Biblical Hebrew Forum

[K Randolph <kwrandolph AT gmail.com>]

Chavoux:

On Sat, Jan 28, 2012 at 5:07 AM, Chavoux Luyt <chavoux AT gmail.com> wrote:

> Shalom the list
>
> I few recent threads has gone into pretty much detail concerning the rules
> of grammar and pronunciation of Biblical Hebrew. I know that when learning
> English in school it was one of my major frustrations that both the
> spelling and the pronunciation was so inconsistent. Why is it "feet"
> instead of "foots"? Why is the "ou" in "though", "through" and "thought"
> pronounced differently? (There are many more examples). The answer I got
> was simply that that was the way English-speaking people speak (and write)
> the language. They learn to speak it in certain way, but don't first learn
> the "rules" of grammar and spelling and then apply that to learn the
> language.
>

That’s because English is a mish mash of different languages combined
together and often distorted as they mixed together. As a result, tradition
rules on the writing, but speaking flows with the time.

But your point is well taken, how should we view Biblical Hebrew?

>
> My question is if we are not over-analysing the grammar and especially the
> pointing of the tanach?


I agree.


> No doubt the different regions in Israel had
> different dialects or at least different pronunciations (we evidence of
> this in Judges 12:6 (which interesting enough implies that the
> pronunciation of Gilead (trans-Jordan) rather than that of Ephraim was the
> correct one) up to the time of the New Testament (Mark.14:70 - here
> assuming they used Hebrew and not only Aramaic)). Even in modern-day Israel
> different pronunciations (in addition to the standard pronunciation) can be
> heard and outside Israel the difference between Azkenazi and Sephardic
> pronunciations still persists. Does it then make sense to look for "the"
> correct pronunciation of Biblical Hebrew (or of the nikkud)?
>

If we want to understand Tiberian Hebrew, we should certainly try to look
for the correct pronunciation of the nikkud.

However, it is a mistake to assume that the Tiberian pronunciation
preserved in the nikkud is Biblical era pronunciation.

>
> There was a long discussion on the meaning of katal, yiktol, wekatal and
> wayiktol in terms of being indicators of tense, aspect or something else.
>

This is an attempt to understand the written language that has been handed
down to us.


> Did the ancient Hebrews really think in those linguistic terms?


Of course not. They just spoke it, and wrote as they spoke.


> In
> Afrikaans it is quite common to relate past events using the present tense
> and it is perfectly understandable as having occurred in the past. Is there
> any reason that the Hebrews did not do something similar?


There is no reason, just what patterns do we find in Tanakh?


> And are we not
> making a mistake to use "counter-examples" to conclude that a certain
> "grammatical rule" cannot be true?


Depends on the rules being presented, and the counter-examples that
contradict the rules.


> I cannot conclude from the occasional
> use of present tense (usually in a narrative) in Afrikaans for past events
> that it is not really the present tense form of the verb. Are we not
> confusing ourselves by making the Hebrew Grammar more difficult than it
> need to be …


I think we are confusing ourselves, but it is not only Biblical Hebrew.

Like your English example above, so often the answer is that that’s the way
they spoke.

There are two reasons I see for the overly complex grammatical constructs:

1) many appear to be based on how the text is translated into other
languages, and

2) how many of the grammatical constructs are based on the native language
of the grammarian, and not on the language being studied?

How many of the rules are because grammarians often just like to over
analyze?


> … and are many pronunciations and grammatical "oddities" not
> simply indications of how biblical Hebrew was spoken at a specific time and
> place?


That is not counting variations based on that Biblical Hebrew was written
by ear, not according to strict rules, and secondly there were variations
caused by use, such as poetry to give a meter.


> The most important thing is surely to ensure that we understand it
> as correctly as possible?


Exactly. That’s why, after realizing that the grammatical rules that I
learned in class just didn’t work as I read through the whole of Tanakh
over and over again, I pretty much ignored grammar other than to recognize
forms (this is a verb, noun, etc.) until fairly recently as the question
came up here on this list. During that time, I read for meaning and
understanding, not for linguistic analysis.


> Before we draw all kinds of grammatical
> conclusions from those occurrences of "curious" language usage we
> occasionally encounter.
>
> Best Regards
> Chavoux Luyt
>

Karl W. Randolph.