The last two Sunday mornings at church I’ve seen some lengthy strings of genitives. Last week was 1 Timothy 6:14, and this week was James 2:1. I remembered seeing some even longer ones in the past, so I thought I’d do a quick search and see what I would come up with.

This was pretty easy to do with the OpenText.org Syntactically Analyzed Greek New Testament. I simply called for a genitive word and asked for it to be repeated x number of times. I refined the number to give me hits I was looking for. (Download the query if you want, and put it in your My Documents\Libronix DLS\SyntaxQueries folder.)

The award for longest string of genitives goes without contest to Luke, who in Luke 3:23–38 strings together a massive 153 genitives.

23 Καὶ αὐτὸς ἦν Ἰησοῦς ἀρχόμενος ὡσεὶ ἐτῶν τριάκοντα, ὢν υἱός, ὡς ἐνομίζετο, Ἰωσὴφ τοῦ Ἠλὶ 24 τοῦ Μαθθὰτ τοῦ Λευὶ τοῦ Μελχὶ τοῦ Ἰανναὶ τοῦ Ἰωσὴφ 25 τοῦ Ματταθίου τοῦ Ἀμὼς τοῦ Ναοὺμ τοῦ Ἑσλὶ τοῦ Ναγγαὶ 26 τοῦ Μάαθ τοῦ Ματταθίου τοῦ Σεμεῒν τοῦ Ἰωσὴχ τοῦ Ἰωδὰ 27 τοῦ Ἰωανὰν τοῦ Ῥησὰ τοῦ Ζοροβαβὲλ τοῦ Σαλαθιὴλ τοῦ Νηρὶ 28 τοῦ Μελχὶ τοῦ Ἀδδὶ τοῦ Κωσὰμ τοῦ Ἐλμαδὰμ τοῦ Ἢρ 29 τοῦ Ἰησοῦ τοῦ Ἐλιέζερ τοῦ Ἰωρὶμ τοῦ Μαθθὰτ τοῦ Λευὶ 30 τοῦ Συμεὼν τοῦ Ἰούδα τοῦ Ἰωσὴφ τοῦ Ἰωνὰμ τοῦ Ἐλιακὶμ 31 τοῦ Μελεὰ τοῦ Μεννὰ τοῦ Ματταθὰ τοῦ Ναθὰμ τοῦ Δαυὶδ 32 τοῦ Ἰεσσαὶ τοῦ Ἰωβὴδ τοῦ Βόος τοῦ Σαλὰ τοῦ Ναασσὼν 33 τοῦ Ἀμιναδὰβ τοῦ Ἀδμὶν τοῦ Ἀρνὶ τοῦ Ἑσρὼμ τοῦ Φάρες τοῦ Ἰούδα 34 τοῦ Ἰακὼβ τοῦ Ἰσαὰκ τοῦ Ἀβραὰμ τοῦ Θάρα τοῦ Ναχὼρ 35 τοῦ Σεροὺχ τοῦ Ῥαγαὺ τοῦ Φάλεκ τοῦ Ἔβερ τοῦ Σαλὰ 36 τοῦ Καϊνὰμ τοῦ Ἀρφαξὰδ τοῦ Σὴμ τοῦ Νῶε τοῦ Λάμεχ 37 τοῦ Μαθουσαλὰ τοῦ Ἑνὼχ τοῦ Ἰάρετ τοῦ Μαλελεὴλ τοῦ Καϊνὰμ 38 τοῦ Ἐνὼς τοῦ Σὴθ τοῦ Ἀδὰμ τοῦ θεοῦ.

Second place goes to John for his two 10-word genitive strings:

Revelation 8:13

Καὶ εἶδον, καὶ ἤκουσα ἑνὸς ἀετοῦ πετομένου ἐν μεσουρανήματι λέγοντος φωνῇ μεγάλῃ· οὐαὶ οὐαὶ οὐαὶ τοὺς κατοικοῦντας ἐπὶ τῆς γῆς ἐκ τῶν λοιπῶν φωνῶν τῆς σάλπιγγος τῶν τριῶν ἀγγέλων τῶν μελλόντων σαλπίζειν.

