Biblical Hebrew Forum

["Yitzhak Sapir" <yitzhaksapir AT gmail.com>]

Dear Rolf,

Of course, just like sound changes, semantics also change in
languages, and the functions of verbs and the very presence of
different verb paradigms is common among cognate languages
and even among different stages of the language.  Thus, for
example, the development of the -n ending into an "energic"
verb form from an earlier imperfect and the development of
this imperfect itself from an earlier perfective verb in a
subordinate clause.  However, it is still possible that "cognate"
verb paradigms in different stages of the language or even in
cognate languages, will share similar semantics.  Even if they
don't, the verb presence of separate verb paradigms in different
stages of the language or cognate languages should alert us
to the possibility that there are similar separations (but perhaps
with different meanings) in cognate languages or later/earlier
stages of the language.

Thus, even if the meanings of the verb paradigms in the Amarna
corpus are not the same as the later stages of Hebrew, their
structure and separation could be useful for analysis of Hebrew.
In fact, the impression I got is that Rainey himself argues that
the meanings of the Amarna verb forms changed somewhat by
the time of Biblical Hebrew.  In any case, all you argue in your
response is that Rainey may be correct -- but he did not prove
it 100% and there are additional steps that need to be carried
out in your opinion.  Well, that may be true, but it is rare in
science, even natural or physical sciences, but certainly in
humanities, to be able to prove something 100%.  One can
provide a working theory and see how it fits.  As time goes on,
this theory is adapted to new evidence, and either it becomes
a robust theory that can explain a wide variety of evidence, or
it fails.  You essentially agree that Rainey provides a working
hypothesis that does explain the evidence.  At the very least,
then, even if you feel his hypothesis is in fact wrong but may
not yet have evidence to prove it so (as in"We should not just
reject his conclusions" -- my feeling / understanding is that
your intention was to say "We should not as yet reject his
conclusions" from the way the paragraph continued and from
the example you provided a bit later).

Given that this solution may be workable, and given that it is
one of the widely accepted understandings of the Biblical verb
system, you should try to see how your statistics work and
explain the text in light of his conclusions.  Thus, in analyzing
the consonantal text of the Hebrew DSS, you should consider
the possibility that ambiguous verb forms in relation to tense
are in fact two different verb forms that are simply spelled the
same way as far as consonants are concerned but were
pronounced differently and that they preserve separate
paradigms as in the earlier Amarna constructions, even if with
different semantics.

This gives special importance to such verb forms as Hiphil or
of the weak verbs where the difference should be discernable
even in the consonantal text of the DSS and even the
consonantal texts and vocalizations as late as the Massoretic
times would show maintain these differences.  However, from
links elsewhere it appears that you chose not to deal with
such forms in the DSS because plene spelling "varies widely."
This simply suggests you did not carry out your study far
enough.  Perhaps we can categorize the different types of
spelling and make some conclusions about how different
verb forms are spelled in each category of "plene-ness", for
example.  (This is the link for the "elsewhere" above:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ANE-2/message/2644
where it says, "Since plene writing varies in the DSS,
practically the only candidates for a possible morphological
identification as WAYYIQTOLs are the lamed he verbs.")

When one comes to the vocalizations of the MT, one must
again remember and maintain the problems of an oral tradition
that maintains an earlier text.  Deut 4:41 is a case in point.
Perhaps the Samaritan version might be of use here. Rainey's
explanation of this theory, as detailed in his Hebrew Studies
27 article, would expect the preterite form here, which should be
"yavdel" as opposed to the MT's "yavdil".  In contrast, in Lev. 1:17
and Lev 5:8, the word follows the negative "lo:" so here we should
expect the imperfect form, "yavdil".  HALOT on bdl says: "Sam
M72 yebdel etc = i!" but this short comment doesn't say on which
verse the SP reads this or whether it reads so for all verses (in
contrast, it details the verse in a comment two lines later).  If the
SP does indeed read yebdel for Deut but something else for
Lev, it would be one more example of how the MT spelling is
consistent with the (late) vocalization and may have lost or
harmonized important information regarding verb forms.

Dealing with the MT consonantal as well as vocalization text, then,
requires understanding of its place in history and so cannot be
easily mixed with the DSS evidence as is suggested by your post
("I basically use the unpointed text of the Tanakh and the DSS").
You seem to admit that the vocalization allows one to defend a
"four-component model" (what happened to vatiqtol in these "four
components"?).  You then claim that a strong case can still be
made for a two component model.  In other words, you seem to
say, "when I have unvocalized text, I can claim that one cannot
differentiate vattiqtol from vatiqtol, but when I have vocalized text,
the differentiation can still be defended but I can still make a
strong case that there is no difference."  The problem is that you
are moving from less information to more information, yet your
conclusions seem to imply that with less information you can
somehow be more conclusive than with more information.  This
suggests that you were not as careful as you should have been
when you had less information, and that in fact, something in
your analysis of the texts with less information (the DSS, when
Hebrew was still a living language!) is flawed.  The bottom line
appears to be that you admit that the vocalizations do not
permit you to make a definite conclusion regarding the verbal
system, only a strong case in your opinion but the main opinion
of scholarship apparently "can still be defended."

Best,
Yitzhak Sapir