Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Rolf Furuli <furuli AT online.no>]

Peter Kirk wrote:

>Dear Rolf,
>
>You wrote: "I refer to J. Barr: "Vocalization and the Analysis of Hebrew
>among the Ancient Translators"  Hebraische Wortforschung. Festschrift zum
>80 Geburtstag von Walter Baumgartner. VT supp XVI, 1967, 1-11. In this
>article he discusses how a person's mother tongue influences her when
>hearing another language which she is going to transcribe."
>
>I fear that your own argument is sufficient to cast doubt on your reliance
>on Origen, a native Greek speaker, and therefore one whose transcription of
>Hebrew cannot be relied on. The same applies to the LXX translators, for
>whom Hebrew was probably already their second language, also to Jerome.
>Josephus could be more reliable, as probably he knew good spoken Hebrew.
>Nevertheless, the influence of mother tongue is not random, and so with
>great care maybe some results can be derived from Origen. The statistics
>you quote do not show this great care, but of course you were abbreviating.
>Is there any published work in which these matters are carefully dealt
>with?

Dear Peter,

We cannot be sure of anything regarding old manuscripts, but all the
evidence taken together suggests that patah and shewa were elusive and
could be pronounced in different ways while most other vowels were stable.
I once checked the first syllable of proper names in the writings of
Josephus with the following results:  Of those written with patah, 66 per
cent were written with a Greek alpha, 21 per cent with epsilon and 13 per
cent with other vowels. Of those written with shewa, 58 per cent were
written with alpha, 20 per cent with epsilon and 22 per cent with other
vowels. This suggests that Origen was not far off track when he made his
transcriptions. E.Y. Kutcher: The Language and Linguistic Background of the
Isaiah Scroll, 1974:500-501 wrote: "The transcriptions indicate that  shewa
mobile is likely to have the quality of the following vowel. This is the
case in the Sept, Josephus, in Jerome and Origen." Keep also in mind that
in the Babylonian pointing system ( for Hebrew) the same sign is used for
patah and segol. I recommend the article (Look out Vince!): H.P. Muller:
"wa- und ha- und das Imperfektum consecutivum", Zeitschrif fur
Althebraistik, 1991: 144-164.  I would like to stress that I am not the
only one who believs that  the Masoretes invented wayyiqtol. F.C. Fensham
believes that the Masoretes probably "have changed weyiqtol to wayyiqtol"
"The use of the suffix conjugation and the prefix conjugation in a few old
Hebrew poems",  Journal of Northwest Semitic Languages, 1978, VI 9-18). A
very thorough study of Origen (still valuable) is: E. Bronno: Studien uber
hebraische Morphologie und Vocalismus, Abhandlungen fur die Kunde des
Morgenlandes XXVIII, 1943.
>
>You seem to imply in your arguments that the doubling of the yod in
>wayyiqtol is a phonological artifact, a Masoretic addition to get around an
>apparent exception to their pronunciation rules. Is that a generally held
>view? Is this also borne out by Origen's transcription? Or could this
>doubling represent some morpheme that has otherwise dropped out, as Vince
>seemed to suggest at one point? I am mindful of the distinction between
>B:YOWM "in a day" and BAYYOWM "in the day", which superficially and
>phonetically resembles that between W:YIQTOL and WAYYIQTOL. Of course in
>BAYYOWM it is the article which has almost disappeared, but is represented
>by patah (in place of shewa) and dagesh. Is this distinction also a
>Masoretic one? Is it seen in Origen's transcription? Is it consistently
>represented in LXX translation? This could be a significant test or whether
>Origen's failure to distinguish WAYYIQTOL was grammatical or phonetic.

The wa of wayyiqtol could of course represent a morpheme that had dropped
out. Several suggestions, such as Egyptian iw, Accadian ma and different
adverbials have been suggested - and dropped. Look at the following
suggestion:

As Bryan correctly has observed, wayyiqtol is the normal form "used in
Biblical narrative to advance the
story time". We also can see that the apocopated form is usually (but not
always) preferred. Suppose now that you are a Masorete and you have heard a
narrative recited in the synagogue, where the building of a house is also
mentioned. You have heard the the apocopated form of bnh with prefix (3. p.
sing.) and enclittic w. Because of the apocopation the stress is on the
prefix and its vowel. Starting with the prefix you get the form yiben. But
what are doing with the enclittic conjunction? You may try with a shewa,
getting weyiben, but this does not work well in Hebrew, because the shewa
would be changed to a patah according to the rule of pretonic lengthening.
Shewa is therefore excluded, and you try with is close sister ( or is it
twin brother) patah, and you get wayiben. But this will not work either
because the system will not allow patah in an open syllable. To use one of
the sisters, you have just one choice if you will keep the penultimate
stress, to add an extra yod. So you get wayyiben.  Verbs which are not
apocopated could have been handled similarly simply by analogy. I am not
saying that this *was* the way it happened, but it is a plausible
suggestion, and it shows that just one feature ( in this case apocopation)
may cause all the differences between wayyiqtol and weyiqtol.
>
>The phonetic distinction between WAYYIQTOL and W:YIQTOL may also have been
>affected by the phonetic environment - as in the Masoretic text where we
>have WF'EQTOL for *WA''IQTOL, but perhaps differently in the dialect which
>Origen and others heard. To avoid being misled by this variable, separate
>study should be made of WAYYIQTOL, WF'EQTOL, WATTIQTOL, and WANNIQTOL
>forms; the latter two may be more fruitful, if the sample is large enough
>e.g. in the surviving extracts from Origen, as the environment of vowel
>before yod may significantly affect the pronunciation - taw and nun are
>more neutral. (Maybe you have looked at all of this already, if so I'm
>sorry if I seem to restate the obvious.)

Your suggestions are very fine, and I am working with this and other
things, for instance mapping all the instances when wayyiqtol does not
contain an apocopated form where one such a form is available (Joshua
19:50; 1 Kings 18:32 have for instance wayyibne).  In view of the fact that
there is no trace of wayyiqtol before the Masoretes, and because no
researcher has ever been able to explain how or why a simple conjunction
can change the meaning of a verb form to the very opposite, and because
there is a wide gulf between past time and past tense, why not ask
yourselves why you should believe that wyyiqtol either is a preterite or
the perfective aspect? Are there any hard facts to substantiate such a
view? or are we just "parroting" old or new grammars?

Regards
Rolf

Rolf Furuli
Lecturer in Semitic Languages
University of Oslo