# What is the tense of "Christ is risen"? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [April 8, 2012, 5:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-tense-of-christ-is-risen/618185 "2012-04-08T17:02:54Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 19\ **Page:** 4
**Author:** ![Chessic\_Sense](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/7c8e57/32.png) [@Chessic\_Sense](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chessic_Sense)\ **Post date:** [April 12, 2012, 2:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-tense-of-christ-is-risen/618185/61 "2012-04-12T14:00:21Z")
> [@Frylock](#): > > Could be a genuine dialectical (or ideolectical?) difference between you and I. “you and me.” I’m a Pittsburgher, so I do have a strange dialect, but I don’t think that’s it. I think I figured out what it is, though. “Killed” is both the simple past and past participle of “to kill.” So when I hear “is killed,” despite being the participle, my brain refuses to hear it that way. It hears the simple past tense and tells me it’s wrong. When you say “Caesar is slew by Brutus,” you hear what I’m hearing. If I say “Caesar is slain by Brutus,” I hear what you’re hearing. Ahhhh. Much better. > [@](#): > > Tomorrow, I am going to school, my wife is going to work, and my kids are going to Grandma’s house. > [@Frylock](#): > > “Today I’m on the red team and Johnny is on the green team. Tomorrow, Johnny is on the green team, and I’m on the red team. And we continue to alternate thereafter.” > > All in the present tense, but all talking about the future. What the hell? Who says “tomorrow, [subject] is…”? You’d either say “tomorrow my wife has to work,” or “tomorrow my wife will go to work,” or “tomorrow my wife is going to go to work.” In the latter case, you need to have the second verb phrase. You can tell because while you can say “I’m gonna eat tomorrow,” you can’t say “I’m gonna Chicago tomorrow.” That is, you can say “Tomorrow my wife is going to [verb],” but not “Tomorrow my wife is going to [noun].” Secondly, why would you say “Tomorrow, Johnny is on the green team.”? It’s “Johnny will be on…” > [@](#): > > We also do this in informal settings when talking about the past: > > “Yesterday, Claude walks up to me and says…” As you say, it’s informal. Everyone knows it’s wrong. It’s no different than “Who dat?” ---
**Author:** ![nudgenudge](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/9f8e36/32.png) [@nudgenudge](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/nudgenudge)\ **Post date:** [April 12, 2012, 2:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-tense-of-christ-is-risen/618185/62 "2012-04-12T14:43:51Z")
> [@Chessic\_Sense](#): > > What the hell? Who says “tomorrow, [subject] is…”? You’d either say “tomorrow my wife has to work,” or “tomorrow my wife will go to work,” or “tomorrow my wife is going to go to work.” Well it may be another dialectal thing, but a sentence like “the SDMB is down for maintenance this evening” sounds completely normal and correct to me. As does “… will be down for maintenance”. The present/non-past tense version seems particularly prevalent in what I think of as the “itinerary” tense: “Tomorrow we are in Paris, Tuesday we’re in Brussels, and then we travel to Cologne overnight”. (Speaker of British English.) ---
**Author:** ![Spectre\_of\_Pithecanthropus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/spectre_of_pithecanthropus/32/12343_2.png) [@Spectre\_of\_Pithecanthropus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Spectre_of_Pithecanthropus)\ **Post date:** [April 13, 2012, 3:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-tense-of-christ-is-risen/618185/63 "2012-04-13T03:14:22Z")
> [@nudgenudge](#): > > Well it may be another dialectal thing, but a sentence like “the SDMB is down for maintenance this evening” sounds completely normal and correct to me. As does “… will be down for maintenance”. The present/non-past tense version seems particularly prevalent in what I think of as the “itinerary” tense: “Tomorrow we are in Paris, Tuesday we’re in Brussels, and then we travel to Cologne overnight”. > (Speaker of British English.) It sounds perfectly normal to me, as an American, to hear the present tense used in certain contexts to mean the near future. For some reason _The SDMB is down this evening_ doesn’t sound quite as natural as _The SDMB **goes** down this evening_, but that in itself may be a matter of dialect. ---
