I spent a good bit of time before the holidays reworking the chapter on the historical present in my forthcoming discourse grammar. I do not expect what I have written to be the final word on the matter. However, after reading some recent treatments on the issue, including an article in the most recent volume of JETS, it seems like there is a bit of a log jam in terms of progress on this issue. Historically I have avoided verbal aspect like the plague because it is something of a rat’s nest. I liken talking about verbal aspect to talking to someone about how they parent or spend their money. All three issues typically carry a deep emotional investment, and there is often little openness to discussion of change. The only thing more personal would probably be the ritual devotion to Mac, but I know better than to go there.

As I was reworking the chapter, I realized that any substantive advancement on the issue is going to take a substantive investment, based on how much has been written on the issue. The investment will need to be more focused in the actual exegesis of passages than in the literature, though a lit review will be a necessary component. I have concluded that it is worth the investment to take on the historical present this year, culminating in papers at the conferences next year, assuming the proposals are accepted.

So far, treatments of the historical present (HP) have tended to study its usage under the rubric of verbal aspect to answer the question of whether there is tense or not. Less attention is given to its role within the discourse. I have claimed that it is used as a forward-pointing device for highlighting an important event or speech that follows. However, based on the disparity of usage between, say John and Mark versus Matthew or Luke, the description would need to be tailored to fit the usage within a single book, though the overarching principle should hold true.

Rather than making a claim about what the HP does and then providing a series of proof-texts, my approach will be to consider its function within the larger system of the language. E.g., if Mark uses the HP as a highlighting device, attracting attention to significant events or speeches, one could look at the synoptic parallels to see how they treated the allegely significant event. I have shown elsewhere that synoptic differences provide evidence of stylistic variation. Mark is not Luke, nor is Matthew. They each have a style, and a register of preferred discourse devices.  Thus, they can use different devices within their stylistic register to accomplish the same discourse function. There are several other forward-pointing devices that I have described that accomplish much the same task as the HP (cf. part 1 of the glossary).

So, Runge’s folly for 2009 will be to blog through the HPs in the gospel of Mark that occur in synoptic pericopes, noting how the others treat the same events and speeches. If the HP does what I claim, there should be corroboration in many instances. This project should address the issue of advancing the discussion of the HP, as well as fulfill my desire to consider the discourse implications of synoptic differences.

In beginning with Mark’s usage I am not necessarily arguing for a Markan priority, though this seems to be the majority view. On the contrary, I am looking at how the three gospels treat the same story, how they each choose to represent it based on each writer’s objective. In this way, the issue of priority is largely moot. Priority has to do with compositional history, which is not my interest. My interest is to understand the usage of the language, to describe what is signaled by the use of an HP. I cannot claim to know what was in Mark’s head when he used an HP. But I can use the synoptic parallels to see how the other writers represented the same/similar content.