Revelation 19:15

καὶ ἐκ τοῦ στόματος αὐτοῦ ἐκπορεύεται ῥομφαία ὀξεῖα, ἵνα ἐν αὐτῇ πατάξῃ τὰ ἔθνη, καὶ αὐτὸς ποιμανεῖ αὐτοὺς ἐν ῥάβδῳ σιδηρᾷ, καὶ αὐτὸς πατεῖ τὴν ληνὸν τοῦ οἴνου τοῦ θυμοῦ τῆς ὀργῆς τοῦ θεοῦ τοῦ παντοκράτορος

Third place is a three-way tie between Luke, Paul, and John with these nine-word genitive strings.

Luke 3:1 (a total of 26 genitives in the verse)

Ἐν ἔτει δὲ πεντεκαιδεκάτῳ τῆς ἡγεμονίας Τιβερίου Καίσαρος, ἡγεμονεύοντος Ποντίου Πιλάτου τῆς Ἰουδαίας, καὶ τετρααρχοῦντος τῆς Γαλιλαίας Ἡρῴδου, Φιλίππου δὲ τοῦ ἀδελφοῦ αὐτοῦ τετρααρχοῦντος τῆς Ἰτουραίας καὶ Τραχωνίτιδος χώρας, καὶ Λυσανίου τῆς Ἀβιληνῆς τετρααρχοῦντος,

1 Thessalonians 1:3 (a total of 22 genitives in the verse)

μνημονεύοντες ὑμῶν τοῦ ἔργου τῆς πίστεως καὶ τοῦ κόπου τῆς ἀγάπης καὶ τῆς ὑπομονῆς τῆς ἐλπίδος τοῦ κυρίου ἡμῶν Ἰησοῦ Χριστοῦ ἔμπροσθεν τοῦ θεοῦ καὶ πατρὸς ἡμῶν,

Revelation 14:10

καὶ αὐτὸς πίεται ἐκ τοῦ οἴνου τοῦ θυμοῦ τοῦ θεοῦ τοῦ κεκερασμένου ἀκράτου ἐν τῷ ποτηρίῳ τῆς ὀργῆς αὐτοῦ καὶ βασανισθήσεται ἐν πυρὶ καὶ θείῳ ἐνώπιον ἀγγέλων ἁγίων καὶ ἐνώπιον τοῦ ἀρνίου.

There are seven eight-word genitive strings: Acts 12:12, 1 Cor 1:9; Col 2:12; 2 Tim 1:10; Rev 3:12; 9:13; 16:14; and another 22 seven-word genitive strings: Mat 1:1; Acts 4:30; 12:11; 15:26; Rom 1:4; 1 Cor 1:10; 2:6; Eph 2:2; Phil 3:8; 1 Thess 5:9–10; 2 Thes 2:1; 1 Tim 6:14; Heb 11:9; Jas 2:1; 2 Pet 3:2; Jude 17; Rev 12:17; 14:8; 16:19; 18:3; 21:9; 22:19.

That’s as far as I’m going to go, since the numbers are starting to increase rapidly. :)

It’s noteworthy that Revelation wins for the highest number of large genitive strings with 12. Oddly enough, though, John’s Gospel and letters don’t have a single genitive string with seven or more consecutive genitives. (If we take the number down to six, two turn up: John 5:25 and 2 John 3.)

Some of these strings pose some real challenges to unpack, but that’s beyond the scope of this post.

Surely someone has already analyzed patterns in long genitive strings like these. Anyone know of any significant work on the subject?

About two months ago, I happened to catch a Zondervan blog post that mentioned that they were giving away 20 review copies of Constantine Campbell’s Basics of Verbal Aspect in Biblical Greek. I enjoy studying Greek, needed to learn more about the verbal aspect theory, and like free books, so I sent off my email and managed to snag a copy.

I got a friendly email yesterday reminding me that I still needed to write my review and mentioning the week-long series of blog posts on verbal aspect from the book’s author next week at the Zondervan Koinonia blog. It appears that I’m not alone as I’ve seen several other reviews coming out today.

Though I had 11 semesters of Greek classes in college and seminary and taught elementary and intermediate Greek for six semesters, my exposure to the verbal aspect theory has been rather limited. In fact, I don’t recall its ever being mentioned in any of my Greek courses with the one exception of the 15- or 20-minute overview in Advanced Greek Grammar. But by that time, I had already done some reading on my own, first prompted by a question from one of my first-year Greek students (he had a friend from another school whose teacher was a proponent of the verbal aspect theory) and then by my preparing to teach tense uses to my fourth semester students. But the extent of my reading was the section in Wallace’s Grammar, “An Assessment of Time in Verb Tenses,” and a smattering of articles and papers that I found online. I have since read and would recommend an article written by my friend Andy Naselli, “A Brief Introduction to Verbal Aspect Theory in New Testament Greek.”

