129 Aspect, Aktionsart, and Abduction: Future Tense in the New Testament FRANCIS G. H. PANG This study examines the treatment of the Future tense among the major contributions in the discussion of verbal aspect in the Greek of the New Tes- tament. It provides a brief comparative summary of the major works in the past fifty years, focusing on the distinction between aspect and Aktionsart on the one hand, and the kind of logical reasoning used by each proposal on the other. It shows that the neutrality of the method is best expressed in an abductive approach and points out the need of clarifying the nature and the role of Aktionsart in aspect studies. Keywords: Verbal Aspect, Aktionsart, Abductive Reasoning, Future Tense. 1. Introduction The world of scholarship concerning the Greek verbal system experienced a paradigm shift in the late 1980s. Since the publication of Porter’s Verbal Aspect in the Greek of the New Testament in 19891 and Fanning’s Verbal Aspect in New Testament Greek a year later2, there has been a change of direction in the discussion of the function of the Greek tense-forms from time and Aktionsart to aspect3. Since then, many have followed with their contributions of a new model of verbal system4 1 S.E. Porter, Verbal Aspect in the Greek of New Testament, with Reference to Tense and Mood (Studies in Biblical Greek 1; New York 1989). 2 B. Fanning, Verbal Aspect in New Testament Greek (Oxford 1990). 3 This is not to say that there is no work on the topic before Porter and Fanning. Juan Mateos and Kenneth L. McKay are considered by Porter and Pitts to be the forerunner in aspect theory on NT Greek. J. Mateos, El Aspecto Verbal en el Nyevi Testamento (Madrid 1977), K.L. McKay Greek Grammar for Students: A Concise Grammar of Classical Attic with Special Reference to Aspect in the Verb (Canberra 1981). See S.E. Porter and A.W. Pitts, “New Testament Greek Languages and Linguistics in Recent Research”, Currents in Biblical Research 6.2 (2008) 216-217. 4 For example, monograph length works in English include the works of M.B. Olsen, A Semantic and Pragmatic Model of Lexical and Grammatical Aspect (Outstanding Dissertations in Linguistics; New York 1997), R. Decker, Temporal Deixis of the Greek Verb in the Gospel of Mark in Light of Verbal Aspect (Studies in Biblical Greek 10; New York 2001), T.V. Evans, Verbal Syntax in the Greek Pentateuch: Natural Greek Usage and Filología Neotestamentaria - Vol. XXIII - 2010, pp. 129-159 Facultad de Filosofía y Letras - Universidad de Córdoba (España)