Hey Scot -
We did a little on “aspect” in Greek – not much though. I might have to grab that book up and run through it. Perhaps the school library should invest in it. Either way, It is always good to run through those things. Thanks for the suggestion.

The Zondervan Academic blog “Koinonia” recently did a short series with Con Campbell about the book.

Hi Scott, as a Bible translator in Africa, I found thinking of aspect rather than tense incredibly valuable. The language we worked on did not have tenses in our way of thinking at all, but it lined up with Koine Greek very well in many cases. Thanks for flagging this book up (and for everything else you point me too). When do you have time to work?

Does Con Campbell pound some sense of time (tense) back into Greek verbs? Asked by one who learned Greek over 20 years ago.

thanks for pointing the book out, it looks helpful.
my greek teachers in seminary definitely pointed out aspect. we sort of crawled with tenses in first year with an awareness that aspect is out there . . . then in second year took the toddler steps towards aspect. i don’t know if this is typical, but all 3 of my hebrew teachers were very in tune with verbal aspect as opposed to tense. of course now i’m talking OT to a NT guy, although if you’re a sucker for biblical studies you tend to love both.

Con Campbell blogs over at http://www.readbetterpreachbetter.com
If you have the time, check it out. He’s got a lot of great material there and a few co-writers too.

“Basically, Greek tenses (as aspects) reveal the viewpoint of the author and not the time at which something happened.”
Anti-realism (http://www.philosophyprofessor.com/philosophies/anti-realism.ph) (http://www.fitelson.org/164/realism.html ) has already made its splash in the philosophy of science. Now it seems to be doing the same in Greek! It is only a matter of time until this postmodern infatuation with individuals penetrates all areas of knowledge. Whether this is good or not depends on your prior metaphysical commitments, that is, whether you are a realist or a nominalist. Isn’t it amazing how that old battle is still being fought on ever new fields?

I came across this a decade ago in a class – we used Stanley Porter, Idioms of the Greek NT. I thought he made a pretty interesting case, but I’ve never seen anyone take it anywhere and I haven’t heard it mentioned outside that class until now. How widespread is this?