Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Uri Hurwitz <uhurwitz AT yahoo.com>]

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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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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>From nxzaha AT wm.edu  Fri Nov 26 17:53:21 2004
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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