Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Pere Porta <pporta7 AT gmail.com>]

Dear Karl,
At writing my mail I was thinking and intended to speak about the common
grammar sense or basic meaning of )HYH, namely the general pattern of verbs
lamed"heh (or lamed"yod if one prefers to say so) as concerns their Qal
Imperfect, first person singular (common).

This is clear, for instance, in Ex 4:12: "I will be", where the Vulgate
translates this word literally: "ego *ero*" = I will be.

Hearty,

Pere Porta
(Barcelona, Catalonia, Spain)

On Wed, Dec 23, 2009 at 4:52 AM, Shoshanna Walker
<rosewalk AT concentric.net>wrote:

> Except that G-d, who originated the Torah, Transmitted this
> particular Name to us in the future tense.  And as He is the Creator
> of the Universe, and of you and me, and of the Torah, He is the final
> authority.  And if He meant this Name to be "translated" in the
> present tense, He would have Said it that way.  And what man has the
> credentials/audacity to second guess G-d and say that He was wrong
> the way He transmitted His Name?
>
> You attribute to this phrase the meaning  "I am the Eternal".
>
> I can just as easily attribute the same meaning as yours to this
> phrase, by using the future tense as G-d transmitted it thus:  "I
> will [continue to] be that which I will be [and have always been -
> implied]" - ie; eternal - without changing the future tense as G-d
> transmitted this Name, to present tense, which people, other than all
> of our Rabbinical Commentaries, seem to have the need to do, to show
> that they "know better" than G-d, the Owner and Originator of this
> Name, in the first place.
>
> Shoshanna Walker
>
>
>
>
> In order to answer this question I would like to pose the following
> question. Imagine you are English and for some strange reason your name is
> "I'm" and then out of the blue somebody comes up to you and says "Could you
> introduce yourself please?". How would you do it in the confines of the
> English language. One of the most likely, and yet obscure, natural language
> productions is:
>
> I'm I'm
>
> where the effect of the first "I'm" is that of introducing oneself and the
> effect of the second "I'm" is that of saying your name. Could it be that we
> see a similar pattern in the Hebrew ehyeh asher ehyeh? Could it be that
> ehyeh asher is simply introducing oneself and that the second ehyeh was his
> name. The context certainly seems to support this view as further on in the
> context the name is repeated but this time as simply 'ehyeh' and not 'ehyeh
> asher ehyeh'. So that's the pragmatics. Now onto the semantics:
>
> If we are to accept the theory that the construction 'ehyeh asher ...' is
> communicating a name to follow and the name is 'ehyeh' then we get onto
> considering the semantic significance of the name. As has often been argued
> this is tenseless verb form with imperfective aspect. Something that is
> ongoing and not limited to any time frame of past, present or future. For
> this reason all of 'I was', 'I am', and 'I will be' seem to fail in some
> way. Of all of them perhaps 'I am' is best because even though it is
> strictly a present tense form it is often used with imperfective semantics:
>
> a) I am a man (this isn't likely to change anytime soon)
> b) I am a carpenter (has been, is and most likely will be)
>
> It is perhaps for these reasons that the LXX translates the second ehyeh as
> 'O WN' in an attempt to indicate some kind of tenseless permanence.
> Personally, I find it interesting to compare how revelations calls God the
> one who was, who is and who is coming indicating some kind of
> everlastingness existing in the past, the present and in the future. For
> me,
> this is what the name of God means. It is perhaps with this motivation that
> one translation has it as "I am the Eternal". I quite like this
> translation.
> It seems to be the only one that abandons grammatical translation giving
> priority to semantics.
>
> James Christian
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-- 
Pere Porta
"Ei nekrói ouk eguéirontai, fágomen kai píomen áurion gar apothnéskomen"
(1Cor 15:32)