Calling all pastors and seminary teachers/students!! Help with Koine Greek Aorist?

Question

I am in Chaper 22 of Bill Mounce's Basics of Biblical Greek. We are learning about the 2nd Aorists. In English, an Aorist would be eat --> ate, because it totally changes form. That's a 2nd Aorist. If a first Aorist only adds -ed to the word to make the past tense form, an example would be study --> studied.
If 1st and Second Aorist were separated because of this difference in English formation, why did they have the two separate cases? English wasn't even around then, so how did they know that the forms in English were going to be different? Is there some other reason why there are two sets of endings that I am missing?

Answer 1

The verbs in English that add -ed, study > studied, are called weak verbs, and the verbs that change the vowel, run > ran, are called strong verbs. They HAVE NOTHING TO DO WITH Greek first and second aorist. The strong verbs are ONLY found in the Germanic languages and evolved independently within the Germanic languages.

The first aorist verbs in Greek are the regular verbs in Greek (like the weak verbs in English are the regular verbs). That means that most verbs follow that pattern (the -o [omega] conjugation). The first aorist is the e- augment in all voices and the -sa suffix after the stem in active and middle voice. The second aorist is the irregular pattern (as the English strong verbs are the irregular pattern), meaning that only specific verbs take the second aorist (the -mi conjugation). The second aorist is the e-augment in all voices and the -k suffix in active voice.

Once again, there is NO relationship between first and second aorist in Greek and weak and strong verbs in English. The sets of verbs in second aorist in Greek and strong verbs in English are different sets of verbs. The only "relationship" is that strong verbs and second aorist are both the irregular sets. Do not get stuck on a relationship between them because there is NONE.

EDIT: Sorry, but JJ (the above answer) is wrong. There is NO relationship between 2nd aorist and English strong verbs at any level of Indo-European etymology. The Germanic strong verbs do not derive from Proto-Indo-European ablaut. They are an independent development that happens to make use of ablaut, just as other Proto-Indo-European processes made use of ablaut. The Greek 2nd aorist does NOT make use of ablaut. Greek, indeed, makes virtually NO use of ablaut as a conjugational process.

Answer 2

Both Greek and English derive from Proto Indo-European. In Greek, you use the terms 1st Aorist to refer to the pretirite of weak verbs and the 2nd Aorist for strong verbs. Many PIO languages display a similar characteristic, where the word undergoes ablaut, which is a vowel change in the different tenses. There are loads of examples of ablaut in any bilingual dictionary - if you look at the verb section on English, you will find swim-swam-swum, sing-sang-sung, ring-rang-rung, etc.

In English and German, we call these 'strong' verbs - you don't usually hear the word Aorist to describe English.

By the way, the strong verbs are usually the most common and have therefore retained their ablaut gradation through frequent usage, while less commonly used verbs have ended up in the 'weak' verb camp.

Hope this helps a bit.