Biblical Hebrew Forum

["Rolf Furuli" <furuli AT online.no>]

Dear Herman,

See my comments below.

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Herman Meester" <crazymulgogi AT gmail.com>
To: "Rolf Furuli" <furuli AT online.no>
Cc: <b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org>
Sent: Saturday, November 26, 2005 9:07 PM
Subject: Re: [b-hebrew] Hebrew grammar, (was Zech 6:8)


Dear Rolf,

Reading your reply I came to the conclusion that our ways of looking
at Hebrew syntax are miles apart. It will be very difficult to
reconcile our two views, for a number of reasons.
First, I see you mention examples found in the book Job.
It is my strong conviction that BHebrew prose and BHebrew poetry
differ completely in syntax. Canaanite poetry has actually its own
separate, "parallel" language, and poets are messy with yiqtol,
wayyiqtol, qatal etc. on purpose, to be able to reach audiences
speaking various dialects.
The same phenomenon is to be observed in Marocco in the Rif mountains.
There too, poets make syntax messy on purpose, and their language is
not one local dialect but uses various elements from all the dialects
they've heard, to give all hearers something to make them feel "at
home" in the (recited) poem.

If your work is based partly on poetry, we cannot discuss any further
I'm afraid. The syntax of prose needs its own description and so does
most of poetry.

RF:
My dissertation is built an the whole Tanakh, the DSS, Ben Sira and the
Inscriptions, it includes both prose and poetry. The syntax can be different
in prose and poetry, but the semantic meanings of verbs are the same. This
works for all languages. So, the meaning of WAYYIQTOL is the same regardless
of genre.

HM:
Secondly, I think it is impossible for the masoretes to have invented
the We-yqtl /wayyqtl distinction. It amounts to so much innovation,
whereas they rather intended to preserve. I cannot imagine that in
their discussions they agreed to invent something huge like that. If
ever anyone came up with the idea, they would have thrown him out of
the academy.
If you look at the accent signs, the margins, the countings at the end
of a book, and so on, it's all about preserving what they remembered.

RF:
The Masoretes would not dream of inventing anything new. They were extremely
careful to point and vocalize the text exactly as they heard it recited in
the synagogue. However, the recitation of a narrative text would probably be
different from the recitation of a hortatory or future text. My suggestion
is that verbs in a narrative text were recited with retracted stress,
causing a closed syllable with patah and gemination (the WAY- prefix), while
this was not the case with hortatory and future texts (which got the
WE-prefix). Since patah and shewa were pronounced similarly, this was for
the Masoretes simply a matter of stress and intonation and not a semantic
distinction. But later grammarians misunderstood this, and ascribed a
semantic
distinction to the difference between WE- and WAY-, and the consecutive
model was born.

HM:
I think by the way we should not underestimate the ability of the
human memory to memorise the entire Tanakh syllable by syllable. There
are thousands of non-Arabic speakers who memorise the entire Qur'an,
hardly understanding the meaning of a word, whereas the Jewish
"memorisers" are expected to know what they were learning, simply
because they used Hebrew for other purposes too.
In the mind of such a haafiz (someone who memorises the Qur'an) a lot
may come up, but not the idea of changing a little sound here and
there for clarification. I see no reason why the masoretes would be so
different in their treatment of a holy text.
To my knowledge, there are no references in say the Talmudim to
masoretes innovating their text in its phonology or spelling. That
doesn't mean anything, I haven't read it all, but have you found any
such reference? If it happened, people would have been discussing it
and it is very unlikely it would not have ended up in some anecdote in
rabbinic literature.

RF: When the Masoretes used gemination after the article and some particles,
or when they introduced pausal lengthening, this was not the introduction of
new semantic meanings. They did their best to use points and vowels
according to what they heard in the synagogue.  The same is true with
WAYYIQTOL and the other verb forms. In my view, two factors may have been
behind the Masoretic difference between  WAYYIQTOL and WEYIQTOL, 1) The
stress and intonation of narrative verbs versus other verbs, and 2) the
function of verbs (past reference in narratives versus modal and future
reference). The Masoretes pointed on this pragmatic basis without any
intention to introduce new meanings.

HM:
You are right I cannot prove the theory I'm defending here. The only
proof is its simplicity: C1-gemination explaining 3 phenomena at a
time! (the Arabic and Hebrew "definite article", and wayyqtl, each
"anchoring" their noun to "this world"). I think that is as good as
proof. In the further analysis of (way-/we-)yiqtol I refer to Hatav
2004, in order not to have to write it all down here ;)

Hoping to convince you some day,

RF:
Evidence will convince me.

Best regards,
Herman



Best regards

Rolf Furuli
University of Oslo