Aorist Tense and "Is Sent" in Acts 28:28

Acts 28:28 in the KJV reads:

"Be it known therefore unto you, that the salvation of God is sent unto the Gentiles, and that they will hear it."

Other translations render the verb as "was sent" or "has been sent." The issue is the Greek verb tense and how it intersects with English, particularly older English.

The verb "is sent" translates a form of apostellō in the aorist passive indicative. The aorist in Greek is not a "past tense" in the way English has a past tense. Rather, it is a viewpoint on the action as a whole, a point-like or complete action, which can be contextually past, present, or even future.

In Luke 1:26 the same form appears:

"And in the sixth month the angel Gabriel was sent from God...’’

The KJV translators rendered that as "was sent" because the context clearly describes a completed past event. In Acts 28:28, however, they rendered the same aorist form as "is sent."

Here older English usage is significant. Early modern English regularly used forms like "is come," "is risen," "is departed," where modern English prefers "has come," "has risen," "has departed." The KJV’s "is sent" is not a mechanical attempt to reproduce the Greek tense; it is idiomatic early modern English for what we would now express as "has been sent" or "was sent." It is a perfect passive idea using "to be" as an auxiliary.

So, grammatically speaking, both "is sent" (in its 17th-century sense) and "was sent" / "has been sent" are legitimate ways to carry the aorist passive into English. The question then becomes whether some nuance is lost or preserved in choosing one English form over another.

The aorist passive indicative here presents the sending of "the salvation of God" to the Gentiles as a completed fact. In modern English, "has been sent" probably best captures that sense of a completed action with present relevance. "Was sent" leans more simply to a past event. "Is sent" in today’s usage sounds odd because we no longer use that older perfect auxiliary construction, but in 1611 it conveyed the sense of a completed sending that stands as an ongoing fact.

There is also a contextual and theological nuance. In Acts 13:26 we read:

"Men and brethren, children of the stock of Abraham, and whosoever among you feareth God, to you is the word of this salvation sent." Acts 13:26

There, the sending is addressed to Jews and God-fearing Gentiles. In Acts 28, Paul stands at the climactic point of his ministry to Israel and pronounces that "the salvation of God is sent unto the Gentiles, and that they will hear it." The KJV’s "is sent" in both Acts 13:26 and 28:28 lets the reader sense a formal, declarative statement of fact: the sending stands as a present, operative reality.

Modern translators, constrained to contemporary idiom, almost have to choose between "was sent" and "has been sent." Either can be defended grammatically. "Was sent" may unintentionally flatten the sense into a purely past event, while "has been sent" better preserves the completed action with present effect.

The KJV’s "is sent" reflects a now-archaic, but once standard, English perfect passive usage that can legitimately express the Greek aorist passive here. So, yes, both renderings are defensible, but "is sent" (in its 17th-century force) is both grammatically sound and theologically deliberate, signaling a present standing reality of God’s salvation being directed to the Gentiles at that juncture in Acts.

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