All this to say that I was excited to have an opportunity to dig a little bit deeper.

Contents

Verbal Aspect Theory

1. What is Verbal Aspect?
2. The History of Verbal Aspect
3. Perfective Aspect
4. Imperfective Aspect
5. The Problem of the Perfect

Verbal Aspect and New Testament Text

6. Verbal Lexeme Basics
7. Present and Imperfect Tense-forms
8. Aorist and Future Tense-forms
9. Perfect and Pluperfect Tense-Forms
10. More Participles

Summary

BVABG brings a technical and controversial subject down to a level that most Greek students can understand and benefit from. It’s a fairly easy read, even for those with little to no exposure to the details of the verbal aspect debate.

What follows is a brief summary of Campbell’s positions on some of the main issues.

Aspect and Aktionsart are distinct and must not be confused.

1. Aspect is the author’s subjective viewpoint or way of portraying action. A tense-form is always either perfective or imperfective. That never changes.
2. Aktionsart refers to the various kinds of action that a verb can perform based on the semantics, the lexeme, and the context. A tense-form can have many different Aktionsarten as those influencing factors change.

There are only two aspects—perfective and imperfective—not three (stative is not an aspect but an Aktionsart) or four as some have suggested.

1. Perfective aspect views the action externally, as a whole, in summary. It’s like a reporter watching a parade from a helicopter.
2. Imperfective aspect views an action internally, as it unfolds. It’s like a reporter watching a parade from the street.

Aspect corresponds to semantics, which is contrasted with pragmatics. Pragmatics corresponds to Aktionsart.

1. Semantics (or more properly verbal or grammatical semantics) refers to the “values that are encoded in the verbal form” (22). They are always present and uncancelable. Semantics answers the question “Who am I?”
2. “Pragmatics refers to the semantic values in context and in combination with other factors” (23). As such, they are changing. Pragmatics answers the question “What do I do?”

This semantics–pragmatics dichotomy is what leads Campbell and others to exclude time from the tense-forms, for if the time element is changeable or cancelable (and it is), then it must be part of pragmatics and thus a part of the verbs Aktionsart, not a part of semantics, what the tense-form always communicates. And to say that time belongs to pragmatics is to say that the tense-forms don’t encode temporal reference.

As Campbell puts it,

The remaining question related to the distinction, however, is this: Is temporal reference semantic or pragmatic? If temporal reference is semantic, then Greek verbs truly are tenses. A verb’s temporal reference is uncancelable and is a core part of its meaning. An aorist is a past tense and must always be a past tense.

But here, of course, lies a problem. We learn early on that aorist are not always past referring. Therefore, we are led to ask: Is past temporal reference a semantic value of the aorist? . . . Even though the aorist often ends up expressing past temporal reference when used in Greek texts, this is a pragmatic implicature rather than semantic encoding. (24)

The most important players in the history of verbal aspect are Georg Curtius, K. L. McKay, Stanley Porter, Buist Fanning, Mari Broman Olsen, Rodney J. Decker, T. V. Evans, and—the author himself—Constantine R. Campbell.

The present points of disagreement among scholars are

1. whether time is intrinsic to the tense-forms in the indicative mood,
2. how many aspects there are, and
3. which tense-forms belongs to which aspects—a point that Campbell leaves off.

Perfective Tense-Forms

Campbell argues that both the aorist and future tense-forms are perfective. Many have maintained that the future is aspectually vague or non-aspectual, but Campbell disagrees. In addition to being perfective, the aorist is remote, which can take the form of spatial, temporal, or logical remoteness. The future is also perfective, but, unlike all the other tense-forms, it is a true tense in that it always conveys future time, and by extension remoteness. I’m not sure why Campbell feels the need to make an exception with the future in terms of time. It seems that this is a similar move to Olsen’s when she maintains that some lexemes convey temporal reference in their semantics, but others do not. The bigger problem is the overlap between the aorist and the future. Since (1) both are perfective, (2) both are remote, and (3) both can be future, what’s the difference between them when they are both future referring. Why choose one over the other? Campbell’s attempt to differentiate between them in this case is less than satisfying.

Imperfective Tense-Forms

Since there are only two aspects in Campbell’s system, he puts the remaining tense-forums in the category of imperfective.

1. Present is imperfective and proximate.
2. Imperfect is imperfective and remote.
3. Perfect is imperfective and more proximate.
4. Pluperfect is imperfective and more remote.

