Revelation 5:7

εἴληφεν. B2 adds τὴν; Text. Rec[199] τὸ βιβλίον with 1 and all Latin authorities.

[199] Rec. Textus Receptus as printed by Scrivener.

7. καὶ ἦλθεν καὶ εἴληφεν. The absence of an object for εἴληφεν is very strange: and the difficulties of this book are due rather as a rule to redundancies than to ellipses: the perfect after the aorist is very strange also; cf. however Ev. Petri ἐχάρησαν δὲ οἱ Ἰουδαῖοι καὶ δεδώκασι τῷ Ἰωσὴφ τὸ σῶμα αὐτοῦ. Winer’s reference p. 340 to the custom of scholiasts, who explain an aorist verb in the text by a verb in the perfect, is irrelevant; the aorist is far commoner than the perfect in the language of the New Testament, whatever it may be in the language of scholiasts, and probably scholiasts use the perfect in explaining the matter of a book for the same reason as ancient and modern commentators use the present in discussing a writer who lived long ago: we say, “he says, he means, he sees, &c.” Cf. note on πῶς εἴληφας καὶ ἤκουσας (Revelation 3:3).