Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Peter Kirk <peter AT qaya.org>]

On 24/03/2007 07:04, Rolf Furuli wrote:
> Dear Harold,
>
> In the study of a dead language we can never draw a conclusion and believe 
> that this is the final word, this is the truth. But by the use of different 
> approaches we can try to come as close the the correct understanding as 
> possible. I have also applied my model to New Testament Greek, although I 
> have not yet analysed all the verbs of the NT. You are correct in your 
> observations that the aorist may have non-pastreference - it can even has 
> future reference (e.g., Jude 1:14). My  conclusion so far is that past tense 
> is not a  part of the aorist, but it represents the perfective aspect. I 
> take the imperfect as as past tense + the imperfective aspect, present as 
> the imperfective aspect, and future as future tense.
>
>   
Rolf, thank you for this interesting example, because it has led me to 
reconsider the idea of the "prophetic perfect", which we have discussed 
before on this list. Now here we have what looks like an example in 
Greek of the same phenomenon. In this case, Jude 14, the Greek example 
is, I understand, taken from a quotation from the book of Enoch, and so 
is a translation of a Hebrew original. Rolf, of course you know a lot 
more about this book than I do and can perhaps tell us what verb form 
was used in the original. But I note that this example is taken from 
what I take to be an apocalyptic vision of the future, Enoch (I think), 
relating a vision which he saw. He is telling the vision as something he 
saw in the past, although in fact he understands it (as does Jude) as a 
prophecy of something which will happen in the future.

Now this is not something which is unique to Hebrew literature, in the 
original or in translation. Conveniently following the letter of Jude is 
the book of Revelation, which is a series of visions of the future which 
John relates as something which he saw in the past. Maybe he did 
actually see something, or you might choose to interpret this as a 
literary device. And of course he mostly uses the normal Greek past verb 
form (I hesitate to say "past tense"), the aorist, see for example 20:14 
"Then Death and Hades were thrown into the lake of fire" - although 
interestingly, and for reasons I won't try to go into here, he sometimes 
uses a future tense, e.g. 20:7 "Satan will be loosed from his prison". 
The past tense in Jude 14 should surely be understood in the same way as 
these in Revelation. As this literature is usually described not as 
prophetic but as apocalyptic, I suggest that we call this kind of use of 
a past verb form the "apocalyptic past".

Lest we think that this is something which happens only in ancient 
apocalyptic literature in Hebrew and Greek, let us consider modern 
English literature of a similar nature. Modern science fiction novels 
are often explicitly set in the future, but they are at least in general 
narrated using the English past tense, the normal convention for novels, 
which are so written because they are presented as accounts written 
after the event. This is of course a literary device. Although I haven't 
read the "Left Behind" series of novels based on an interpretation of 
the events described in Revelation, I would be almost certain that they 
are also narrated in the past tense. And, although I don't have any 
examples to check at the moment, I would expect that the same is true of 
science fiction set in the future in any other language: the verb forms 
used are the normal narrative past forms. I know that in a large number 
of languages it has not proved problematic to translate Revelation using 
past verb forms. Thus this "apocalyptic past" would appear to be a 
cross-linguistic pragmatic feature.

The point here I suppose is that the author of the fiction or the 
narrator of the vision is writing as if from a deictic centre in the 
future, after the events being narrated. It is thus normal to use the 
past tense.

On this understanding it is wrong to treat the Greek aorists in Jude 14 
and Revelation 20:14 as counter-examples to any hypothesis that the 
aorist is a past tense. For, from the deictic centre, these events are 
in the past.

Can the same principle be applies to the so-called "prophetic perfect" 
in the Hebrew Bible? This perhaps depends on the context and genre. The 
vision in Daniel 8 is clearly of this apocalyptic nature. And therefore 
the WAYYIQTOLs in 8:6 etc must be understood as having past reference 
relative to the deictic centre, and in fact as being normal narrative 
past WAYYIQTOLs except that this particular narrative is an apocalyptic 
one of the future. Might the same be true of passages like Isaiah 
8:23b-9:6 (9:1b-7 in English), which is introduced with WH'XRWN "in the 
latter time" followed by a QATAL? A study of how far this principle can 
be extended to other QATALs and WAYYIQTOLs which have been described as 
"prophetic perfect" would be an interesting exercise. But this 
illustrates the danger of taking verb forms which are used to describe 
future events and classifying as "non-past", and so as counter-examples 
to a tense-based analysis, without properly understanding the genre and 
the deictic centre.

--
Peter Kirk
E-mail:  peter AT qaya.org
Blog:    http://www.qaya.org/blog/
Website: http://www.qaya.org/