Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Rolf Furuli <furuli AT online.no>]

Robert Hoberman wrote:

>Rolf Furuli wrote: "... the first Hebrew grammarians entered the scene.
>They made their grammars on the basis of induction and when they
>interpreted the verbal system of the MT, they did so on the basis of
>*tense* because they did not know aspect..."  Wait a minute!  The earliest
>grammarians of Hebrew may not have had a theory of tense (I don't know)
>but their native language was Arabic, which is much more clearly aspectual
>then Hebrew.  So they should have intuitively interpreted Hebrew in terms
>of aspect. If they did not, then we may be able to learn something about
>the ways in which BH works in terms of tense versus aspect by trying to
>understand their point of view.
>
>Robert Hoberman


Dear Robert,

I asked a professor of Arabic, who is an expert on the period in question,
about tense/aspect and Arabic. He said there may be some difference of
opinion, but most workers would agree that from the middle of the first
millennium CE the Arabic prefix- and suffix conjugations were interpreted
as aspects - completed or  un-completed actions, but from the tenth century
a change took place.  The Arabic-speaking grammarians borrowed the
tense-system from the greeks, and the conjugations were now viewed as past
and future tense.  The participle, however, was not viewed as present
tense, as was the case in Mishna-Hebrew (Middle-Hebrew).

Thus the data do not contradict the view that the Masoretes chose their
points on the basis of the recitation in the synagogue and not on a
grammatical basis. But when learned Arabic-speaking persons started to make
grammatical observations  (Saadia Gaon, 882-942 was one of the first) they
interpreted the points in a grammatical way, thus misunderstanding the
difference between patah and shewa. Regardless of whether they looked at
the MT in the light of Arabic, Mishna-Hebrew or Talmudic Aramaic, they
would naturally give the different forms a tense-interpretation.


Regards
Rolf


Rolf Furuli
Lecturer in Semitic languages
University of Oslo