Biblical Hebrew Forum

["Vadim Cherny" <VadimCherny AT mail.ru>]

> > > 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