Campbell defends his view based on the similar roles that the present and perfect on the one hand and the imperfect and pluperfect on the other hand play in narrative.

The rest of the book goes on to discuss the Aktionsarten of each of the tense-forms. Chapters 7–10 include examples as well as exercises, with an answer key in the back. Oddly enough, Campbell’s system results in something not too different from the tense uses that you find in Wallace’s Grammar. Though I do think that Campbell’s system does provide a more linguistically informed and organized approach to the Greek verbal system, I’m not yet convinced that it really changes as much as proponents seem to suggest.

Evaluation

As one who has not delved into the technical literature on this subject, I find Campbell’s book informative, accessible, and fairly well reasoned. It doesn’t answer all of the questions, but it certainly provides one with a nice introduction to the major players and contours of the issues involved in the verbal aspect debate. I highly recommend it to those wanting to learn more about verbal aspect.

Finally, one grammatical error that was missed: “Thus, the semantic values of the future indicative tense-form is [are] perfective aspect and future temporal reference” (39).

Endorsements

Other Reviews

Mike Aubrey at his ἐν ἐφέσῳ: Thoughts and Meditations blog:

• The Basics of Verbal Aspect
• The Basics of Verbal Aspect – A Review Part I
• The Basics of Verbal Aspect – A Review Part II

Michael Hanel at the BibleWorks Blog:

• Review of Campbell’s Basics of Verbal Aspect in Biblical Greek – Introduction
• Review of Campbell’s Basics of Verbal Aspect in Biblical Greek – Part Two
• More on Campbell and Verbal Aspect

Donald Kim at his blog:

• Basics of Verbal Aspect in Biblical Greek, A Review

Matthew Malcolm at his Crypto-theology blog:

• Verbal Aspect in Biblical Greek

Andy Naselli at his blog:

• Con Campbell’s Primer on Verbal Aspect Theory

William Varner at Amazon:

• A Good Start, But…

I just found out that a friend of mine, Brian Collins, has been blogging for a couple of weeks at Exegesis and Theology. Brian is a voracious reader and careful thinker. I’m sure his blog will be worth keeping tabs on.

HT: Andy Naselli

Dan Phillips, who blogs at Biblical Christianity and Pyromaniacs, emailed me about a month ago and asked me about making Henry Alford’s The Greek Testament: With a Critically Revised Text; a Digest of Various Readings; Marginal References to Verbal and Idiomatic Usage; Prolegomena; and a Critical and Exegetical Commentary available for Libronix. In that email he told me that “John Piper names it as the one he always consults.” Recently I asked him if he knew the source for Piper’s statement. He didn’t, but said he’d do some hunting. He asked his blog readers for help, and it was Pilgrim Mommy to the rescue.

I think it might be . . . during the Q&A at the end of Piper’s talk on John Owen.

I just listened to the end of Piper’s biographical lecture on Owen, and here’s what he says in the Q&A in response to a question about commentaries that he finds helpful:

When I’m stumped with a . . . grammatical or syntactical or logical flow [question] in Paul, I go to Henry Alford. Henry Alford . . . comes closer more consistently than any other human commentator to asking my kinds of questions. (John Piper, “John Owen: The Chief Design of My Life—Mortification and Universal Holiness,” 1:30:11–1:30:31.)¹

Mystery solved. Thanks, Pilgrim Mommy.

If you like Alford and would like to have it in the best digital format, you can pre-order it for only $129.95. It’s out of print, hard to obtain, and will cost you 2 to 3 times that much for the print volumes.

Also, his The New Testament for English Readers is available on Community Pricing and with enough bids could go for $16 or less.

Read Dan’s post at the Pyromaniacs blog for more on Alford.

Footnotes

1. I actually have three different versions of this audio, all of which are different lengths. The time above is from the latest version of the audio on the Desiring God website. ↩

I just installed the new Moulton-Howard-Turner Greek Grammar Collection from Logos.

It comes with the four volumes of A Grammar of New Testament Greek:

• Vol. 1: Prolegomena by James H. Moulton
• Vol. 2: Accidence and Word-Formation by James H. Moulton and Wilbert F. Howard
• Vol. 3: Syntax by Nigel Turner
• Vol. 4: Style by Nigel Turner

It also includes Turner’s volume Grammatical Insights into the New Testament.

