Chapter 5. The Rationale For Greek Verb Forms

Abstract

This chapter focuses more on the Greek translation. It considers why the translator chose particular Greek verb forms due to the influence of the cultural, historical, and textual-linguistic contexts and how the resulting translation reads. The authors tabulate all of the Greek indicative forms and participles according to each text type (indicating which Hebrew forms they correspond to). This is followed by the analysis of each Greek form in detail according to the three text types, taking into account Aktionsart, and discourse pragmatic features in determining the choice of Greek verb form, especially the forms that are not common equivalents. Finally the chapter mentions variations in word order, in syntactic structure (i.e., paratactic vs. hypotactic), in text type, and in temporal iconicity between the Hebrew text and the Greek translation, and the omission of a verb form that is present in the Masoretic Hebrew text (minus).Keywords: Greek indicative forms; Greek translation; Greek verb forms; Hebrew forms; Hebrew text