Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Randall Buth <randallbuth AT gmail.com>]

vayyixtov Rolf
>An argument of yours in a previous post in favor of Qohelet being
Proto-Mishnaic Hebrew was:

>>"and the frequent use of ve-qatal (50xx) instead of vayyixtov is 'low
>>dialect' not just Second Temple, and lines up with Mishnaic Hebrew."

>Below is the statistics of the use in Qohelet of QATAL  with prefixed
W (WEQATAL) and with prefixed $. Could you please show the list how
the use of the prefix-forms in Qohelet  "lines up" with Mishnaic
Hebrew?>


>VERBS IN QOHELET (TEMPORAL REFERENCES)

>WEQATAL

>Past: 24
>Present: 7
>Perfect: 1
>Future: 2 (not future perfect)
>Gnomic: 11
>progressive past: 1
>Modal: 2
>
>QATAL:
>
>Past: 44
>Present: 31
>Perfect: 31
>Future: 2 (not future perfect)
>Gnomic: 26
>progressive past: 1
>Modal: 1"

In the above list you have 1 progressive past. It is difficult to evaluate
without the Hebrew text.
Are you referring to something like
Gen 29: ve-neesfu . . . ve-galelu ... ve-hishqu "and they used to water"?
That is a usage that is not in mishnaic Hebrew, and it appears at
first glance not to be Qohelet.

...

> Moreover, in the book of Proverbs we find 150 QATALs and 41
>WEQATALs, and they have about the same temporal reference as
>the QATALs >


Do these really have "about the same temporal reference"?
Who is evaluating? Have you read Ohad Cohen's recent PhD
dissertation on the verb in LBH (Hebrew Univiversity, 2008)?
[A month ago you assured the list that the nature of 'take a stand' in
Gen 41 couldn't be perfective, After several direct challenges you
came  back and basically accepted 'taking a stand' can be viewed
'perfectively', though you quoted a different context and did not
mention that that reversed your first position and evaluation.
Everyone is allowed to reverse positions, it's just nice to have it
clearly stated and also to know who is evaluating what and how.]

And if the verb profile goes off the chart in one direction according to
most readers of biblical Hebrew, and it lines up with other features
of either LBH or mishanic Hebrew (I'm listing these as two different
dialects/registers, this is not a hendiadys though there are features
that relate to both) ,
then the probability becomes all the more strong that Qohelet is
not pre-exilic.

Prov 3:24
im tishkav lo tifHad
veshaxavtA ve-`areva shnatexa
if you would lie down you will not fear
and you would lie down and have sweet sleep

Prov 3.26
ki Y"H yihye bexislexa
veshamar raglexa millaxed.
for the L"d will be with your brashness
and will protect your foot from capture

Most Hebraists would read the veqatal in these verses and similar
verses as basically parallel to the prefix verbs. It is such examples
of tight congruence that are generally missing in Qohelet (but not
always!) and mishnaic Hebrew. the ve-qatal in Proverbs are often
(usually) in a context with prefix verbs while the ve-qatal in Qohelet
are not. When Qohelet has a parallel verb to a ve-qatal it is usualy
a qatal, like with mishaic Hebrew.

Qoh 2:5
`asiti li gannim upardesim
venata`ti bahem `ets kol pri
I made me gardens and parks
and planted in them all kinds of fruittree.

But as mentioned, Qohelet is complex. You mentoined 3 vayyiqtol,
there are also a couple of ve-qatal that look "traditional":

Qoh 2:24 and 3:13
she-yoxal
ve-shata
ve-ra;a
that he would eat
and would drink
and would see

Qoh 4:11
im yishkevu shnayim
ve-Ham . . .
ule-eHad ex yeHam?
if two lie down
and it will be warm for them [though may be read as particple instead
of ve-qatal]
and for one, how will it be warm.

So I would add the Qohelet verb to the two Persian words, some mishnaic
words, etc. (asuppot, ra`ayon, shilton, ben-Horim, pesher, kvar, zman ...)
The "ve-qatal" is different from normal biblical Hebrew.
It is frequently like mishnaic ve-Qatal, though if one wants to
read Qohelet as regular biblical Hebrew, then there are a
high number of contexts were an open-ended
reading (I was searching, I was saying ...) is forced.
The massoretes, of course, agree with the mishnaic verbal view,
since they never attach a final accent to a
1st or 2nd person sing ve-qataltA verb,
something that they  do elsewhere (75-80%) in the Bible, I suspect that
you don't like the massoretes but you would have to agree that they
side with a mishnaic view here. They could have continued their
practice from everywhere else if it was true that the Qohelet verb was
the same as everywhere else. So they become a testimony that the
Qohelet verb is different. Whether one reads with them or not.
(You may be surprised to learn that personally I give two recommendations
to students: if they are interpreting the MT, they should read the ve-
qatals as mishnaic [except 2:24, 3:13, 4:11], but if discussing the author's
style, they should include the possibility that he had an
uncharacteristically high incidence of 'open-ended' verbs.)

PS: on Hurvitz and 'P' we may be closer than you imagine,
when I said that Hurvitz causes a 'reevaluation' of Welhausen,
that is actually a euphemism for 'undermines'. The
"P-ish material" simply can't fit the Wellhausen schema linguistically.
Jacob Milgrom's work on Leviticus has paid appropriate tribute to Hurvitz'
work, so that today Leviticus studies need to be turned around. (Milgrom
did the Anchor Dictionary article "Priestly" material.) I have been quite
surprised over the years to watch German scholarship basically
ignore Avi's results.


-- 
Randall Buth, PhD
www.biblicalulpan.org
randallbuth AT gmail.com
Biblical Language Center
Learn Easily - Progress Further - Remember for Life