Apologies! Correcting a statistical mistake (footnote 45 of my FilNet article), plus some more thoughts on verbal aspect theory

Of all the peer-reviewed journals that focus on the New Testament, Filologia Neotestamentaria has pride of place for focusing on the technical details of the New Testament, namely Greek studies (grammar, lexicography, the verb tense debate,) and textual criticism. A few years ago I had the privilege of having a paper of mine published in this excellent journal; it wasn't until just a few days ago that I realized I had committed a rather glaring statistical error in a footnote--since it's obviously too late to correct it in print, I shall offer my mea culpa here in the blogosphere.

"The Use of the Aorist Imperative in the Pastoral Epistles," Filologia Neotestamentaria vol. 23 (2010), page 83, footnote 45, makes the very odd (and incorrect statement) as follows: "The reader should note that 1 Tim only has a total of 4 aorists, regardless of mood (Accordance search, command line [VERB aorist] <AND> [VERB 2aorist]) as opposed to 203 occurrences of the present tense (command line [VERB present]). If anything, one could almost argue that the present tense is functioning as the background tense rather than the foreground tense." The mistake is in saying "4 aorists."

Now anybody familiar with search syntax can spot my embarrassing mistake. Instead of <AND>, I should have used <OR>. In other words, I ended up looking for only those verses that contained both Aorist and 2nd Aorist!

So my apologies to the editors of FilNet and any readers of my article (all 5 of you! :). This was sloppy.

Fortunately, my main point still holds, and I was not guilty of such sloppiness in the main data on page 81 (since I looked at every single imperative, regardless of tense).

Furthermore, I do believe my point in the footnote is valid, because when I used the <OR> in the command line, I found that present tense, regardless of mood, occurs 370 times in the Pastoral Epistles, roughly twice as many times as the Aorist and 2nd Aorist combined (182), which raises my original question on whether or not the "Aorist" functions as background while the "Present" functions as foreground, since I would think that the "foreground" would lose its "foreground status" by virtue of outnumbering the so-called "background" tense (though one could argue that this is a matter of idiolect of the PE, not general Koine or general NT usage). I do agree that the Aorist is the "default" tense (and I argue as much in this article), but in my opinion that's a different matter from calling it the "background" tense in contrast to "foregrounded" and "frontgrounded" tenses.

My curiosity was piqued, however--the Pastoral Epistles are definitely an anomaly in their ratio of Present to Aorist verbs (2-1). Within the NT as a whole, all Aorists number 11651 (both 1st and 2nd),while present tenses of all moods number 11547--so almost a 1-1 ratio. Likewise, in Josephus, 34,621 Aorists versus 35363 Present tense verbs, almost 1-1 again. Surprisingly, in the LXX, these translators used the Aorist much more, for a ratio of 49,410 to 21,888, so over 2-1 in favor of Aorist verbs!

So what does that tell us? Not sure, actually! But at least it's food for though. I still maintain that the Aorist is the default tense, the tense you use when you're not trying to make a point (building off of Stagg's key article "The Abused Aorist"), so preachers beware! (I.e., the Aorist tense does not in of itself mean "once-for-all" action. It may, if context indicates so, but it does not have to).

The Verbal Aspect debate still continues to rage. Recently Steve Runge launched a challenge against Stanley Porter in one of the newest issues of Novum Testamentum. Various authors continue to put verbal aspect theory to the test in a variety of journals with a variety of results. At this point, what is probably the main factor holding me back from going over to Dr. Porter's side on VAT is an excellent article by Jody A. Barnard, "Is Verbal Aspect a Prominence Indicator? An Evaluation of Stanley Porter's Proposal with Special Reference to the Gospel of Luke," in Filologia Neotestamentaria vol. 19 (2006), available here. For articles that can introduce you to the whole debate, click here and here. The one by Naselli is more readable, but Picirilli offers a better critique and dialogue with the literature out there.

One final note: an error that actually was not my fault! On page 73, footnote 2 of my article, it states, "Except for the statistics in the first parafraph . . ." Now "parafraph" sounds like something you'd order at Starbucks ("I'd like one hot caramel parafraph please!"), but this one was not my fault, and I have the article proofs to prove it! Still, misspelling a word is much less significant than giving the reader faulty statistics, so once again, mea culpa.

