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15.99 Significance of the Perfect Tense

Make sure you read through Croy section 99, but do not worry about this a great deal. Croy's focus is on explaining the difference between the English perfect tense and the Greek perfect tense. It is definitely true that you cannot mechanically translate the Greek perfect with an English perfect - but that is something you would have been able to guess, since there is no situation in which a Greek verb can be mechanically translated into an English verb.

The Greek verb system and the English verb system are built on quite different principles and the verbs are never directly equivalent. The English perfect tense and the Greek perfect tense are similar, but not identical - and the best way to understand the Greek perfect tense is by reading lots of Greek and observing how the perfect tense is used.


Biblical Greek Online. Laura Gibbs, Ph.D. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons License. You must give the original author credit. You may not use this work for commercial purposes. If you alter, transform, or build upon this work, you may distribute the resulting work only under a license identical to this one. Page last updated: April 9, 2005 8:06 PM


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