74 Paul Himes for the imperative mood in the PE, the present imperative and the aorist imperative3, and it is puzzling why Paul would prefer one over the other (especially in light of the fact that his use of the present imperative greatly outnumbers that of the aorist imperative)4. In light of its use in the Pastoral Epistles (PE), this paper will conclude that it is safest to view the aorist imperative as the default, generic imperative and prohibition and that, in contrast to the present imperative and prohibition, no significance should be drawn from the tense in of itself, either for aktionsart or verbal aspect. In other words, the aorist imperative is significant only in its insignificance. In contrast, the present does seem to possess a durative or habitual force. The propensity of the present imperative in the PE, then, can be attributed to an emphasis on a habitual, consistent lifestyle. The first section of this paper will survey the views of modern scholarship on the role of the imperative. The second section of this paper will examine the imperative in the PE, specifically looking at each occurrence of the aorist imperative and the prohibitory aorist subjunctive. Finally, the third section of this paper will attempt to synthesize the data into a coherent view of the aorist imperative and prohibitory aorist subjunctive while establishing some guidelines for interpretation. 2. Modern Linguistics and the Greek Imperative Our understanding of Biblical Greek has undergone many significant changes in the past century, especially regarding the verb. In particular, verbal aspect theory has attempted to overturn many of the previously assumed ideas of the Greek verb tenses. Yet scholars still have not come to a consensus and have even failed to agree on a consistent definition for “aspect” (as will be noted below). What follows is an overview of the various views of the imperative mood in the New Testament. For the sake of brevity, this paper will focus on the imperative mood while assuming a basic knowledge of the various views of the Greek verb in general5. 3 The perfect imperative is very rare and found only in four places in the New Testa- ment: Mark 4,39; Acts 15,29; Eph 5,5; and Jas 1,19. 4 As J. Thorley, “Aktionsart in New Testament Greek: Infinitive and Imperative”, NovT 31 (October 1989) 307, points out, “The pattern of Paul’s imperatival usage is hugely diffe- rent from that of all other NT writers. First of all, he uses far more present than aorists—over three times as many, if one excludes the 16 cases of ἀσπάσασθε in chapter 16 of Romans.” 5 For more thorough discussion of the Greek verb in all moods, from various perspec- tives, the reader should especially note the following sources: C. C. Caragounis, The Devel- opment of Greek and the New Testament (Grand Rapids, Mich. 2006) 151-181 and 320-336; B. M. Fanning, Verbal Aspect in New Testament Greek (Oxford Theological Monographs;