Narrative Structure and Verbal Aspect Choice in Luke 11 sis in the following analysis is not that Luke deliberately and consciously imitates a Thucydidean point of style, but rather that he utilizes a more general feature of contrastive Greek verb semantics that is particularly pronounced in (but not limited to) historiographical narrative26. II. The Lukan Paradigm To conduct this analysis, I shall look at the use of the imperfect and aorist tenses of chapter four of Luke’s gospel, with reference to the full gospel and its companion book, Acts, when suitable. I shall also inves- tigate one particular phrase, ν τα ς μ ραις κε ναις, which elucidates the perspectival function of verbal aspect in the Lukan corpus. From an in-depth look at this one rich narrative section, I shall propose general principles for Lukan usage of the imperfective and perfective aspects in non-speech narrative, particularly as they relate to the higher level organization of the gospel and its pericopes. This discourse analysis, then, will proceed with the text of chapter four viewed in-depth in three sections. For the sake of space, I have not included the text of the entire fourth chapter; however, for the sections of text that are of particular interest, each is printed below27 with the non-speech imperfect verbs and imperfective participles and infinitives underlined, and the perfective verbs, participles, and infinitives (aorists) emboldened. Then following each section of Greek is my translation, with its equivalents of the Greek verb forms underlined and emboldened. It must be noted that I have not marked every imperfective and per- fective verb form in this way. Only aspectually significant verb forms have been marked. Those verb forms considered aspectually insignificant include verbs that have only one lexical tense stem, the most common of these being ο δα and ε μι. A second category of verbs that are aspectu- ally vague and thus insignificant for this study are verbs of which Luke chooses not to use all tense form possibilities, even though these forms lexically exist. γ νομαι is the most common example. Luke essentially only employs the aorist form of γ νομαι when referring to past-time narrative 26 To some readers, this analysis will seem like an exercise in over-interpretation or in treating the verb system in terms unduly complex. The history of exegesis, however, shows that, on the contrary, it has been a stubborn insistence on the durative/puncticular distinction between aspects that has too often led to over-interpretation of this grammati- cal feature. For a thorough discussion of this fallacy, see F. Stagg, “The Abused Aorist”, JBL 92 (1972) 222-31. 27 The UBSGNT 4th edition text, with deviations noted as they occur.