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  • From: Harold Holmyard <hholmyard3 AT earthlink.net>
  • To: b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: Re: [b-hebrew] The JW outlook on the Hebrew verbal system
  • Date: Wed, 21 Mar 2007 09:03:47 -0500

TedBro AT aol.com wrote:
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?
HH: I am not familiar with the latest theory, but my understanding is that current ideas involve the possibility that there were originally two prefix verb conjugations, a long and a short form. The "conversive waw" would represent a phonological difference dependent on use of the original short form. There are occasional long form "waw conversives" and these are seen to be "secondary, analogical developments" by some scholars (Waltke-O'Connor, Biblical Hebrew Syntax, 33.1-2). So it is not exactly the waw changing the meaning of the verb, but two different verbs with different meanings, one of which is represented in the waw conversive.

Yours,
Harold Holmyard




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