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b-hebrew - Re: [b-hebrew] re:the mystery of the vav-consecutive

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  • From: Peter Kirk <peterkirk AT qaya.org>
  • To: "Smith, Colin" <csmith AT bbc.edu>
  • Cc: b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: Re: [b-hebrew] re:the mystery of the vav-consecutive
  • Date: Wed, 25 May 2005 23:35:08 +0100

On 25/05/2005 18:27, Smith, Colin wrote:

... The Hebrew Bible was the first body of Semitic literature to present
sacred texts inprose form and it presented a unique circumstance in which a
verbal form was created to suit the needs of the text - a narrative of the
acts of a God of time/history rather than a god of nature.


This is an interesting theory, but I see a problem with it. A large proportion of the prose texts in the Hebrew Bible are narratives of history and/or legend. Although I accept that these narratives are not entirely non-religious, it is surely at least probable that these texts are at least in part a written form of a continuing tradition, probably originally oral, of history and legend - which would have also included stories about the acts of God or gods. For it is hardly likely that the biblical authors invented an entirely new genre for telling stories about the past. These pre-biblical narratives of the past must have had their own grammatical form indicating the successive events in a narrative. And, in the absence of any evidence to the contrary, it is surely highly probable that this grammatical form would have been the WAYYIQTOL or its precursor.

--
Peter Kirk
peter AT qaya.org (personal)
peterkirk AT qaya.org (work)
http://www.qaya.org/



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