Biblical Hebrew Forum

["Rolf Furuli" <furuli AT online.no>]

Dear list-members,

All scientific studies are, and must be based on axioms and fundamental 
assumptions. If one fundamental assumption of a study of Hebrew verbs is 
that Hebrew *has* four conjugtions, then one almost inevitably ends up with 
four conjugations. The answer is given before one starts!

I am aware of one exception, namely, Alexander Sperber (and perhaps Cook, 
who ends up with three conjugations). He started with the old assumptions, 
but his advantage was that he studied the Hebrew text (including old 
manuscripts) and not only scholarly opinions regarding the Hebrew text.  On 
the basis of years of textual studies, he was able to show that the authors 
of Biblia Hebraica in many cases had changed the Hebrew text in order to 
conform with their grammatical views (we find the same in the apparatus of 
BHS regarding weyiqtols in "wrong" places etc.). He was also able to show 
that the uses of verbs in MT definitely contradicted both the tense-view and 
aspect-view of the finite verbs, and that there was no semantic difference 
between the YIQTOLs and the WAYYIQTOLs.

In addition to Cook and Smith, who give much insight into the issue, I 
recommend A. Sperber: "A Historical Grammar of Biblical Hebrew". 1966: E. J. 
Brill.  Reading Sperber will help against circularity and traditional 
thinking.

Best regards

Rolf Furuli
University of Oslo


----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Ken Penner" <pennerkm AT mcmaster.ca>
To: <b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org>
Sent: Wednesday, April 27, 2005 7:54 PM
Subject: RE: [b-hebrew] The mystery of vav-consequtive


> I expect Rolf Furuli will comment on this thread.
>
> John's dissertation is excellent, though I am still surprised that he
> defends the aspectual model.
> I will limit my contribution to the recommendation of Mark Smith's 
> readable
> and concise book,
> The Origins and Development of the Waw-Consecutive. ISBN 1555406025

> > I'd simply like to point toward John A. Cook's 2002 Wisconsin-Madison
> > dissertation, written under (my former classmate) Cynthia Miller, "The
> > Biblical Hebrew Verbal System: A Grammaticalization
> > Approach." It's out or