Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Harold Holmyard <hholmyard AT ont.com>]

Dear Shoshanna,

> It's based on Bereishi 4:1  "And the man knew"
>
> Rashi here notes that Cain and Abe (and their three sisters) were 
> born before the sin:
>
> (This is what it says in the notes to my English edition of Rashi: 
> "Rashi bases this statement on the syntactical rule that when, in a 
> naarative, a series of imperfects with Vau Conversive is followed by 
> a perfect, it has a pluperfect sense, the action it describes having 
> taken place previous to the event mentioned immediately before it")
>
> It's expounded in Bereishis Rabbah 22, in the gemara in Sanhedrin 
> 38b, which elaborates on Bereishis 4:1, and commentaries on the 
> gemara, in the midrash Pirkei de R' Eliezer, and the Zohar in 
> Bereishis 36b
>  

HH: Thank you for this information and point of view. I don't doubt that 
what Rashi claims sometimes happens. The perfect aspect is used in 
Hebrew to communicate pluperfect ideas, and the pluperfect sense has to 
be deduced from the context. However, it goes overboard to say that 
every time a perfect occurs after a string of imperfects with vav 
consecutive, one has a pluperfect. The string of vav imperfects is 
broken any time a noun stands first in a clause, and if it is a past 
narrative, a perfect verb will then continue the narrative. Genesis 4:1 
is the start of a new chapter, and chaper divisions were put in where 
there was thought to be a transition. So Moses may simply have wanted to 
signal a shift in the story by putting Adam's name first in the clause 
at 4:1, just as we might indent for a new paragraph, or start at the top 
of a new page to signal a new chapter.

Yours,
Harold Holmyard