Biblical Hebrew Forum

[George Athas <George.Athas AT moore.edu.au>]

I agree with you in large part, Naama. Tense is indicated mostly by the 
deictic markers in the clause - that is, those elements that are not part of 
the verb, but which indicate something about the circumstance and context of 
the verb.

I think that tense is, ultimately, an unhelpful category that we 
European-language speakers have unhelpfully imposed onto Semitic languages. 
Yes, we need to think about tense in the process of translation, since our 
European-based languages employ tense as a basic communicative category. 
However, I don't think biblical Hebrew has tense, and therefore when trying 
to understand biblical Hebrew on its own terms, it gets in the way.

Both the simple noun clause and the participial clause are verbless clauses - 
there is nothing there to indicate tense. Hebrew is simply making basic 
equative statements in these cases: X = /X/. I would argue that since 
biblical Hebrew works on essentially presenting mainline actions to be viewed 
'live', that present tense is usually inferred from verbless clauses because 
the reader is 'in the moment' of the text.

BTW - great to 'see' you here!


Regards,

GEORGE ATHAS
Moore Theological College (Sydney, Australia)
www.moore.edu.au