Biblical Hebrew Forum

[peter_kirk AT SIL.ORG]

Dear Rolf,

See my interleaved comments.

Peter Kirk


______________________________ Reply Separator 
_________________________________
Subject: Re[2]: Tidbits from Ruth
Author:  furuli AT online.no at internet
Date:    28/04/1999 03:01


Dear Peter,

I have never claimed to have hundreds of examples of non-sequential 
wayyiqtols, as you wrote in your last post, because sequentiality has been 
of secondary importance to me. But I do claim to have several hundred 
examples of wayyiqtols with non-past meaning, which also in many cases may 
imply non-sequentiality. My examples from Ruth do not belong to the 
mentioned list, but were just stray examples I gathered when I recently 
read the book.

PK: Sorry if I confused the issues here. Let me rephrase to make my 
point clear and precise: If the hundreds of examples of non-past 
wayyiqtol which Rolf claims to have found (in narrative) were no more 
certain than these examples of non-sequential wayyiqtol, I would have 
to conclude that there is no definite evidence for any non-past 
wayyiqtol (in narrative).

I appreciate that you have reached the conclusion that sequentiality is  a 
pragmatic implicature as far as wayyiqtol  is concerned, and not its 
semantic meaning. Randall also seems to have reached the same conclusion 
although his language is ambiguous. So in this respect we all three seem to 
agree. But then I do not understand why you are so zealous in using all 
kinds of strange arguments to defend the sequentiality of wayyiqtol if you 
agree that this property is pragmatic rather than semantic.

PK: My point is to demonstrate that in each specific case we must be 
certain that the verb is non-sequential, non-past etc., rather than 
just preferring such an interpretation to another which is sequential, 
past etc., before using that case as evidence for a theory. The 
correct method is to examine all of the data carefully and discard any 
which has a possible different interpretation. This is all the more 
important for your method which in principle takes even a single 
counter-example as decisive - it can only be decisive if it is 
unambiguous.

To admit that wayyiqtol may express a coordination of two verbs 
("hendiadys" to use your words) is tantamount to saying that the 
way-element in such situations is nothing more than a simple cunjunction.

PK: I disagree. For example, Azerbaijani has a similar hendiadys idiom 
for "eat and drink", "yeyib ichmek" ("-mek" is the infinitive ending, 
"ye-" is "eat" and "ich-" is "drink"). There are several similar 
hendiadys idioms in the language. By your argument "-yib" must be 
"nothing more than a simple conjunction". But that simply does not fit 
the facts: "-(y)ib" is a gerund type verb ending which usually denotes 
sequentiality, thus (if this were not a special idiom) one would 
translate "having eaten, drink". Incidentally, re 1 Kings 18:41, in 
Azerbaijani one would use the hendiadys in most verb forms, but not in 
the imperative which is not "yeyib ich" but simply "ye, ich".

.. So again the map must be modified to fit the scenery! If the 
way-element in some cases is just a conjunction, how do you know that it is 
not a simple conjunction in *all* instances? (See situations with handiadys 
without wayyiqtol, 1 Kings 18:41 "eat and drink", Jer 2:19 "know and see", 
Isaiah 2:3 "go and ascend"). I have earlier shown that Origen did not 
differentiate between wayyiqtol and weyiqtol and that there is no 
difference between the forms in unpointed texts.

PK: This may simply be evidence that Origen didn't know much Hebrew. 
One would hardly expect him to, for he was a Christian of Greek origin 
living in a city where Hebrew had not been spoken as a living language 
for hundreds of years (hence the need for the LXX translation 
centuries earlier).

.. Let me add another argument, namely, that there is evidence that shewa 
at Qumran was pronounced with an "a"-sound. This would reduce or blot out 
any difference between a wa(y)- element and a we-element. One piece of 
evidence is Isaiah 34:6 where the word for "kidneys" in MT is written as 
KILE:YOT and the great Isaiah scroll has KL)YWT (shewa is written plene as 
aleph). If this is not a scribal error it suggests that shewa was 
pronounced as "a".

