Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Peter Kirk <peterkirk AT qaya.org>]

On 07/03/2004 21:18, Karl Randolph wrote:

> ... And that the verbal forms gradually shifted away from the 
> Biblical forms to parallel the usages in the writers' mother tongues is again indicative that Hebrew was a 
> language used well only by an elite, and even they were not always very well versed in the language. 
>
>  
Trevor has answered the first part of this well. As for this second 
part, the verb forms in dead languages e.g. Latin are usually slavishly 
copied from those of the classical form, and not shifted (at least in 
form, maybe in function) to those of the writers' mother tongues. Your 
suggestion that the writers were not well versed in the language is an 
interesting one, although unlikely given the devotion of the scribes to 
the Hebrew scriptures and the extent to which these scriptures were 
copied. But if this idea is undermined by the fact that the verb form 
most thoroughly lost in Mishnaic Hebrew and I think in QH was the one 
which is most common and therefore most likely to be mastered first in 
BH, that is the WAYYIQTOL form.


--
Peter Kirk
peter AT qaya.org (personal)
peterkirk AT qaya.org (work)
http://www.qaya.org/