The Use of the Aorist Imperative in the Pastoral Epistles 89 Yet some distinction must exist! It would be utterly pointless to conclude that the aorist does not differ at all from the present, especially in light of the odd feature of 2 Tim 4,1-5 (one present surrounded by a sea of aorists)64. However, certain misunderstandings must be guarded against. To begin with, one must emphatically reject any notion that the prohibitory aorist subjunctive forbids something not yet started while the present prohibition urges cessation. Indeed, both the evidence from the NT and the evidence from the LXX argue against this (though, granted, the latter is a mix of both good and bad Koine). In the New Testament, the reader is advised to examine the following passages containing the aorist prohibition (μὴ with the aorist subjunctive): Matt 1,20 (where Joseph was already fearful of taking Mary as his wife; that was the whole point of the dream!); Matt 3,9 (presumably the Pharisees were already boasting against Christ that Abraham was their father); Col 2,21 (no doubt one of the purposes of these inappropriate regulations was to halt activity already in progress); 2 Thess 2,3 (many of the Thessalonians had already been deceived; that is the reason the apostle is urging them not to believe a word or counterfeit letter that contradicts what he says); and 2 Thess 3,13 (which must certainly have been meant to apply to those who were already in the process of becoming discouraged as well as those who might in the future). Likewise, in the LXX, the following sampling of verses may be considered: Gen 44,18 (where Judah had every reason to believe that the mysterious ruler was already angry with them); Num 12,12 (where Aaron is not concerned about Miriam’s future condition; rather he is concerned about her present condition); and 1 Sam 1,16 (Hannah is not concerned about Eli’s future opinion of her but of his present opinion; the verse in the LXX could just as easily be translated “stop reckoning your servant as a woman of pestilence” [this writer’s own translation]). This is hardly an exhaustive list of evidence, of course, and every rule has exceptions; yet the fact remains that the traditional view of prohibitions has no claim to being normative in either the LXX or the Greek New Testament65. 64 We are perhaps forced to echo Baugh’s sentiments that “to think that ‘to a great extent’ [quoting G. C. Neal] the choice of tense form could be arbitrary would be, to say the least, bothersome if true... how do we know when the choice was arbitrary making the form itself semantically insignificant and when was it not?” (Baugh, “Introduction to Greek Tense Form Choice” 2; emphasis is Baugh’s). 65 See J. L. Boyer, “The Classification of Imperatives: A Statistical Study”, Grace Theo- logical Journal 8 (Spring 1987) esp. 42-43 for a more extensive discussion; note especially that Boyer classifies every single instance of the 174 occurrences of the present prohibitory imperative and points out that most of them are simply general prohibitions.