Recent works on verbal aspect in New Testament Greek have departed from the consensus in general linguistics that aspect is a temporal concept. A possible reason for this departure is that linguists have often defined aspect using spatial and visual metaphors which are susceptible to misunderstanding. It is argued that a time-relational definition is to be preferred, and that such a definition sheds light on aspectual usage in the Greek New Testament, and on the interaction of verbal aspect and lexical semantics in particular.