[HarleyD]

Perhaps I didn't explain it correctly. I'm not a Greek scholar nor do I play one on TV. However below is an excerpt from what I was attempting to explain.

2. THE INTERPRETER'S RELATION TO GRAMMAR. Both the grammarian as such and the interpreter deal with grammar, but from very different points of view. The distinction between these points of view should be clearly recognized by the interpreter. It may be conveniently represented by the terms historical grammar and exegetical grammar. Historical grammar deals with the development of both form and function through the various periods of the history of the language, and does this in purely objective fashion. Exegetical grammar, on the other hand, takes the forms as it finds them, and defines the functions which at a given period each form discharged, and does this from the point of view of the interpreter, for the purpose of enabling him to reproduce the thought conveyed by the form. To investigate the process, by which the several forms were built up, to determine the earliest function of each such form, to show how out of this earliest function others were developed, and how forms of different origin, and presumably at first of different function, became associated, discharging the same function and eventually coming to bear the same name -- all this belongs to historical grammar. To reproduce in the mind of the interpreter, and to express as nearly as may be in his own tongue, the exact thought which a given form was in the period in question capable of expressing -- this is the task of exegetical grammar. Historical grammar views its problem wholly from the point of view of the language under investigation, without reference to the language of the grammarian. Exegetical grammar is necessarily concerned both with the language under investigation and with that in which the interpreter thinks and speaks, since its problem is to aid in reproducing in the latter tongue thought expressed in the former.

The results of historical grammar are of the greatest interest and value to exegetical grammar. Our interpretation of the phenomena of language in its later periods can hardly fail to be affected by a knowledge of the earlier history. Strictly speaking, however, it is with the results only of the processes of historical grammar that the interpreter is concerned. If the paradigm has been rightly constructed, so that forms of diverse origin perhaps, but completely assimilated in function, bear a common name, exegetical grammar is concerned only to know what are the functions which each group of forms bearing a common name is capable of discharging. Thus, the diversity of origin of the two Aorists, e;lusa and e;lipon, does not immediately concern the interpreter, if it is an assured result of historical grammar that these two forms are completely assimilated in function. Nor does it concern him that the ai at the end of the Infinitives, dei/xai and ive,nai, is the mark of the Dative case, and that the earliest use of such infinitives was as a verbal noun in the Dative case, except as this fact of historical grammar aids him in the interpretation of the phenomena of that period of the language with which he is dealing. The one question of exegetical grammar to which all other questions are subsidiary is, What function did this form, or group of forms, discharge at the period with which we are dealing? What, e.g., in the New Testament, are the functions of the Present Indicative? What are the uses of the Aorist Subjunctive?

For practical convenience forms are grouped together, and the significance of each of the distinctions made by inflection discussed by itself. The present work confines itself to the discussion of mood and tense, and discusses these as far as possible separately. Its question therefore is, What in the New Testament are the functions of each tense and of each mood? These various functions must be defined first of all from the point of view of the Greek language itself. Since, however, the interpreter whom in the present instance it is sought to serve thinks in English, and seeks to express in English the thought of the Greek, reference must be had also to the functions of the English forms as related to those of the Greek forms. Since, moreover, distinctions of function in the two languages do not always correspond, that is, since what in Greek is one function of a given form may be in English subdivided into several functions performed by several forms, it becomes necessary not only to enumerate and define the functions of a given form purely from the point of view of Greek, but to subdivide the one Greek function into those several functions which in English are recognized and marked by the employment of different forms. An enumeration of the uses of a given Greek tense made for the use of an English interpreter may therefore properly include certain titles which would not occur in a list made for one to whom Greek was the language of ordinary speech and thought. The Aorist for the English Perfect, and the Aorist for the English Pluperfect (46, 48) furnish a pertinent illustration. The interests of the English interpreter require that they be clearly recognized. Fidelity to Greek usage requires that they be recognized as, strictly speaking, true Historical Aorists.

MOODS AND TENSES OF NEW TESTAMENT GREEK by ERNEST DE WITT BURTON

[Kolokotronis]

Here's the problem you guys who don't speak Greek run into:

"An enumeration of the uses of a given Greek tense made for the use of an English interpreter may therefore properly include certain titles which would not occur in a list made for one to whom Greek was the language of ordinary speech and thought."

On a much more common level, this is the same problem anyone has when listening to or speaking a foreign language he doesn't speak with any regularity, even if he "knows" the language well. This shows up continually with something as simple as idiomatic speech. Where it can be even more confusing, however, is when someone attempts to listen and understand or speak and understand or write and understand or translate and understand and NOT at the same time be THINKING in the foreign language in question. If I pick up a French novel, or the Greek NT for that matter, and begin to read and in my mind translate the words on the page into English and then create a mental image of the English word or phrase, I end up with a stilted and probably incorrect reading. If, on the other hand, I read a given word or phrase and that very word or phrase calls up an image, without an intervening English step, I get the right image.