Skip to Content.
Sympa Menu

b-hebrew - Re: [b-hebrew] shwa

b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org

Subject: Biblical Hebrew Forum

List archive

Chronological Thread  
  • From: Rolf Furuli <furuli AT online.no>
  • To: b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: Re: [b-hebrew] shwa
  • Date: Wed, 15 Mar 2006 07:53:40 +0100

Dear Herman,

You have misunderstood what is the basis of my conclusions regarding the verbal system of classical Hebrew. It is not just poetic texts, but the whole Tanakh, the DSS, and Ben Sira. All the 79,574 verbs of these sources have been studied (a few verbs may have been overlooked of course). At the end of my dissertation twelve pages are used to list the passages from the Tanakh that are used as examples throughout the work. Six of the pages list passages from Genesis through Kings, one page lists the poetic books, and five pages list the prophets. This shows that examples from prose are more numerous than those from poetry.

While I agree that the construction of poetry is different from prose in Hebrew, we should be careful not to extrapolate this fact in wrong directions. It is true that a poet can use a verb or another word in a contrafactual way to create a certain effect. But such uses are exceptions, and the *semantic meaning* of verbs is exactly the same in prose as in poetry. A YIQTOL, QATAL, infinitive, and participle have the same meaning in poetry as in prose. In order to have some basis for the view that you cannot find the real meaning of Hebrew verbs in poetic texts but only in prose, you need to refer to at least one language where the semantic meaning of verbs are different in prose compared with poetry. I am not aware of the existence of such a language.

My Question was about Origen's use of vowels. If he, where the Masoretes used shewa, used the original vowel, and he used OU- both for WAYYAIQTOL and WEYIQTOL, wouldn't that mean that both forms in his view had the same vowel?

Best regards,

Rolf Furuli
University of Oslo

Herman Meester wrote:

I know Rolf Furuli's point of view regarding this issue, but the idea
that there was, originally, no difference between wayyiqtol and
weyiqtol is (I know I run the risk of enticing some members, incl.
myself, to a long and heavy thread again ;) improbable if not
impossible.
Masora means tradition, not invention. The lengthened prefix
consonant is real. It must have been there for ages prior to the
masoretes. Any invention of this kind would have lead to discussions,
none of which we find traces of in Jewish literature.

Biblical poetry, which is what Rolf bases his thesis on, cannot be
used to discuss this problem because in poetry, tenses, or verb
aspect, or whatever, is blurred on purpose by the poet in order to
give poetry its own syntax. This is a feature of all oral poetry in
semi-sedentary or fully sedentary people's dialect continuums (i.e.
areas where every ten miles there is some kind of language change, so
that people can effortlessly understand other people that live ten
miles off, but have trouble understanding people twenty miles off, and
have no idea what people say thirty miles off), where travelling poets
had to make themselves understood over rather large areas. Resulting
in an artificial, non-"domestic" language with a unique and flexible
syntax. Instances of this have been described for real (i.e.
contemporarily) in several parts of the world, a.o. in Morocco. Cf.
the medieval "troubadour" in the part of Europe where Romanic
languages are spoken; they crossed linguistic borders without
bothering.

In other words, syntax of biblical poetry and syntax of biblical prose
each deserve their own description.

regards,
Herman












Archive powered by MHonArc 2.6.24.

Top of Page