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  • From: furuli AT online.no
  • To: b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: RE: [b-hebrew] Prophetic Perfect? Jer. 50.
  • Date: Wed, 19 May 2004 21:55:29 +0200

Dear Liz,

I have not stated the assumptions that you ascribe to me, and whether or not I believe that a person whose name was Jeremiah, who lived in the times of Zedekiah, wrote the book, is irrelevant from a linguistic and translational point of view. This is so, because even if a person a long time after Zedekiah wrote the book and pretended to be a Jeremiah of the 6th century B.C.E., he would naturally give the verbs a future reference. If he did not write "prophecies", people would quickly see through his scheme.

Therefore, when I say that except when a prophet (read:a book claiming to be written by a certain prophet) utters words of judgment against a present population, the default interpretation of a prophet's words is future, that is a descriptive statement and not a theological one. It does not require any particular view regarding the writing of the book.

To use the verb forms to find the time that is referred to by a certain writer is impossible. And to argue that by the use of this verb in the book of Isaiah, which is past tense, we unmask the writer. He pretends to be a prophet speaking about the future, but without realizing it, by the use of this and that verb, he shows that he writes after the events have happened. Such arguments are fallacious in my mind.
A very good example showing that I do not switch the meanings of the verbs around to conform to my hypothesis, is Psalm 107. If you in this Psalm manage to find a pattern on the basis of the YIQTOLs, WEYIQTOLs, WAYYIQTOLs, and QATALs I will admit that I am guilty of this switching. I also suggest that you take a look at the long lists of different Hebrew forms used with the same meaning in the works of Alexander Sperber, from 1938 to 1959. After studying these lists, I think that second thoughts regarding the use of verb forms to fix time would emerge in the mind of manu students.


Best regards

Rolf


Rolf Furuli
University of Oslo



Dear Rolf,
I don't agree that Jeremiah 50 speaks about a future event.
That katav is used in fact demonstrates that Jer. 50 is about
a past event not about a future event.
Now you assume that it is about a future event because you
say that Jeremiah lived in the time of Zedekiah and that
the fall of Babylon didn't occur until the time of Cyrus.
I don't assume this however. I assume that a later
writer added to the book of Jeremiah and wrote about a past
event.
You switch the meanings of the verbs around to conform to
your hypothesis that these are all the exact words of the
prophet who gives his name to the book.
Liz Fried
Ann Arbor






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