present and aorist subjunctive spelled the same??

Greek Learning Greek
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[12] Γενομένης δὲ ἡμέρας ποιήσαντες συστροφὴν οἱ Ἰουδαῖοι ἀνεθεμάτισαν ἑαυτοὺς λέγοντες μήτε φαγεῖν μήτε πεῖν ἕως οὗ ἀποκτείνωσιν τὸν Παῦλον.

ἀποκτείνωσιν: this spelling seems to be both present & aorist subjunctive. Have I got this right? Do I get the aorist versus present aspect from context?

I must have studied this matter, but I have forgotten the proper words for an index lookup. I mean the problem of the present and aorist subjunctives having the same spelling.

Please help me get myself sorted out on this.

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ἀποκτείνωσιν: this spelling seems to be both present & aorist subjunctive. Have I got this right? Do I get the aorist versus present aspect from context?

Yes that’s right confusingly the endings are the same here.

I think that ἕως οὗ indicates that “ἀποκτείνωσιν” is aorist subjunctive, ie that they kill Paul at some undetermined point in the future.

I dont read the bible so others more expert may have better explanations but in attic yes context would reveal the aspect/tense.

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Many thanks Seneca. It seems to me that the aspect must be aorist, just as you say, so the reading isn’t a problem here.

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Yes, I think this makes the best sense. Interestingly enough, my parsing software wants to make it a present, but that goes to show knowledge of the language beats software in such contexts.

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I wrote

ἀποκτείνωσιν: this spelling seems to be both present & aorist subjunctive. Have I got this right?

Barry wrote:

Interestingly enough, my parsing software wants to make it a present, but that goes to show knowledge of the language beats software in such contexts.

FWIW, the Perseus Word Study Tool shows subjunctive, both present and aorist.
https://tinyurl.com/yfvjbqtv

A “500 Ancient Greek Verbs, Fully Conjugated” book would help this autodidact, but I haven’t found one. I found such books very helpful in my self-directed study of literary French and of Latin. They make possible speedy re-study of verb forms.

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The Wikitionary is actually pretty okay for things such as this:

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/ἀποκτείνω

Indeed; in all places in the NT mine also parses as present as opposed to aorist:
Matt 26:4; Mark 14:1; John 11:53, 12:10; Acts 23:12 (here), 27:42; Rev 9:5, 15

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Accordance tags them all with both aorist and present.

Thx
D

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Present would be outlining their plan not to sleep until they are in the midst of killing him. (EDIT: Eat and drink. I should have scrolled back up to the original verse before commenting)

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αποκτεινωσιν will be aorist here (and no doubt everywhere else).
Though it has no sigma this aorist is “really” an ordinary sigmatic aorist like e.g. επαυσα or ελυσα; cf. e.g. διαφθειρω with aorist διεφθειρα. In such verbs (with nasal or liquid stems) the aorist stem ends up identical in form to the present stem, with nothing except its contextually determined aspect to identify it as one or the other.

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Others have answered the aor vs pres question fully. Another quick note on this clause: the ἄν that would be expected in Attic prose is missing. This is common in Post-Classical Greek. Especially after ἕως οὗ, similarly non-Attic (unlike μέχρι οὗ/ἄχρι οὗ). Lots of interesting changes to temporal clauses in PCG—a good research topic.

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Thanks for that helpful summary, mwh.