[maryz]

And as to "Athens and Jerusalem", I think that part of the "fulness" of time that led to the Incarnation's happening when it did was precisely that because of the Roman Empire, the Gentiles and learned Jews who converted were amply prepared to "make as much sense as possible" of the Gospel of Christ.

Exactly! At least that's how we learned it . . . ;-)

Of course, it's not entirely clear -- to me, anyway -- just how the ancient Hebrews perceived time as indicated by tense: there's the rather odd (again,to me anyway) "vav conversive" and the fact that Biblical Hebrew just doesn't have a present tense. (Modern Hebrew, probably influenced by the Western languages, uses what was originally a participial -- to borrow from Latin grammar, as English grammatical terminology does -- form as the present tense.)

I read an article years ago on the Hebrew verb that said in Biblical Hebrew, the important aspect of a verb was not whether it indicated past or future action but whether it indicated a completed or not-completed action. I guess it's the sort of thing you just have to read enough of it to let it soak in -- which I haven't yet, but I'm trying!

[Mad Dawg]

just how the ancient Hebrews perceived time as indicated by tense

There was a made for TV movie about some American Indians a bazillion years ago. it tried for some kind of "authenticity" which seemed to include translating Sioux into literal English. I remember thinking at the time that it was almost as weird in tense as Hebrew.

I don't know how to think a bout this, except possibly to conjecture that "we" are very comfortable with the idea of time as a line with our back to the past and our face to the future, and so forth. But how to wrap my head aqround a language that seems to say, "I went to the store and I will pickup some milk and I will check out the peanut butter and I will pay for it," all about something that happened yesterday ... well, yes. Tea I think.