Biblical Hebrew Forum

["Rodney K. Duke" <dukerk AT appstate.edu>]

A "test/problem case" for wayyiqtol theories.

Dear Colleagues,

I would like to make another inquiry regarding sequences of wayyiqtols.
I know that some of you strongly disagree with the theories I have been
adopting and adapting.  They are trial balloons.  The negative responses
are as helpful to me as the positive.  Thank you for your patience.

[I had been taught that the wayyiqtol went back to a preterit, prefixed
conjugation, a theory PROVEN by the short forms.  At this point in my
understanding, I see the various explanations for wayyiqtol vs. weqatal
as just theories.  I don't see that anyone has demonstrated THE answer
for the origin or historical development of wayyiqtol vs. weqatal.  I am
trying to understand the different models.  Right now the 'simplest' and
most encompassing model seems to be that yiqtols are ACTION oriented and
modal, using 'modal' in a broad sense, and qatals, in narrative are
EVENT oriented.]

One problematic text that I just noticed is Gen 45:24.
wayyiqtol: wayeshallach
wayyiqtol: wayyeleku
wayyiqtol: wayyomer

If we see the three wayyiqtols as narrative wayyiqtols reporting a
sequence of EVENTS, each with a new Reference time (Hatav), and each
representing the simple past (English: "And he sent away his brothers,
and they went, and he said to them..."), then a logical problem is
created.  The last wayyiqtol does not make sense, if it refers to an
EVENT, which is the third in a sequence.  We must see it as a past
perfect: "he had said to them..."

(I think that Prof. Niccacci would say that the first two are "narrative
wayyiqtols" and that the third is a "continuation wayyiqtol.")

Either way, to remove the awkwardness, we must come up with complex
models for what wayyiqtols express and how we know it.

On the other hand, if yiqtols present ACTION, and if in story-telling
the narrator assumes a speaking time contemporaneous with the action (a
common device for creating 'realism'), then it seems possible to view
this verse as presenting not three separate events, but three
overlapping ACTIONS (expressed better, but not perfectly with the
historic present: "And he sends away his brothers and they go, and he
says to them...").

So, how would the models of understanding wayyiqtol account for and
explain the sequence in Gen 45:24 and which model seems the most
successful?

Thanks!
Rodney


--
Rodney K. Duke
Dept. of Phil. & Rel., Appalachian State Univ., Boone, NC 28608
(O) 828-262-3091, (FAX) 828-262-6619, dukerk AT appstate.edu