Biblical Hebrew Forum

["Ken Penner" <pennerkm AT mcmaster.ca>]

Rolf wrote:

> 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.

You seriously recommend Sperber's work? Certainly it is an example of
non-traditional thinking! Granted, I use it for the primary data collected
there, but not for his conclusions regarding the historical development of
Hebrew, especially its tenses. He certainly would not have agreed with your
aspect-based system, would he? IIRC, he saw two distinct dialects each with
one "tense", and when the literary output of these two dialects merged (in
the Biblical literature), it appeared that there were two "tenses." I think
we've come a long way since he formulated these ideas.

Ken Penner
McMaster/Hebrew