Biblical Hebrew Forum

["Dave Washburn" <dwashbur AT nyx.net>]

Peter wrote: 
> Let me clarify this. As I understand it, according to the widely 
> accepted discourse analysis understanding, in a historical narrative 
> (carried on mainly by a sequence of wayyiqtols) the form X + qatal (X 
> may be a noun, but also e.g. LO' as in Jdg 13:2) indicates a 
> background event or one which happened before the main time line 
> event, but resulting in a state of affairs which is relevant to the 
> time line. From one viewpoint, this is "stative". From another 
> viewpoint, this is "perfect" according to the definition "a present 
> state  resulting from a past action" (Wenham, "NT Greek", p.139). In 
> English translation, as the time line is translated with a simple 
> past, the background is often translated with a pluperfect, or with 
> "was" and a stative expression. In this sense I see "stative" and 
> "pluperfect" as almost equivalent.

I'm going to zero in on the example of Judg 13:2.  For one thing, it's 
clearly a hendiadys, expressing the same thing in both positive and 
negative ways, so it's hard to see how "she hadn't had any 
children" can be before "she was childless."  But more than that, 
since the LO) clause says the same thing as the qatal clause, it's 
difficult for me to see how one is "foreground" and one is 
"background."  Add to that the fact that being childless/not having 
children can hardly be construed as a present result of a past 
action (having unsuccessful sex?  Sorry...) this is not a good 
example of the principle being presented.  Rather, it looks to me as 
though it argues against it.

> This point is perhaps illustrated better with stative verbs like 
> "stand", "sit". In Azerbaijani these are expressed only with a perfect 
> participle "having stood up", "having sat down" and a copula. In NT 
> Greek these are expressed by perfect forms HESTEKA, KATHEMAI; and even 
> the stative "I know" is a perfect form: OIDA = "I have seen/come to 
> know". The Hebrew idiom is not so clear to me, but it might be 
> instructive to correlate "stative" and "fientive" uses of (MD and Y$B 
> with qatal, yiqtol, participles etc.

These verbs may or may not be statives, depending on their 
context.  As for OIDA, this is a frozen form in which the present 
tense form has vanished altogether by NT times, so I don't consider 
it a valid example.  Most grammars that I have seen would 
conclude that the form has lost its distinctively perfect force by 
Hellenistic times.

> There is one possible difference which could help to decide whether 
> qatal is more "stative" or more "pluperfect"; that is the question of 
> whether the described state has come into existence or has existed in 
> eternity past. Since love is eternal only in the Godhead, "Solomon was 
> in love" is equivalent to "Solomon had started to love", and the 
> difference from "Solomon had fallen in love" is at most a rather 
> subtle one (and it surely overloads the verb here to insist that it 
> means one rather than the other). Can anyone find examples of X + 
> qatal (where the qatal cannot be a participle) for a truly eternal 
> state - or even a very ancient one? If this is not found, or rare, it 
> would back up my "pluperfect" idea; if it is common, then X + qatal is 
> perhaps more "stative".

I think this puts an impossible constraint on the idea and it strikes 
me as somewhat ad hoc rather than being considered as a general 
grammatical principle.  Solomon's propensity toward foreign women 
need not have existed from eternity past; rather, if (as seems to be 
the case) it describes a quirk of his personality, then it is stative.  
Chances are that even he didn't know exactly when that preference 
developed, and it doesn't matter.  By the time he became king and 
established his domain, he had a tendency to prefer foreign women 
and hence the statement is as "stative" as if someone had said "he 
had blue eyes."

> 
> Peter wrote:
> > If we follow the regular understanding of N + qatal in 1 Kings 11:1, 
> > the point is not that Solomon "had a thing for" foreign women or
> > "habitually fell in love with them". I guess that would require a 
> > participle. Here, rather, the sense is pluperfect: at some time
> > previous to the events described in the previous passage, Solomon "had 
> > fallen in love with" many foreign women and so was, at the narrative
> > time, in a state of love regarding them - cf an English or Greek 
> > perfect or pluperfect tense.
> 
> I'm inclined to think this is putting more on the verb form than it can 
> bear.  Per Bryan's approach, it looks more to me as though it's
> saying "Solomon was in love with many foreign women" in a stative 
> sense, i.e. it described the state of his heart in a sort of "this is 
> how he was" manner.
> 
> Indeed, they had become his wives and
> > concubines. I understand Bryan's conception of the qatal as stative as 
> > relating in that way to its pluperfect "flashback" sense - is that
> > right, Bryan? Maybe the older grammarians were not as wrong as we 
> > sometimes think in calling the qatal form "perfect".
> 
> I'm not convinced that Bryan's approach includes the pluperfect 
> idea.  This need not be part of the stative concept.  To say 
> something like "he was old" or "he was tall" or "he was an 
> Edomite" need not include the pluperfect notions "he became old 
> and was now in a state of being old" etc.
> 
> <snip>
> 
> 
> Dave Washburn
> http://www.nyx.net/~dwashbur
> A Bible that's falling apart means a life that isn't.
> 
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Dave Washburn
http://www.nyx.net/~dwashbur
A Bible that's falling apart means a life that isn't.