Biblical Hebrew Forum

[K Randolph <kwrandolph AT gmail.com>]

Randall:

On Fri, Oct 7, 2011 at 3:13 AM, Randall Buth <randallbuth AT gmail.com> wrote:

>
>
>   [rb] Well, in the above discussion on אני הולך it was the 'Russian' who
>>>>>> incorrectly cried 'foul'.
>>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>> [kr] Curious: in what way did the Russian incorrectly cry “foul”? What
>>>> was incorrect? Do you have Biblical examples to back up how it was wrong?
>>>>
>>>
>>> [rb] It was the 'Russian' who claimed that in hearing participles in
>>> present tense speech he "only heard" modern Hebrew, and that the
>>> Subject-Verb word order was "English". The thread showed that those were
>>> traits of Biblical Hebrew and were not grounds for criticism. I can't 
>>> change
>>> BH to be different from these in places where it isn't !
>>>
>>>
>> [kr] Let me refer back to what I wrote on the fourth, “To be serious,
>> when I hear people consistently speaking using a syntax where there is a
>> pronoun followed by a verb in a participle form in the same way as English
>> uses the present tense verb, it sounds like modern Israeli Hebrew which has
>> a tense based verbal usage.” We don’t find this pattern in Biblical Hebrew.
>>
>
> [rb] Thank you for confirming that you did "cry foul" and intended to
> negatively criticize, although in the intervening email you seemed to imply
> that you hadn't.
>

>From the context it was pretty clear, but I decided to play along to see
what you would say. Sure enough, you misrepresented what I said.


> In addition, on 3 Oct you wrote "and all I heard was what I understand as
> modern Hebrew." without any limitation or knowledgable discussion of the
> implied claim that it was not BH. Your comments definitely came across as a
> criticism and with not a little 'seemingly knowledgable', but
> hollow, suspicion. And now, here, the false statement: "We don't find this
> pattern in Biblical Hebrew." Not only do we find the pattern
> "pronoun+participle in actual present situations", but it is the default
> pattern!
>

Wrong! Yes you can find it for individual sentences, but not for sentence
after sentence after sentence, both statements and questions, without others
interspersing. One also finds the pattern (pro)noun+participle used for both
future and past events, so this is not a marker for present tense. Further,
we find examples like Exodus 5:2 “לא ידעתי את־יהוה” “I do not know YHWH” in
response to Moses telling Pharaoh to let his people go, a present tense use.
Pharaoh’s full statement is interesting in this context, “מי יהוה אשׁר אשׁמע
בקלו לשׁלח את־ישׂראל לא ידעתי את־יהוה וגם את־ישׂראל לא אשׁלח” “Who is YHWH
that I should listen to his voice to send out Israel, I do not know YHWH and
even Israel I will (indicating intention) not send out.” All present tense.
Nary one participle.

Another example, Isaiah 37:28 “ושׁבתך וצאתך ובואך ידעתי” “I know your
settling down and your exiting and your coming”.


>   It is the basic way for Jeremiah and Moses to communicate in BH. As I
> said before, I can't change BH just because it is roughly congruent to
> something in modern Hebrew or English. Your criticism and suspicion turns
> out to be the 'highly artificial' item to be avoided. The pattern is the
> correct basic BH pattern to use in classroom actual present situations. And
> drilling such situations and various verbs 500-1000 times would be wonderful
> for students and fairly quickly done in an engaging, spoken environment.
>

The reason the method is under suspicion is because those who most push it
are more at home in modern Israeli Hebrew than Biblical Hebrew, leading to
the expectation that those who teach it will teach a mixture of modern and
Biblical Hebrews, not a pure Biblical Hebrew. As a result, the student, in
order to understand correctly Biblical Hebrew, will have to unlearn some of
what he learned in class.

>
>
>> In fact, not all the times when a pronoun is present does it precede the
>> participle, e.g. Numbers 22:22. An individual sentence, yes, but not every
>> sentence. This was highly artificial and potentially inaccurate.
>>
>
> First of all, no one claims that a default pattern is the only pattern to
> use. But a default pattern can be correctly used untold number of times in a
> default situation. And a person must understand how and why changes from the
> default are being made.
>
> You mention Num 22:22 (it helps if you quote some words for easier
> verification).
> ויחר אף אלהים כי הולך הוא
> Don't you recognize that the word holex in הולך הוא has been pragmatically
> marked within the ki clause with a participle? Your quickness to criticize
> and quoting this example as 'contrary' leads me to think that you don't
> really understand these simple patterns of BH. You are incorrectly quoting
> "form" without reference to "meaning". Back to Numbers. The Lord was angry
> for his walking. That was a puzzling statement in the context of Num
> 22:20-22 because the previous verses told him to go with the men. That
> becomes a natural context to specially mark a surprising piece of
> information. 'Going' was not expected to lead to anger after telling him to
> go. 'Going' as a cause of triggering anger is surpising,
> contraexpected. The  "participle-Subject" structure is good BH, as a Focus
> structure, something that is part of BH syntax as well as many languages
> around the world.
> The fun part of this more accurate and nuanced reading of BH is that we get
> to focus on what the author wants us to focus. In Num 22:22 we get to ponder
> why the walking was angering God. The Bible doesn't explain, but it does
> mark the fact that the walking needs to have our attention. Perhaps God saw
> something wrong in Balaam's motives or in what Balaam wanted to do.
> Communication signals show us how to process the information but do not
> always supply all of the pieces. For further discussion on the structures,
> you are referred to an article available on the BLC website:
> http://www.biblicallanguagecenter.com/verbless-clause-article/
>

Now that you have mentioned “walking” here, that was another of my
criticisms. הלך in Biblical Hebrew had the general meaning of “going”, while
it included walking, it also included riding and even traveling by ship.
Also used as in “I am going the way of all life” said while sitting down.
Balaam in the example above was riding. From the context in the video, I
suspected the teacher meant the modern Hebrew “walking”.

>
> Best of all, such live teaching gives much more rapid input for students,
> leading them to a higher level faster, and gives them a more nuanced,
> naturally-acquired, starting platform as their language continues to grow
> through their readings.
>
> brakot (*barakawata or *bvrvkvwvtv is only the language of Karl, it was
> never BH, as was clarified in the other thread.)
>
> --
> Randall Buth, PhD
> www.biblicallanguagecenter.com
> Biblical Language Center
> Learn Easily - Progress Further - Remember for Life
>

Do you remember when the Jehoash forgery inscription came out? According to
news reports, unnamed scholars connected to Hebrew University in Jerusalem
(I hope you were not one of them) came to the last line where they found “to
repair” and that’s what told them that the inscription is a forgery.

For me, almost from the first line it felt funny, like an accent which one
cannot place. That made me suspicious. Some of it was clearly wrong. But I
totally missed the “to repair” as I was familiar with “ויתנו על־יד עשׂה
המלאכה המפקדים בבית יהוה ויתנו אתו עושׂי המלאכה אשׁר עשׂים בבית יהוה לבדוק
ולחזק הבית” found in 2 Chronicles 34:10.

Karl W. Randolph.