Biblical Hebrew Forum

["Peter Kirk" <Peter_Kirk AT sil.org>]

Dave, I am simply repeating what I have heard about this from a
colleague, who has a Ph.D. in linguistics. I am not trying to claim that
WAYYIQTOL is always consecutive, simply that it often is, and that there
is no reason to interpret it otherwise either in Gen 1:3 or in the
opening verses of historical books which continue the historical
narrative.

I think this is the Niccacci article I mentioned:

Niccacci, Alviero. 1995. Organizzazione Canonica Della Bibbia Ebraica
tra Sintassi e Retorica. In Rivista Biblica XLIII: 9-29.

Peter

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Dave Washburn [mailto:dwashbur AT nyx.net]
> Sent: 16 August 2002 16:18
> To: Biblical Hebrew
> Subject: RE: My understanding of Gen 1:1-3
> 
> [snip]
> > Several books of the Hebrew Bible (but not Genesis) start with
WAYYIQTOL
> > verbs. But they are part of an ongoing narrative history of Israel
and
> > start with the next significant event in that history. A friend of
mine
> > has written a paper, which may be published shortly, on how the
books of
> > the Bible fit together in a framework using such verb forms and
other
> > discourse markers. Niccacci wrote something similar a few years ago,
in
> > Italian I think but that shouldn't be a problem for you.
> >
> Peter, I tend to agree with you about Gen 1:1-2 as you know, but I'm
> afraid Ian has you on the matter of the WAYYIQTOL.  Your
> explanation of books that begin with this form is weak at best,
> contrived at worst and tends to ignore the whole question of sources
> (which I'm not going to get into).  The fact is that Niccacci, Hatav
> and other recent writers on the topic suffer from a case of circular
> reasoning: we "know" that the WAYYIQTOL denotes sequence,
> therefore we approach texts that are simple narrative in order to
> prove it, and we know they're simple narrative because they use the
> WAYYIQTOL and it's a sequential form.  QED.
> 
> Of the recent works on the topic, I find Galia Hatav's the most
> exciting because of her work on the question of modality.  At the
> same time, questions of sequentiality and syntax are relegated to
> lists of statistics and selected, dare I say, obvious, examples that
> seem (probably unconciously) to have been selected somewhat ad
> hoc.  The questions I raised some 10 years ago have yet to be
> answered, particularly wrt to the extended passage in Judges that I
> presented.  The latter part of Judges 12 has several "chains" of
> WAYYIQTOL that cannot possibly be "sequential," in terms of time
> or "logical consequence" or any of the other common extensions of
> the term.  Ian mentioned the beginning of Ezekiel; Jonah 1:1 is
> likewise a problem, and I haven't seen any of the recent treatments
> deal with any of this.
> 
> The simple fact is that the WAYYIQTOL is not a "sequential" form
> and never was.  Even F. I. Andersen, in "The Sentence in Biblical
> Hebrew," while trying to preserve the idea of sequentiality, had to
> admit that in many, many cases the form begins a new section of
> narrative.  These kinds of exegetical back-flips are unnecessary
> unless one has some major stake in preserving the idea of inherent
> sequentiality.  If one does, one needs to get over it, to put it
bluntly.
> 
> Then again, I've noticed that in terms of linguistic theory, biblical
> studies tends to take about 50 years to catch up to everyone else,
> so perhaps my hypothesis only has 40 years to go!
> 
> ;-) (That last part was a joke, btw)
> Dave Washburn
> http://www.nyx.net/~dwashbur
> 
> 
> 
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