I’ve been looking forward to this collection since it was first put on Pre-Pub in June of 2006. We used Turner’s volume on syntax in an advanced Greek grammar course in seminary, and I found his meticulous analysis to be incredibly helpful. I’m eager to dig into the other volumes as well.

The first thing I did after installing this collection was to run a search in the Reference Browser for 1 Cor 15:28.

The first hit was this relevant quote from Moulton:

An ingressive future may probably be seen in ὑποταγήσεται, 1 Co 15:28: the τότε seems to show that the Parousia is thought of as initiating a new kind of subordination of the Son to the Father, and not the perpetuation of that which had been conspicuous in the whole of the mediatorial æon. The exposition of this mystery must be taken up by the theologians.¹

None of us is able to interpret the Scripture with sheer objectivity, but Moulton’s best attempt at reading this text grammatically rather than theological leads him to see an ingressive future, which denotes a subordination of the Son to the Father that differs from the Son’s present subordination to the Father (i.e., during the mediatorial age—from the incarnation until “God has put all things in subjection under His feet”).

See my previous post: John Frame on 1 Corinthians 15:28 and Eternal Subordination.

Footnotes

1. James Hope Moulton, A Grammar of New Testament Greek, Volume 1: Prolegomena, (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 2006), 149. ↩

John Piper is one of my favorite living theologians. His writings and preaching have had a profound impact on my thinking, and he is regularly a means of great encouragement and motivation. I rarely find myself disagreeing with him.

I recently picked up the 24-volume John Piper Collection from Logos and have been enjoying working through Life As a Vapor. It’s composed of 31 chapters making it an ideal book to read for a month’s worth of devotional reading.

The second chapter is entitled “Suffering, Mercy, and Heavenly Regret,” in which Piper poses the question, “Is there regret in heaven?” He continues, “Can regret be part of the ever-increasing, unspeakable joy of the age to come, purchased by Jesus Christ (Romans 8:32)? My answer is yes” (19).

Piper reasons that since we will spend eternity praising Christ for ransoming us (e.g., Rev 5:9), we’ll certainly remember our sinful condition from which we’ve been ransomed. And those memories will yield feelings of regret.

It is inconceivable to me that we will remember our sin for what it really was, and the suffering of Christ for what it really was, and not feel regretful joy. . . . It does mean that regret will not ruin heaven. There will be kinds of joys, and complexities of happiness, and combinations of emotions in heaven of which we have never dreamed. (20)

Piper feels some tension leading him to speak in terms of “regretful joy.” He addresses Revelation 21:4, but concludes that he doesn’t think that it “rules out tears of joy” or “regretful joy.”

I’m having trouble being convinced. Regret is defined as “a feeling of sorrow, repentance, or disappointment” (Concise OED), “a sense of repentance, guilt, or sorrow, as over some wrong done or an unfulfilled ambition” or “a sense of loss or grief” (Collins English Dictionary), and “sorrow aroused by circumstances beyond one’s control or power to repair” or “an expression of distressing emotion (as sorrow or disappointment)” (Merriam-Webster’s).

Revelation 21:4 speaks of the permanent removal of mourning (πένθος), crying (κραυγὴ), and pain (πόνος). BDAG defines πένθος as “sorrow as experience or expression, grief, sadness, mourning” (795), κραυγὴ as “outcry in grief or anxiety, wailing, crying” (565), and πόνος as “experience of great trouble, pain, distress, affliction” (852). It’s clear from a passage like Isaiah 65:14 that πόνος can refer to emotional pain (πόνον τῆς καρδίας) as well.

I struggle to see how the elimination of these leaves room for genuine regret (i.e., sorrow, disappointment, grief, guilt, distress). But since Piper never defines regret or “joyful regret,” it’s hard for me to know exactly what he has in mind. I’m really having a difficult time getting my mind around the concept of “joyful regret.” And if our praise of Christ for His work of ransoming us will be unceasing, and that praise requires that we remember our sin, then it would seem that our regret would be as constant as our praise.

Is it even right for believers to feel regret when recalling past sin? If it is right, should we do it intentionally? In other words, should we try to conjure up feelings of regret? Should we do so frequently? Or does genuine confession and faith in the work of Christ—and confidence in the sovereignty of God—put regret away permanently and give place to unceasing joy so that whenever our minds recall past sin we turn immediately to the cross? Is regret something to strive for or against? Or is it more like a necessary evil of sorts?

What are your thoughts? Will regret be part of the ongoing experience of the redeemed when God makes all things new?