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  • From: Uri Hurwitz <uhurwitz AT yahoo.com>
  • To: Rolf Furuli <furuli AT online.no>, b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Cc:
  • Subject: Re: [b-hebrew] A Jewish perspective on reading biblical hebrew
  • Date: Fri, 26 Nov 2004 11:38:55 -0800 (PST)



Rolf Furuli <furuli AT online.no> wrote:
Dear Uri,

If you are teaching students, I suggest the following test: Take a
narrative text of a page or so, and change all the finite and infinite
verbs into bare roots, to the point where there is no difference between
YIQTOL, WAYYIQTOL etc. Then, let your students translate the text
( they should be able to use a lexicon in order to understand the
lexical meaning of each root).

I would guess that those who have a relatively good grasp of Hebrew
would be able to translate the text rather easily, including the
temporal reference of each clause. If that turns out to be true, it
would show that the form of the verb (the conjugations) are less
important for grasping the broad meaning of a text, but they are
important for understanding the subtleties of the text.

I would suppose that the test would work quite well with modern Hebrew
as well.

Best regards

Rolf Furuli
University of Oslo

Dear Rolf,

Your point is well taken, and could possibly applied to modern languages in
general. In fact, we just recieved by E-mail a charming paragraph in which in
every signle word the letters were badly garbled, yet the whole was
nevertheless enirely readable and sensible.

On the other hand, one can think of verses and passages where no temporal
indication could be given by a root alone.

Clearly I have nothing against further refinement of grammatical and
analytical tools, but question whether the meaning of biblical original texts
is unneccessarily and wrongly declared to be obscure.

Best, Uri
>
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Date: Fri, 26 Nov 2004 11:51:26 -0800 (PST)
From: Uri Hurwitz <uhurwitz AT yahoo.com>
Subject: Re: [b-hebrew] A Jewish perspective on reading biblical hebrew
To: Karl Randolph <kwrandolph AT email.com>, Hebrew <b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org>
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I agree with your comment below, and also with your broad quantification.
When it comes to prose I would venture the guess that even more than 95% of
the text is clearly understood. Of course we are dealing with very ancient
texts that do require commentaries.
That not everything is fully understood even today, after the decipherment
of languages like Akkadian and Ugaritic, is beyond question.

Uri

Karl Randolph <kwrandolph AT email.com> wrote:

----- Original Message -----
From: "Uri Hurwitz"

> Now the mystery really deepens: if the above is correct, how could this
language have been in use for thousands of years, been translated to
practically every written language; how could commentators delude themselves
they understaood it -- since the the days of the Dead Sea Scrolls at least,
if its very basic verbal system defies comprehension?
>
> Perhaps it is simply the difference between the use of a language on the
> one hand, and the grammatical tools that are employed to analyze it, tools
> that by their nature are constructs and abstractions?
>
> Uri

How much do we know about the language?

After reading through Tanakh several times in Hebrew, I have now come to the
conclusion that we don’t know as much about Biblical Hebrew as we thought we
did. It’s like a person who knows only modern English who then tries to read
Shakespeare or the King James Version translation. Sure, around 95% is
understood, and the rest can be guessed at, but there is just that amount
that we don’t know, even though we think we do.

Because this is the book that founded Western society (though modern modern
trends have been a return to paganism) that has led to people translating the
book, even though some sections didn’t make sense. I have repeatedly said in
the past that it is demonstrable that the Masoritic points are sometimes
wrong, in fact I think wrong points is often the reason for Ketib/Qere in
Tanakh. Because 95+% is understood correctly in every detail, a translator
can muddle through the few sections he doesn’t understand completely to get a
final result that accurately covers all the main points.

