Biblical Hebrew Forum

[ianyoung AT plato.arts.usyd.edu.au]

Dear All,
Since they seem relevant to some recent discussions on these lists, I thought
I would briefly mention some of the findings contained in an article of mine
forthcoming in ZAH.  In the article I investigated all occurrences of the word
`am "people" in Biblical texts in terms of the distribution of singular and
plural verbs, suffixes etc with it.  My focus was on the diachronic and
textual issues, rather on the question of the author's intention in choosing
to use one or the other form.

The following observations, however, would need to be borne in mind by anyone
undertaking such a study of the literary purpose of such variation:

1. Each book of the Masoretic text has its own profile in terms of its
preference for singular/ plural with `am.

2. Our available textual evidence shows almost a 20% variation in some cases
between the Masoretic text and other textual witnesses as to the number of
singular/ plural verbs in particular books with `am.  This would lead me to
conclude that we are in no position to talk confidently about the "author's
intention" in using such forms, since we are far away from the original
language of the books, at least in this feature.

3. It would be necessary to explain 'minimal pairs' such as Judges 9:36-37 "a
people is coming down//people are coming down", or the whole sequence of
parallel texts where eg Chronicles and Kings disagree.  This latter phenomenon
is, of course, tied by many to diachronic issues and is dealt with in detail
in my study.

By the way, I had the impression that E. J. Revell had another article
possibly relevant to this issue, which is to appear in the 'lost' issue of
Maarav.  Does anyone know any more about this?

Ian Young
Semitic Studies
University of Sydney