**Author:** ![newme](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/e0b2c6/32.png) [@newme](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/newme)\ **Post date:** [April 13, 2012, 6:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-tense-of-christ-is-risen/618185/64 "2012-04-13T06:11:53Z")
> [@Chessic\_Sense](#): > > What the hell? Who says “tomorrow, [subject] is…”? I [googled “Tomorrow I am riding”](https://www.google.com/search?q=%22tomorrow+i+am+riding%22&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a) and got 45,000 hits. That construction doesn’t sound odd to me. ---
**Author:** ![Alley\_Dweller](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/alley_dweller/32/430_2.png) [@Alley\_Dweller](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Alley_Dweller)\ **Post date:** [April 13, 2012, 8:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-tense-of-christ-is-risen/618185/65 "2012-04-13T08:08:51Z")
And if Lerner and Loewe had read this thread, we might have [“I will get married in the morning, … so get me to the church on time.”](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WXJUKkWIPyI) ---
**Author:** ![Frylock](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/ce7236/32.png) [@Frylock](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Frylock)\ **Post date:** [April 13, 2012, 11:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-tense-of-christ-is-risen/618185/66 "2012-04-13T11:08:38Z")
[quote=“Chessic\_Sense, post:61, topic:618185”] > [@](#): > > I’m a Pittsburgher, so I do have a strange dialect, but I don’t think that’s it. I think I figured out what it is, though. “Killed” is both the simple past and past participle of “to kill.” So when I hear “is killed,” despite being the participle, my brain refuses to hear it that way. It hears the simple past tense and tells me it’s wrong. > > When you say “Caesar is slew by Brutus,” you hear what I’m hearing. If I say “Caesar is slain by Brutus,” I hear what you’re hearing. > > Ahhhh. Much better. Yeah, that makes sense actually. Don’t you love the sweet release of grammatical relief? > [@](#): > > What the hell? Who says “tomorrow, [subject] is…”? AFAIK everybody does. You almost certainly do. > [@](#): > > As you say, it’s informal. Everyone knows it’s wrong. It’s no different than “Who dat?” Informal =/= wrong. “Who dat” also is perfectly grammatical in many dialects. ---
**Author:** ![Frylock](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/ce7236/32.png) [@Frylock](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Frylock)\ **Post date:** [April 13, 2012, 11:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-tense-of-christ-is-risen/618185/67 "2012-04-13T11:11:30Z")
Mitt Romney recently said “Tonight we celebrate, tomorrow we go back to work.” ---
**Author:** ![Alley\_Dweller](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/alley_dweller/32/430_2.png) [@Alley\_Dweller](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Alley_Dweller)\ **Post date:** [April 13, 2012, 11:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-tense-of-christ-is-risen/618185/68 "2012-04-13T11:37:32Z")
> [@newme](#): > > I [googled “Tomorrow I am riding”](https://www.google.com/search?q=%22tomorrow+i+am+riding%22&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a) and got 45,000 hits. That construction doesn’t sound odd to me. And it’s certainly encouraging that [“Tomorrow I am running”](https://www.google.com/search?q=%22tomorrow+i+am+running%22&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a) gets 887,000 hits. I guess people are finally getting some exercise! ---
**Author:** ![psychonaut](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/psychonaut/32/4655_2.png) [@psychonaut](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/psychonaut)\ **Post date:** [April 13, 2012, 12:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-tense-of-christ-is-risen/618185/69 "2012-04-13T12:10:40Z")
> [@Chessic\_Sense](#): > > You can tell because while you can say “I’m gonna eat tomorrow,” you can’t say “I’m gonna Chicago tomorrow.” That is, you can say “Tomorrow my wife is going to [verb],” but not “Tomorrow my wife is going to [noun].” [“Tomorrow I am going to chicago”](https://encrypted.google.com/search?q=%22tomorrow+i+am+going+to+chicago%22) gets 17,700 Google hits. Don’t you just love corpus linguistics? ---
**Author:** ![Frylock](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/ce7236/32.png) [@Frylock](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Frylock)\ **Post date:** [April 15, 2012, 8:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-tense-of-christ-is-risen/618185/70 "2012-04-15T20:19:11Z")
> [@Frylock](#): > > AFAIK everybody does. You almost certainly do. I found [proof!](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=599066) > [@Chessic Sense](#): > > I’m going to the Bahamas! 😃 ---
