Lesson 4.8 · Verbs
The perfect
A past action whose result still stands.
Two endings left, and they are a pair. A final
-ē — the long bar vowel — says the
action happened and the result is still standing. English
usually says "has":
akouanē | we have heard — and we still know it |
agapatē | he has loved |
luamē | I have loosed |
tas angelias han akouanē apo autou
the message which we have heard from him
(1 John 1:5)
And one step further back
A final -elē does the same thing from
a point in the past: it had happened, and the result was
standing then. luamelē, "I had loosed". It is rare —
fewer than a hundred times in the whole New Testament — so
recognise it and move on.
ē means "has happened".In the Greek — a famous example
Greek's perfect is built by doubling the first sound of the stem (λύω → λέλυκα, τελέω → τετέλεσται) — another change at the front of the word.
Its meaning is worth the effort, though. The word Jesus speaks
from the cross, τετέλεσται (John 19:30), is a perfect: not "it
finished" but "it has been finished, and stands finished". In
Biblang that word is Telitē — and the
-ē is doing the same work.
Practice
All six tense endings, on agap- with "he":
- Which means "he loves"?
- Which means "he has loved"?
- Which means "he will love"?
Show the answers
agapatō—ō.agapatē—ē. (Compareagapate, "he was loving": the bar is the whole difference.)agapati—i.
Tense
Aspect and time fuse into a single tense marker — there is no separate past marker.
| Greek tense | marker | 1sg of lu- “loose” |
|---|---|---|
| present | ō | luamō |
| imperfect | e | luame |
| future | i | luami |
| aorist | a | luama |
| perfect | ē | luamē |
| pluperfect | elē | luamelē |