Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Rolf Furuli <furuli AT online.no>]

Dear Ken,

I agree with you regarding Sperber's conclusions, and I mention this in 
my dissertation as well.  The primary advantage of Sperber's grammar for 
the student of Hebrew verbs, is that the author presents so much data 
from the Hebrew Bible that contradicts the standard thinking.  The 
second advantage is that he draws conclusions that contradict the 
established tradition.  We should not study the sources in order to find 
conclusions that we can adopt.  But we should study the data material 
and test the conclusions.

I agree with you that Cook and Smith are worth reading. Nontheless, Cook 
does not disinguish between past reference/past tense and future 
reference/future tense, something which in my view is a flaw and which 
can question his conclusions. Smith's conclusions are based on the 
presupposition that imperfect consecutive do exist and that 
prefix-forms+waw in the cognate languages can be interpreted as 
"converted" imperfects rather than as imperfects with the conjunction 
waw prefixed.  This is of course questionable, and therefore his 
conclusions regarding the existence of particular examples are less than 
certain.

Another important source is L. McFall: "The Enigma of the Hebrew Verbal 
System" (1982). Sheffield:The Almond Press.  The author outlines the 
different views regarding consecutive imperfect from the Masortes and up 
to 1954. All the different data he presents show the shaky foundation of 
the waw consecutive hypothesis.


Best regards

Rolf Furuli
University of Oslo

Ken Penner wrote:

> 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
>
>
>
>
>