grammarians and linguists according to 21st-century standards.