18 Alexander C. Loney period as a whole, from the transfiguration, past the resurrection, up to the time when the disciples did tell others of their experience. Through this discussion on perspectival distance, effected via the semantics of verbal aspect choice and the mode-switching phrase ν τα ς μ ραις κε ναις, I have shown that the role of verbal aspect in Luke is centrally concerned with perspective. Having discussed these theoreti- cal matters inherent in the grammatical opposition of verbal aspect, the central question of this analysis looms: why does Luke choose to create variously internal and external perspectives? The answer to this question reaches back to Thucydides and is rooted in the fundamental stylistic nuance available in the Greek verb. Luke, like Thucydides, makes sty- listic use of the semantic opposition of the imperfective and perfective aspects in order to create enargeia through switching between internal and external perspectives. Additionally, in a somewhat different fashion from Thucydides, Luke uses these “vivid”, internally focused passages set alongside longer, factual, externally focused passages to give the larger narrative structure of his gospel an organizing principle. The basic structure of the whole gospel is a series of episodes outlined by transitional uses of perspective-switching changes of verbal aspect. Given the itinerant nature of the gospel narrative, verbs associated with these changes at the edges of the episodes are commonly verbs of motion, since a new pericope usually occurs in a different place. The usual formula for these transitional sections is an aorist verb (commonly of motion) to mark a finite, factual event on the narrative backbone accompanied by one or more imperfective verbs or participles, used, in part, to give back- ground information subsidiary to the motion, but, more importantly, to evoke an internal perspective by which the audience is drawn into the story. This sequence of verbal aspect regularly opens an episode and a similar, “vivid” imperfective section ends it50. This modulation of aspect change is analogous to a musical cadence moving to the dominant or the tonic to signify the end of an episode in a musical composition. Due to this similarity of function, I shall call this modulation of verbal aspect “cadential”. Acts 2,18; 7,41; 9,37) and three as ν κε ναις τα ς μ ραις (Luke 5,35; 9,36; 21,23). All follow the temporal pattern above, except for Acts 2,18, which is a quotation of Joel 2,29 from LXX. Stylistic preference between authors may account for this deviation. The reason for this rather neat distinction likely derives from the order ν κε ναις τα ς μ ραις being the more traditional, classical and, thus the less marked form. 50 Reed and Reese have likewise noted that, in Jude, a change in aspect from perfective to imperfective (in this case, the present tense) can indicate summary and rhetorical emphasis: “The change in tense indicates a change in rhetorical strategy. This summing up state- ment is brought into the present tense and given more emphasis in the discourse” (“Verbal Aspect”, 192). See also n. 15 on functionally similar formulaic passages in Thucydides.