Lesson 4 | Aorist Indicatives
[1] About Aorist Indicatives
In Lesson 2, we learned about imperfect indicatives. Imperfect indicatives communicate past time with imperfective aspect. In this lesson, we will learn about aorist indicatives. There are 5,884 aorist indicatives in the Greek NT. This makes aorist indicatives the most common verb form in the Greek NT. There is a lot to learn in this lesson, but you should remember that learning about aorist indicatives will significantly expand your ability to read the Greek NT.
Aorist indicatives communicate past time with perfective aspect. Based on this definition, you should be able to predict two of the four key features that make up aorist indicatives. Do you remember how Greek verbs mark for past time? Greek verbs mark past time through (1) the augment and (2) past verb pattern endings.
Also, remember that this is not your first interaction with perfective verbs. In Greek II, we learned about aorist (perfective) participles and infinitives. What do you remember about perfective aspect? When an author used perfective aspect, he was speaking about the action as a whole, from beginning to end.
How is this different from imperfective aspect? Let’s use two English sentences to help us see this difference:¹
She was running a marathon. She ran a marathon.
The first sentence is similar to the Greek imperfect indicative with its past time and imperfective aspect. In this sentence, the author focuses on only one part of the whole activity. We do not know whether the runner finished the marathon, but we do know that she was running it for a time. Notice that this allows the author to speak about the running as it was happening.
The verb in the second sentence is similar to the Greek aorist indicative with its past time and perfective aspect. The author speaks of the whole activity from beginning to end. We know that the runner ran the whole marathon. Notice that this allows the author to speak about the race as a whole, complete activity.
You should also remember from Greek II that there are two ways to form aorist verbs: the first aorist and second aorist.
The first aorist uses a different tense-former to mark perfective aspect: σαντ instead of οντ. (For example, ἀγαπήσαντος.) This difference of σα in the tense former appears in first aorist indicatives as well.
Second aorist forms use an aorist stem to mark perfective aspect. So, λαμβάνω forms as a second aorist participle by using an aorist stem. (For example, λαβόντες.)
We will see similar patterns as we learn about aorist indicatives. Remember, individual Greek verbs usually form as aorist verbs by following either the first aorist or the second aorist patterns, but not both. Thus, you would always expect to find ἀγαπάω forming as a first aorist and λαμβάνω forming as a second aorist. In the next grammar point, we will begin with second aorist indicatives because their forms have a lot in common with what you learned in Lesson 2.