**Author:** ![Autolycus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/22d042/32.png) [@Autolycus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Autolycus)\ **Post date:** [April 16, 2012, 2:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-tense-of-christ-is-risen/618185/71 "2012-04-16T02:04:40Z")
I believe the tense would be Present Active Evangelical. ---
**Author:** ![Leo\_Bloom](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/leo_bloom/32/10377_2.png) [@Leo\_Bloom](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Leo_Bloom)\ **Post date:** [April 16, 2012, 3:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-tense-of-christ-is-risen/618185/72 "2012-04-16T15:35:02Z")
😃 As long as it’s not in Vindicative. ---
**Author:** ![mrpelham](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/a5b964/32.png) [@mrpelham](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mrpelham)\ **Post date:** [May 29, 2012, 1:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-tense-of-christ-is-risen/618185/73 "2012-05-29T01:22:36Z")
to focus too closely on the sentence structure and grammar could mean that the intent and function is overlooked. Although archaic, this sentence is not only declarative, it is imperative. - Christ is risen …SO…do whatever Christians do ---
**Author:** ![Alan\_Smithee](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/2acd7d/32.png) [@Alan\_Smithee](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Alan_Smithee)\ **Post date:** [May 29, 2012, 3:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-tense-of-christ-is-risen/618185/74 "2012-05-29T03:28:04Z")
> [@matt\_mcl](#): > > But that’s archaic in English; auxiliary “be” is an archaism and no longer productive in such situations. In my opinion your modern English speaker construes “He is risen” as copula + adjective. We might well hear a nuance between _He has risen_ and _he is risen_, much as we hear a nuance between _He has gone_ and _he is gone_. Now that this thread is risen again, I’d like to ask about this. At the time of the King James translation (1604 - 1611) would _has risen_ have been gramatical? If it would have been, how certain are we that the two forms were exactly equivalent? It seems unlikely to me that different forms are ever _precisely_ equivalent, although the difference may be hard to explicate (and probably varies by the individual in such cases). I also find it very hard to read any sentence with _be_ instead of _have_ as the modal and NOT read into it at least some element of the distinction I hear between _He has gone_ and _he is gone_ (which I agree I hear as copula + adjective). ---
**Author:** ![Leo\_Bloom](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/leo_bloom/32/10377_2.png) [@Leo\_Bloom](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Leo_Bloom)\ **Post date:** [May 29, 2012, 5:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-tense-of-christ-is-risen/618185/75 "2012-05-29T05:25:56Z")
The Bard speaks: From sydney.edu.au/engineering/it/~matty/Shakespeare/nsearch.cgi —-—— Your search “is risen” resulted in 1 hits The following words appeared in your search: is:9414 risen:5 Your search produced results in the following works: Coriolanus Coriolanus Act 1, Scene 1 First Citizen If I must not, I need not be barren of accusations; he hath faults, with surplus, to tire in repetition. ``` [Shouts within] What shouts are these? The other side o' the city is risen: why stay we prating here? to the Capitol ``` vs. Your search “has risen” resulted in 0 hits ---
**Author:** ![panamajack](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/47e85d/32.png) [@panamajack](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/panamajack)\ **Post date:** [May 29, 2012, 6:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-tense-of-christ-is-risen/618185/76 "2012-05-29T06:25:05Z")
> [@Alan\_Smithee](#): > > Now that this thread is risen again, I’d like to ask about this. At the time of the King James translation (1604 - 1611) would _has risen_ have been gramatical? If it would have been, how certain are we that the two forms were exactly equivalent? It seems unlikely to me that different forms are ever _precisely_ equivalent, although the difference may be hard to explicate (and probably varies by the individual in such cases). I also find it very hard to read any sentence with _be_ instead of _have_ as the modal and NOT read into it at least some element of the distinction I hear between _He has gone_ and _he is gone_ (which I agree I hear as copula + adjective). The KJV only uses a form of ‘be’ with ‘risen’. This includes phrases like ‘If the sun be risen’, ‘my people is risen up as an enemy’, and ‘When therefore he was risen from the dead’. Other Bibles for this part of Mat 28:6 : Wycliffe: “for he is risun, as he seide”. Tyndale : “he is rysen as he sayde”. Verbs that use ‘has[t]’ include ‘ridden’, ‘done’, ‘driven [out]’, ‘eaten’. It appears ‘gone’ went with both. For the have form, there is ‘hast gone a whoring’, ‘I have not gone after Baalim’, ‘have gone the way which the Lord sent me’, and of course ‘all we like sheep have gone astray’. Of the second: ‘thy sister in law is gone back unto her people’, ‘the children of Israel were gone forth out of Egypt’, ‘when ye be gone over Jordan’, ‘thou art gone backward’. Shakespeare has ‘has gone’ only once; but ‘is gone’ in many places. ---
