WHoSe TRUTH? A ReADeR-oRIeNTeD STUDy 407 lowing arguments to substantiate this. 18,38a is the only non-personal question of Pilate. All other questions of Pilate are in the second person singular (18,33.35.37; 19,9.10) or rhetorical (18,35; 19,15). Further- more, 18,38a is more a “leserlenkungssignal”, because it is the only time that avlh,qeia appears in a question, the last time that it appears in John, and the only time that it is not spoken by Jesus 38. Grammatically, kowalski refers to the aorist participle eivpw,n in 18,38 to point out that the duration of the speech consists in no more than “der momentane Augenblick” 39. With the use of this participle in combination with the finite verb in the aorist indicative evxh/lqen, John represents Pilate’s ques- tion of truth as if it were uttered at the moment of his exit from the praetorium. As such, it is not necessarily the case that we need to con- clude that Pilate first asked Jesus his question about truth, and after- wards left the praetorium. According to kowalski, we can consider three additional possible addressees of 18,38a: Pilate himself as in a monologue, the Jews, or the public, as in a classical drama 40. Hence, it is not so obvious that the addressee of 18,38a is Jesus. yet, we need to note that the interpretation whereby eivpw,n in 18,38 refers to an action prior to the action denoted by evxh/lqen is not ex- cluded. As G. Curtius states: “[...] the participle of the aorist is fre- quently applied to actions previous to a point in past time”. Nevertheless, Curtius continues by stating that “the participle [...] has nothing whatever to do with the denotation of past time, and since time previous to a point in past time is not the less a kind of past time, we do not here understand at once how the participle became used in this sense” 41. yet, Curtius found the explanation for this enigma: But the enigma is solved when we examine the nature of the aorist and participle. The latter, an adjective in origin, fixes one action in relation to another. The action which is denoted by the finite verb is the prin- cipal one. When the secondary action continues side by side with the principal action, it must stand [parataktikw/j] in the participle of the present; if, again, referred to the future, the proper sign of the future is needed; and similarly, the perfect participle serves to express an action regarded as complete in reference to the principal action. If, however, it is intended to denote the secondary action without any reference to continuousness and completion and futurity, but merely as a point or 38 koWAlSkI, “«Was ist Wahrheit?»”, 226-227. 39 koWAlSkI, “«Was ist Wahrheit?»”, 221. 40 koWAlSkI, “«Was ist Wahrheit?»”, 226. 41 G. CURTIUS, Elucidations of the Student’s Greek Grammar (london 1875) 216-217.