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  • From: TedBro AT aol.com
  • To: if AT math.bu.edu, b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: Re: [b-hebrew] The JW outlook on the Hebrew verbal system
  • Date: Wed, 21 Mar 2007 07:01:40 EDT


Hi, All:

This is my first time posting... so please excuse me, if my comments go
astray.

I gather that the issue under discussion is the "vav conversive." KJV and
many other translations "convert" the Hebrew imperfect verb form (VAYIQRA)
to
the English past tense; "And He called". The selected example, Genesis 1:5 is

especially interesting because the verbal root QRA appears twice in the
verse, once in the imperfect, (VAYIQRA) with reference to God calling the
light
Day, and the second time in the perfect (QRA) where God calls the darkness
Night.

Logic dictates that in the narrative sequence these two actions both take
place in the past... so why are different verbal form used?

Rendering the imperfect as future and the perfect as past clearly does not
work here. AND... The idea that the vav converts the imperfect to the
perfect,
remains hard to swallow, despite the fact that it eliminates the problem and
makes for reasonable translation.

The NWT practice, as I understand it, is based on an attempt to convey
incomplete / ongoing action with the imperfect, past or future. Hence "God
began
to call" whereas the perfect is translated as a complete past "and God called

the darkness Night."

Is any one familiar with other translations that attempt to distinguish the
imperfect from the perfect? Or others simply acquiesce to the "conversive"
(regardless of how they rename it) despite its structural awkwardness?

Thanks,
Ted Brownstein



In a message dated 3/21/2007 12:04:07 A.M. Eastern Daylight Time,
if AT math.bu.edu writes:

Marjorie,

The New World Translation renders Genesis 1:5 as: "And God began
calling the light Day, but the darkness he called Night." To be
faithful to the Hebrew I would translate it as: "Then He called, God,
to the light Day, and to the darkness called Night." There is a
personal pronoun (YI) squeezed after the VA of VAYIKRA, 'then he
called', but none preceding the second KARA, 'called'. Of course, in
order to avoid a too atrocious English I am using "called" where the
Hebrew has "call" only.

The KJV has Genesis 1:5 as: "And God called the light Day, and the
darkness he called Night."

Isaac Fried, Boston University






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