66 Wally V. Cirafesi occurred as a more marked form in a similar linguistic context16. In the case of the Matthean and Markan temple cleansing episodes in Codex Bezae, tense-form reduction occurs in Jesus’ pronouncement of judgment on those buying and selling in the temple through the codex’s use of ἐποιήσατε17: whereas the original tense-forms used in these texts were likely the more marked imperfective ποιεῖτε (Matt) and the most marked stative πεποιήκατε (Mark)18, a reduction of the level of aspectual semantics has occurred through the use of the least marked perfective ἐποιήσατε. This aspectual reduction suggests two things about the discourse structure and textual emphasis of the Bezan scribe at Matt 21,13//Mark 11,17. First, the Aorist ἐποιήσατε in Bezae places Jesus’ pronouncement of judgment into the background against which the first portion of his statement is intended to be read. That is, the least marked Aorist ἐποιήσατε portrays the actions of those in the temple as less linguistically prominent than Jesus’ quotation from Scripture19. Second, the use of the highly marked Perfect γέγραπται to introduce Jesus’ quotation from Scripture represents a “maximal foregrounding” of the entire quotation, and portrays the most textually significant element of the discourse20. Thus, the textual emphasis of Bezae at this point in 16 On this and for discussion about tense reduction in relation to the so-called “historic Present” in Greek, see S.E. Porter, Verbal Aspect in the Greek of the New Testament, with Reference to Tense and Mood (SBG 1; New York 1989) 190-192. 17 On the markedness values of Greek tense-forms and criteria for establishing such, see Porter, Verbal Aspect, 178-181 and more recently, Cirafesi, Verbal Aspect in Synoptic Parallels, 59-68. On the linguistic notion of “grounding”, see H.A. Dry, “Foregrounding: An Assessment”, in S.J.J Hwang and W.R. Merrifield (eds.), Language in Context: Essays for Robert E. Longacre (Dallas 1992) 435-450; P.J. Hopper, “Aspect and Foregrounding in Discourse”, in T. Givón (ed.), Discourse and Syntax (New York 1979) 213-241; P.J. Hopper, “Aspect between Discourse and Grammar: An Introductory Essay for this Volume”, in P.J. Hopper (ed.), Tense-Aspect: Between Semantics and Pragmatics (Amsterdam 1982) 1-18; R. Longacre, “Discourse Peak as a Zone of Turbulence”, in J.R. Wirth (ed.), Beyond the Sentence: Discourse and Sentential Form (Ann Arbor, MI 1985) 81-98; S. Wallace, “Figure and Ground: The Interrelationships of Linguistic Categories”, in Tense-Aspect: Between Semantics and Pragmatics, 201-223; S.E. Porter, Idioms of the Greek New Testament (BLG 2; 2nd ed; Sheffield 1994) 23. 18 I follow Porter’s three-aspect model for the Greek verbal system. For extended interaction with other proposals, particularly Constantine Campbell’s proposal of a two-aspect model, see S.E. Porter, “Greek Linguistics and Lexicography”, in Andreas J. Köstenberger and Robert W. Yarbrough (eds.), Understanding the Times: New Testament Studies in the 21st Century: Essays in Honor of D.A. Carson on the Occasion of his 65th Birthday (Wheaton, IL 2011) 46-54. 19 I note here that these linguistic observations are valid whether or not the Bezan scribe knew of the variants for Matthew (ποιεῖτε) and Mark (πεποιήκατε) and thus consciously down-shifted the tense-form to the Aorist. 20 The phrase “maximal foregrounding” is from Brita Wårvik, “What Is Foregrounded in Narratives? Hypotheses for the Cognitive Basis of Foregrounding”, in Tuija Virtanen