Greatness of Greek (NT)

From the time I really began to get NT Greek down (not in the first two years), I have realized the vast benefits of knowing how to read and understand the language, especially when I do a Bible study.

For example, the Home Fellowship group I am a part of is going through Mark. Tonight we will be covering Mk. vi.6b-13. In verse 7 we have "And He called together the twelve and began to send them out two by two; and He gave (εδιδου, edidou) them authority over the unclean spirits." By a plain reading of the English, you may be led to believe that Jesus performed a one time granting of authority to the disciples. We may be tempted to assume the simple past tense of the verb "give" here, forgetting that what we have is a translation from an ancient language that handled their grammar a little differently than we who primarily deal with the English language.

εδιδου is in the imperfect tense. Without going into too much detail, the imperfect tense is talking about an action that occurred in the past, however moreso in an ongoing way. While the aorist tense gives you a snapshot of the past (e.g. this happened, he went or "He began to send them out"), the imperfect gives you an event or activity that was going on. The duration of an action in the imperfect tense is typically longer than one in the aorist tense. The action is on going.

In the case of Christ giving or granting the disciples the authority over the unclean spirits, he did not merely give them this authority, in whatever form it was, and send them away two by two. Mark is communicating that Christ was giving them this authority to do the very same things He had been doing: casting out demons, healing the sick, doing these sorts of miracles (Mk. vi.13). This was an on going action on the part of Christ in giving the twelve the authority to do the work.

Without the Greek, would readers of the English Bible be left to interpret this text to mean Christ gave the disciples authority like a grab-bag of goodies, and sent them on their merry way to fight evil demons wherever they lay? Christ was working with and on His disciples. These twelve still did not understand who Christ was. They struggled to grasp who it was that could heal so many, from so many ailments, could raise a dead child, calm the storming sea, and have so much authority over the leaders of the Jewish population. Who were they to be sent out to preach the message of John the Baptist and their own Master: "Repent?" Who were they to go and cast out demons and heal the sick? Christ needed to be with them and empower them to do His work.