Skip to Content.
Sympa Menu

b-hebrew - Re: [b-hebrew] tenses

b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org

Subject: Biblical Hebrew Forum

List archive

Chronological Thread  
  • From: "Vadim Cherny" <VadimCherny AT mail.ru>
  • To: "Peter Kirk" <peterkirk AT qaya.org>
  • Cc: b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: Re: [b-hebrew] tenses
  • Date: Fri, 23 Sep 2005 14:49:46 +0300

Anyway, etymology is largely irrelevant to current meaning.

Sure enough. And narrators employing ci-yiqtol did not dwell into its etymological future tense. ...

It is not etymological future tense, as is clear from cognate languages.


Now, that is curious. First you disputed that Russian speakers mean future tense when they write it in historical mood, which parallels English "future in the past" and Hebrew deictic shifts like in Gen2:6. I sent you an article on Russian grammar confirming my views. Now you want to dispute the same obvious fact for Semitic languages. Ok, go on. How is that clear from cognate languages that ci-yiqtol is not etymologically future?

... Note that deictic shifts and idioms are expectedly unusually common in emphatic decidedly archaic narration like than in Tanakh.

It is archaic now, but it was not archaic when it was written, it was the normal narrative form of the Hebrew of its time.

Of course, not! Isaiah, for example, deliberately used in Is53 archaic turns from Job. Other writers decidedly used wayiqtols to impute the sense of archaicity to the narration. Of course, writing in perhaps the fifth century, they were concerned to make their writings sound ancient.

Vadim Cherny




Archive powered by MHonArc 2.6.24.

Top of Page