73 The Use of the Aorist Imperative in the Pastoral Epistles PAUL HIMES In light of recent developments in the study of Koine Greek, this paper proposes to examine the difference between the aorist imperative and the present imperative in the Pastoral Epistles. The first section of the paper surveys the various scholarly positions on the imperative mood (including the prohibitory aorist subjunctive). The second portion of this paper exam- ines every use of the aorist imperative and the aorist prohibitory subjun- ctive in the Pastoral Epistles, while the third section draws some conclusions based on this analysis. This paper concludes that the aorist tense should be regarded as the default, generic tense (but not necessarily the “background tense” as verbal aspect theory argues), and that its only significance lies in its insignificance. In contrast, however, the present tense does seem to possess a durative/habitual sense. Keywords: imperative, present, aorist, prohibition, New Testament Greek, verbal aspect theory, Pastoral Epistles, 1 Timothy, 2 Timothy, Titus 1. Introduction The use of verb tenses in the Pastoral Epistles stands as somewhat of an anomaly when compared to the rest of the New Testament. Imperatives in the New Testament epistles (Rom through Jude) make up approximately 7.15% of all verbs. When the Pastorals are excluded, however, imperatives account for only 6.54% of the verbs, compared with 14.11% of the verbs of the PE1. In other words, the Pastorals double the relative rate of the use of imperatives when compared to other epistles. While this disjunction between the Pastorals and the rest of the NT may perhaps be explained by the more personal nature of the former, it is nevertheless a significant difference. Difficulties arise when one tries to determine the role of the different tenses of the imperatives2. The complete Pauline corpus uses two tenses 1 All statistics, searches, and charts, unless found in the citation of a secondary source, were created or conducted through use of Accordance 7.4. and 8.4 (Oak Tree Software, 2007 and 2009, respectively). 2 Except for the statistics in the first parafraph, this writer's, ″imperative⁇ use of will also include the prohibitory μὴ with the aorist subjunctive (see below for a discussion of the subjunctive prohibition). It is beyond the scope of this paper to discuss other forms of the verb (e.g. participles) that are used for commands or requests. Filología Neotestamentaria - Vol. XXIII - 2010, pp. 73-92 Facultad de Filosofía y Letras - Universidad de Córdoba (España)