Biblical Hebrew Forum

[yochanan bitan <ButhFam AT compuserve.com>]

RF:>> As a matter of fact there is no
>>distinction between
>> WAYYIQTOLs and WEYIQTOLs in unpointed texts. 

BR:>Why wouldn't you accept the LXX as fairly early
>distinguishing wayyiqtol and weyiqtol?

And you can add to that: Aramaic of the Dead sea materials. 
E.g. the Genesis Apocryphon uses 
Aramaic suffix verbs consistently for vayyiqtol in Hebrew (i.e. =proto-MT).

This is highly significant because it was an age of bilingualism when they
were still writing classical Hebrew. They knew what they were doing.
Yet they consistently changed the "aspect" of vyqtl Hebrew to vqtl Aramaic
when translating Heb to Aram. Also, the morphological short/long
distinction is found early Aramaic besides epigraphic Hebrew and Moabite.

The targums do the similar tense mapping as Qumran Aramaic, but they are
post-second temple, (except for Job and the Lev 16 document). 

The existence of an ancient (as early as can be traced) semantic/syntactic
difference between vayyiqtol and veyiqtol is a non-issue. It is a fact that
doesn't change just because someone considers it strange.

yisge shlamxon
Randall Buth
Jerusalem