Karl W. Randolph.
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Subject: [b-hebrew] The perspective of this native speaker of Modern Hebrew
of Biblical Hebrew tenses
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Shalom! My mother language is (modern) Hebrew, as is my mother's and my
father's. I have been reading the Bible in the original (MT version) since
2nd grade at the latest, by immersion rather than by rules, and have now
been teaching Biblical Hebrew to English speakers for a good number of
years. No, the usage of the verb forms in Biblical Hebrew is not identical
with that of Modern Hebrew (or Mishnaic Hebrew for that matter). In Modern
Hebrew Yiqtol is future, Qatal is past, and participle is present tense
(more or less). Mishnaic Hebrew is largely the same. It clearly isn't so
in Biblical Hebrew. And no, the perfective/imperfective distinction doesn't
work either. It works about half the time -- which is what you would expect
of a coincidence. My impression is that European scholars, used to
Indo-European languages with their complex encoding of time/sequencing/modes
by verb forms, are and have always been baffled by the Hebrew verb forms
which don't seem to work in the same way, and try to impose some
non-existent rules by any means possible. It just doesn't work.

Vav conversive + yiqtol form ("imperfect") is a past event in Biblical
Hebrew, pretty much always (at any case, I can't think of exceptions). The
very same action, though, can be encoded in the qatal form ("perfect") if
the author chooses to put the subject first, before the verb. And the
reason for that choice can be any number of things: it can be a focus on
the subject rather than the verb, it can be in order to mention an action
which is not a part of the same series of actions (which may or may not be
the equivalent of a perfect verb in English in a particular context), it can
simply be a signal for the end of a series of actions (as in the last verb
in Genesis 1:5a, which ends a list of actions of God that starts at 1:4).
There is a wonderful article by Mirsky (I hope I am spelling his name right
in English -- I know it in Hebrew) which claims that Hebrew can signal the
equivalent of punctuation by variants in word order -- I know the article
has been translated into English, but I don't know where one can find it.
In the original Hebrew the article itself is written with no punctuation
marks whatsoever -- and is perfectly legible, in fact very clear. Try to do
that in English! I have since encountered other Hebrew texts with Biblical
flavor, written by naive writers with no theory to prove, which also use no
punctuation marks but are very clear. A translation of the same into
English with no addition of punctuation marks creates gibberish.

Other than Vav Conversive + yiqtol verbs, and imperative (which of course
should be translated as imperative), any verb form in Biblical Hebrew can be
translated as past, present, or future, depending on context. Modality
(may, should, might, etc) is usually encoded by yiqtol without vav
conversive, but not always -- and certainly not all yiqtols without vav
conversive are modal. Times, sequencing, and perfect/imperfect aspects of
action are, in my opinion, encoded in the Bible when necessary by additional
words (hine, ata, achar, beterem, ka'asher, od, and many others). Most of
the time context is enough. If the action happened in the past, translate
it as a past tense; if it hasn't happened yet, translate it as a future
tense. Usually one has a pretty good idea... I am told that many languages
have no clear tenses or perfective/imperfective aspects -- Hebrew is not
unusual in this respect.

This doesn't mean that the different verb forms in Biblical Hebrew are
superfluous, or that the Hebrew verb system is either primitive or
degenerate. It is simply different. Biblical Hebrew verbs are much clearer
than English ones on matters of causation and intention: in English often
the same verb can be used for transitive action and intransitive action,
which never happens in Hebrew (they may be the same root but never the same
root/stem combination). In English one can stand on the floor, or stand a
glass on a table -- the only way to differentiate between the two is by
context. In Hebrew the verb itself would tell you whether it means to stand
(intransitive) or to stand something else (transitive). As all teachers of
Biblical Hebrew know, missing this point can lead to pretty funny
translations!

There is clearly a difference between Biblical Hebrew and Modern Hebrew in
the usage of verb forms like Qatal/Yiktol. But the difference is such that
native speakers can take it in stride -- they don't necessarily have to be
taught the difference, even as children. I think the situation is rather
similar to the difference between Shakespearian English and Modern
English -- they are different, but high schoolers don't get language lessons
before reading Romeo and Juliet!

Just my 2 pennies' worth,

Naama Zahavi-Ely
College of William and Mary





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