My Apologies to L. E. Modesitt (the dangers of equating a character's viewpoints with those of the author)

In a previous post, I interacted with L. E. Modesitt, Jr.'s book entitled The Ethos Effect (Tor: 2004). In my post, I unfairly treated the viewpoints of the protagonist as those of Mr. Modesitt himself. This was both careless, unfair, and wrong of me, as Mr. Modesitt recently pointed out to me. I apologize to Mr. Modesitt and any readers of the original blog. Misrepresentation of an author is the 2nd greatest sin of writing (the first, obviously, being plagerism) The original post has been modified to clarify that it is the viewpoints of the characters, not necessarily those of Mr. Modesitt himself, that are being critiqued. The following is the statement from Mr. Modesitt (e-mail correspondance dated Friday, May 6th, 2011). This is posted with his permission (e-mail correspondance, May 7th, 2011), and he has graciously accepted my apology.

[beginning of correspondance]

"Dear Mr. Himes:

I have to say that I was somewhat surprised and greatly disappointed about your blog which discussed the philosophical points raised by my book -- The Ethos Effect. 

You certainly have the right, and in view of your beliefs, the duty to dispute ethical points at variance with your viewpoint.  And I have no problem with your dispute of the "beliefs" expressed in The Ethos Effect [although there are many parts of your argument I would dispute]. What you do not have the ethical right to do, however, is to assume that, out of the nearly sixty books I have published, the views expressed through characters in a single book represent or encapsulate my beliefs or views, especially since characters in other books express viewpoints which are in contradiction to those expressed in The Ethos Effect.  While I would not go quite so far as other authors who have noted that readers who assume that the beliefs of an author's characters are those of the writer are idiots, I do believe your blog goes far beyond the acceptable in claiming the beliefs expressed in the book represent my viewpoint on religion and ethics.. 

You will find different ethical viewpoints expressed many of my other novels, particularly in the current series, The Imager Portfolio, but also in Adiamante, Gravity Dreams, Empress of Eternity, Haze, and The Octagonal Raven, among others.

As a side note, I would also point out that no religion can exist without a component of humanism, since all religion on this planet exists, at least theoretically, to provide a better way of life for its believers, who are indeed human, and all doctrines, codes, revelations, from or about the divine are filtered through human perception and interpretation."

L. E. Modesitt, Jr.

[end of correspondance]

He is, of course, absolutely correct to rebuke me, and I will endeavor to be more careful in future interactions with books of fiction. For the record, Mr. Modesitt is an excellent and surprisingly deep writer (last Christmas I gave the first two books of his Corean chronicles to my best friend, a fantasy aficionado). 

Regarding the last paragraph of his statement, I can concede the point to a certain extent, though I certainly can't speak for all religions. My definition of "humanism" and "humanistic," however, refers to the viewpoint that sees the good of humanity as the telos, the primary and end goal, of existence. (see, for example, The Humanist Manifesto II, online at http://www.americanhumanist.org/Who_We_Are/About_Humanism/Humanist_Manifesto_II  [accessed 5/7/2011]; note especially the fourth paragraph in the essay proper, after the preface; the interested reader should also note that Isaac Asimov was one of the signers of the document; despite this, I still consider Asimov to be a great sci-fi writer, in his non-fiction as well as fiction)

To a certain degree Christianity and other religions do try to look out for the welfare of their adherents. Yet Christ showed compassion on all men, not just his followers (e.g. Luke 17:11-19), and Christians who fail to show compassion to those outside the faith in addition to those inside the faith have absolutely failed as Christians (e.g. Galatians 6:10, 1 Thessalonians 3:12).

Also, the point of Christianity is that we exist to the glory of God (the "supreme being," if you will), as 1 Corinthians 10:31 notes, and that anybody who joins a church or claims conversion simply on the basis of what it can do for them has missed the big picture. One does not follow Christ simply to escape judgement or for a "pie-in-the-sky" future, but rather because of Who and What he is. Furthermore, as an ideology, Christianity does not benefit from becoming closely tied to the state. One of the worst things that happened to Christianity, in my opinion, was Emperor Constantine and the eventual nationalization of Christianity. Furthermore, any Christians who attempt to force their views on others, either through the state or at the personal level, are not acting like Christians.

Mr. Modesitt is absolutely correct in the last line of his e-mail concerning "human perception and interpretation," and Christians should indeed recognize that we may be (indeed, often are) fallible in our interpretations. I would suggest, however, that this does not necessarily invalidate the concept of divine revelation itself. My own views are those of an inerrantist in regards to Scripture (in the original languages, of course), though I recognize a diversity of views regarding revelation in Christianity.

I thank Mr. Modesitt for his interaction, apologize for misrepresenting him, and look forward to reading more of his work in the future.