Biblical Hebrew Forum

["Ken Penner" <ken.penner AT acadiau.ca>]

Peter wrote:

> Ken, you obviously know much more than I do about Hebrew from 
> the Hellenistic period. Perhaps I went too far in suggesting 
> that the change to a tensed language was completed during 
> this period. I can point you to many authorities, from 
> Gesenius to Furuli, who agree that biblical Hebrew was 
> aspectual. It is well known that modern Hebrew is tensed. I 
> have certainly seen it suggested that this change goes back 
> to the Hellenistic period, but maybe at that period it was 
> only partial. 
> Perhaps you would care to enlighten us further about what 
> these verb forms actually meant in Hellenistic times.

Yes, many authorities do agree that biblical Hebrew was aspectual, but 
Gesenius and Furuli do not constitute examples. I do not recall that Gesenius 
claimed Hebrew was aspectual; GKC followed not Gesenius but Driver on this 
question. I have not seen Furuli cited as an authority outside of B-Hebrew.

At the time of the Dead Sea Scrolls, the verb forms were certainly not 
aspects (using definitions of aspect by Comrie and Binnick) but tenses or 
moods (the evidence does not decisively favour one of these two over the 
other, but a tense model has slighly more explanatory power for most Qumran 
documents).

Ken M. Penner, PhD
Acadia Divinity College