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
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.