**Author:** ![panamajack](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/47e85d/32.png) [@panamajack](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/panamajack)\ **Post date:** [May 29, 2012, 7:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-tense-of-christ-is-risen/618185/77 "2012-05-29T07:10:52Z")
Here are some interesting comparisons on the early variation with the verb ‘go’. Sources are the Wycliffe Bible (14th Century), Tyndale’s translations (early 16th Century), and the KJV (early 17th Century). Verses and Chapters are per the KJV. Some of the verbs don’t always match up: 2 Sa 6:13 WYC And whanne thei, that baren the arke of the Lord, hadden stied six paaces, KJV when they that bare the ark of the LORD had gone six paces Acts 23:19 WYC And the tribune took his hoond, and wente with hym asidis half TYN The hye captayne toke him by the hond and wet a parte with him out of the waye: KJV And the chiliarch having taken him by the hand, and having gone apart in private, 1 Thes 1:8 WYC but youre feith that is to God, in ech place is gon forth; TYN youre fayth also which ye have vnto god spred her silfe abroade in all quartars KJV but in every place your faith which [is] towards God has gone abroad, But notice this one, with the earlier use of ‘had’ : Genesis 27:5 WYC and he hadde go in to the feeld TYN And as soone as Esau was gone to the felde KJV And Esau went to the field Mark 10:17 WYC And whanne Jhesus was gon out in the weie TYN And when he was come in to the waye KJV And when he was gone forth into the way ---
**Author:** ![sundog66](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ee7513/32.png) [@sundog66](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/sundog66)\ **Post date:** [May 30, 2012, 2:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-tense-of-christ-is-risen/618185/78 "2012-05-30T02:33:31Z")
> [@Alley\_Dweller](#): > > But we have > a. Cereal is eaten for breakfast. > b. John is taken, so you better stay away from my man. These are both passive constructions. My point was that we don’t normally find active-voice _be_+past participle. > [@matt\_mcl](#): > > Actually, the intransitivity of “rise” is exactly why you get (or rather, archaically, got) “Christ is risen” and not “John is eaten breakfast”: because eat is transitive and rise is intransitive. This is similar to a structure in French whereby various strictly intransitive verbs such as _mourir, naître, monter, descendre_ (die, be born, climb, descend) and so forth, construct the perfect with the auxiliary _être_ (be) rather than _avoir_ (have): _il est mort_ can mean both “he is dead” and “he died” (_il est mort le 22 août dernier_). Ah, very interesting. So if the analogy to the French avoir/être alternation is right, then, it is the unaccusative subclass of intransitive verbs that (archaically) allows for this, right? > [@mrpelham](#): > > to focus too closely on the sentence structure and grammar could mean that the intent and function is overlooked. Maybe true, but irrelevant. The OP is specifically asking about an aspect of the structure of this sentence. > [@](#): > > Although archaic, this sentence is not only > declarative, it is imperative. False: The sentence is most definitely declarative and not imperative in its grammar. The imperative would be “Christ be risen”. > [@](#): > > Christ is risen …SO…do whatever Christians do 😕 ---
**Author:** ![Leo\_Bloom](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/leo_bloom/32/10377_2.png) [@Leo\_Bloom](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Leo_Bloom)\ **Post date:** [June 3, 2012, 2:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-tense-of-christ-is-risen/618185/79 "2012-06-03T02:10:49Z")
Could someone check out this thread: [Who started adding a- to English verbs?](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=651096) and return back with a report if there’s anything pertinent for us? I saw “Summer is icumen in” and things got interesting. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-tense-of-christ-is-risen/618185.md?page=3)