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  • From: Alviero Niccacci <sbfnet AT netvision.net.il>
  • To: Biblical Hebrew <b-hebrew AT franklin.oit.unc.edu>
  • Subject: Re: <wayyiqtol> again (G.Hatav)
  • Date: Sun, 2 Jan 2000 18:00:45 +0200


Dear Galia Hatav,

Thanks for caring to comment on my post. See my reply below.

On 30/12/99 (Re: <wayyiqtol> again (G.Hatav)) Galia Hatav wrote:

1) < ... >
If I am not mistaken, by "tense" you mean the main temporal
construction in a certain text. Am I right? In that case, is it the case
that if a verb form is the main construction in text A but not in text B,
that form is a tense only with respect to text A? Your discussion on
<qatal> seems to suggest just that. That means that the forms change their
properties (from being tenses to not being tenses) from one text to the
other, which I believe is not good, theoretically speaking.

1) (AN) No no no, far from that. I must have expressed myself in a terrible way. Sorry. Qatal is the tense in direct speech when it starts the mainline of an oral narrative--in EVERY TEXT; x-yiqtol is the future tense when it announces future plans or events--in EVERY TEXT; the same for jussive & cohortative yiqtol, and imperative; similarly the nonverbal sentence (with or without participle) is the present tense when it represents the mainline of an exposition--in EVERY TEXT.

2) < ...>
What does it mean that <qatal> is not a tense in the FULL sense? Is
it possible to be tense only in part? What do you call <qatal> in the
narrative? What is its property?

2) (AN) It means that qatal in historical narrative is used for background information (= circumstance, comment, or the like) not for mainline, or foreground (= as a simple past tense).

3) < ... >
Why do you see <qatal> as the main tense if it only OPENS
direct speech (DS)? If we have a narrative within DS, as in 2Sam 1:6-11,
except for the first clause, all the clauses will be in <wayyiqtol> (just
like in regular narrative). Then why go according to one clause instead of
most of the clauses in determining the main verb form in DS?

3) (AN) Simply because no oral narrative begins with wayyiqtol, but wayyiqtol is used as a continuation form in both oral and historical narrative. This may be due to the fact that wayyiqtol is the only verbform available in BH for the mainline of communication with reference to the past. In other words, BH does not possess distinctive verbforms for oral narrative versus historical narrative as, e.g., Neo-Latin languages do, except for the beginning--i.e. qatal, or x-qatal, versus wayyiqtol. The examples I provided in a previous post prove exactly that.

4)
>Outside historical narrative, i.e. both in prose direct
>speech and in poetry, wayyiqtol is only used as a continuation form,
i.e. it continues a verbform that is not a wayyiqtol and shares its
>status.

Not true. This is what Driver implicitely suggested. One of the
main arguments Bauer had against Driver's theory is that eleven books in
the Bible start with a <wayyiqtol> verb. In checking beginning of segments
(relying on the Jewish division of the text, namely into PARASHOT PTUXOT
and PARASHOT STUMOT, I found many examples where a <wayyiqtol> clause opens
a segment and doe not continue another verb form.

4) Sorry, this is undoubtedly true if it is true that no oral narrative begins with wayyiqtol. -- The fact that eleven book begin with wayyiqtol is interesting. I studied this phenomenon five years ago in a paper that, if I amo not mistaken, I referred to already in this forum--it was published in Italian in _Rivista Biblica_ 43 (1995) 9-29, *Organizzazione canonica della Bibbia Ebraica. Tra sintassi e retorica.* I concentrated in the analysis of the beginning and end of the Biblical books. My criterion was that wayyiqtol indicates textual connection while other verbforms and constructions indicate disconnection. The result is that there appears a conscious *canonical* organization of the Biblical books. Specifically, a large narrative cycle emerges extending from the origins through the exile. It comprises not only the Pentateuch but also Joshua, Judges, Samuel, and Kings. The books of other collections are generally separate one from the other with a few exceptions. Among the Prophets, Ezekiel and Jonah are linked to the narrative cycle Genesis - 2Kings and to Obadian, respectively. Among the writings, Ruth is linked to Judges and Esther to Ezra-Nehemiah. A sophisticated and coherent editorial design for the whole Hebrew Bible emerges form the analysis. The design postulates a rather limited period for the organization of the whole Hebrew Bible, probably dating much earlier than usually thought. In my research I made use of two important studies--R. Beckwith, _The Old Testamnt Canon of the New Testament Church..._, and D.N. Freedman, _The Unity of the Hebrew Bible.

5) < ... >
Actually they are full tenses, i.e.
>they encode a FIX time reference, when they convey mainline of
communication;

Again, you may mean something different by "tense" than
past-present-future, in which case I might agree (depending on what you
mean).

5) (AN) Again, no. By tense I mean a fix reference in time--past, present, and future. English nicely distinguishes between chronological time and grammatical tense. What we have in a text is tense, not time. Tense and time may coincide or diverge. It is the author who decides, and the verbforms he uses reflect his decisions. IMO it is not correct to invoke the time of the event in order to establish the value of the verbforms. In other words, in the text we read the way the speaker/writer organized his information in a structured way--according to HIS time, irrespective of the chronological time. The time of the EVENTS themselves remains outside the tex and we have to recover it by interpretation. That is why I am always unease when one brings into the discussion of the verbal system the category of event-time.

<...>

A blessed New Year 2000.
Alviero Niccacci


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