PK: I am not sure what MT you are referring to, but BHS has K.IL:YOWT 
here, and the schwa is silent after a short I. So this is no evidence 
for the pronunciation of a vocal schwa in a quite different 
phonological environment. Probably what has happened is that the 
writers of the Isaiah scroll read instead of the construct form 
K.IL:YOWT the absolute form K.:LFYOWT as in Jer 11:20 etc. and added 
their aleph according to that pronunciation. Or perhaps at that time 
the construct was pronounced more like the absolute. If so, I think 
this must be a special feature of this word. By the way, I would take 
the decisive difference between wayyiqtol and weyiqtol to be the 
doubling of the consonant rather than the vowel sound, and your 
example does not address that issue.

Two more questions:
(1) When you say that wayyiqtol is "past tense", do you defferentiate 
between "past tense" and "past meaning"? And if so, how do you know that 
wayyiqtol is "past tense" and not only "past meaning"?

PK: Well, what I mean is that in narrative wayyiqtol is used only in 
past contexts and is the most common verb form in such contexts. And 
in my posting which you quoted I am summarising the views of several 
list participants rather than trying to prove them.

(1) You say that X-qatal is "semantically marked for background". Can you 
tell what you includ in X-qatal? Do you really mean that what you include 
in X-qatal in any context in the whole Bible must be background 
information? And how do we identify "background information"? Is the 
definiton of "background" that which is expressed by qatal, or is there an 
independent method apart from the use of qatal by which we can find what is 
background, and thereby test whether qatal always is background?

PK: Same disclaimer as above about summarising the views of others. I 
am talking about narrative not poetry, which I know is a methodology 
which some question. If I understand Prof. Niccacci correctly, this is 
what he is saying from his much deeper understanding than mine, so 
perhaps you should ask him to answer this question.

I made some searches in three narrative books to find coordinated 
wayyiqtols. Some of them are:
Deuteronomy
3:1 "turned and went"
4:11 "came near and stood"
8:3 "humbled, caused to hunger, caused to eat" (hendiatris) 
9:26 "prayed and said"
17:3 "gone and served"
29:26 "went and worshiped"
Joshua
8:11 "drew near and came before"
8:14 "hurried, rose early, and went out" (hendiatris) 
11:17 "struck and killed"
22:9 "turned and left"
24:9 "sent and called
Judges
4:6 "sent and called"
9:7 "went and stood", "raised his voice, cried, and said" (hendiatris) 
10:8 "shattered and crushed"
13:10 "hurried, ran. and told" (hendiatris) 
13:11 "arose and went"
15:15 "took out his hand, took, and struck (hendiatris) 
19:6 "sat, ate, and drank" (hendiatris)
19:14 "passed and went"
20:47 "turned and fled"

You can hardly say that all the examples above are idioms. Rather, some of 
them are examples of how the Hebrew mind liked to express the same thing in 
two ways (paralellism). Even if all examples were special idioms, this 
would not blot out the important fact that the way-element of wayyiqtols 
serves as a simple conjunction.

No, I don't say these are all idioms. Many of them can simply be 
understood as normal narrative sequences e.g. Deuteronomy 3:1, 4:11, 
8:3 (?), 17:3, 29:26, Joshua 8:11, 22:9, Judges 9:7a, 10:8, 13:10 
(ran, then told), 13:11, 15:15, 19:6 (sat, then ate and drank), 20:47.

..  Too often we hear explanations of difficult passages such as: "But 
this is poetry", "But this is prophetic perfect", "But this is this.", and 
"This is that", as if such arguments would explain everything. Poetry does 
not change the semantic meaning of a verb and a label such as prophetic 
perfect does not blot out the fact that the qatal has futute meaning. 
Problematic passages must be explained by lexical, grammatic and syntactic 
arguments (and of course by the context) and not by the help of labels.

PK: I understand your doubts about labels. In your terms, I suppose 
the alleged prophetic perfects would be cases in which the prophet is 
projecting him/herself into a reference time at the consummation of 
the prophecy or in the last day and so looking at all events as past. 
If so one would at least expect consistency within a passage. But I 
don't see why you are so strongly saying that verb forms cannot be 
used differently in different genres composed at different times. I 
would expect to find some differences between Shakespeare's use of 
verbs and modern English prose usage.

Regerds
Rolf

Rolf Furuli
Lecturer in Semitic languages
University of Oslo

<my previous posting snipped>

Best wishes,
Peter Kirk