Biblical Hebrew Forum

[MarjorieAlley AT cs.com]

Rolf ---

Thank you for your gracious and lengthy reply to what was indeed a personal 
question (albeit one which I thought was relevant since a scholar's 
underlying 
presuppositions may affect the direction of his research or even cause him to 
dismiss out-of-hand certain positions contrary to his working hypothesis.)

>>> The first time I realised problems with the understanding of the Hebrew 
verbal system was in 1961 when I read about it in the Foreword of the New 
World 
Translation. It caught my attention, but I forgot it until I read the book  
"The Enigma of the Hebrew Verbal System" (1982) by L. McFall.<<< 

Even if the details of the NWT foreword slipped your mind until you read 
McFall's treatment of the verbal system some twenty years later, I find 
myself 
wondering whether twenty to thirty years of reading a translation which 
emphasizes a particular POV of the Hebrew verbal system might not have had a 
subtle 
effect on your thinking when you later took up the topic in formal study? 

While I doubt if there is any way of assessing the psychological effect of 
twenty to thirty years' worth of reading phrases such as "and God proceeded 
to 
say," "and God began calling," "and God went on to say," etc. which reflect 
the 
NWT's stated purpose of "present[ing] the Hebrew verbs with accurate meaning 
and dynamism by maintaining a distinction between the perfect and the 
imperfect states of the Hebrew verbs,"  I think it not unreasonable to 
suppose that 
this constant repetition would indeed have some effect on one's thinking. 


>>> A situation not very different from this is seen in Hebrew studies from 
end of the 19th century and up to the present. A typical example is the 
creation of the ad hoc hypothesis of  "prophetic perfect," which was invented 
in the 
19th centuries. It has since been parroted over and over again in Grammars 
and 
Textbooks, but I have never seen any serious attempt to *prove*  it (See 
Gesenius-Kautzsch 106, n (p.312) and Waltke-O´Connor 30. 5.1e (pp. 489-490). 
And 
that is natural, since it is a psychological explanation, it requires 
aknowledge of the minds of dead prophets.
 <<<

Was "the ad hoc hypothesis of 'prophetic perfect' " really invented in the 
19th century?

I see that the editor of the Shottenstein edition of Tehillim, published by 
Mesorah Publications (Artscroll, an Orthodox Jewish publishing house) accepts 
the prophetic perfect:

"In Tehillim, as elsewhere in Tanach, future events are described in the past 
tense, because the prophet has seen these events in his prophetic vision."  
(p. xii, Editor's Foreword.)

I confess that I have no evidence regarding the history of the "prophetic 
perfect" interpretation, but I would be surprised to find that Orthodox Jews 
so 
readily adopted a 19th century "ad hoc hypothesis."  I would expect their 
understanding to go much further back, perhaps to Qimhi or Rashi?

Thank you again for responding to my previous post. I appreciate your 
willingness to discuss the factors which have influenced the direction of 
your 
research.

Kind regards,
Marjorie Alley   </HTML>