Criteria for Interpreting Greek Imperfect Verbs When the Resources Don't Help

The Greek imperfect tense presents challenges for Bible translators and consultants because its imperfective aspect can lead to a range of interpretations in narrative contexts. In these verbs, imperfective aspect can simply indicate that the events are construed as ongoing, but they may also have ingressive, habitual, or iterative interpretations (Wallace 1996). Bible translations and translation resources frequently differ or present multiple interpretations, and often without sufficient guidance as to which meaning to select. This paper will provide a set of criteria whereby translators can make principled exegetical decisions by applying the concept of aspect coercion and the Duration Principle (Bary & Egg 2007; Bary & Egg 2012); considering the lexical aspect of the verb and other time elements in the clause; and by considering the scene setting discourse function of the imperfect tense (Allan 2019). These criteria provide translators and consultants with the tools necessary to make sound interpretive decisions even when available resources do not offer sufficient guidance.