Biblical Hebrew Forum

[K Randolph <kwrandolph AT gmail.com>]

Jerry:

On Wed, Dec 5, 2012 at 10:15 AM, Jerry Shepherd <jshepherd53 AT gmail.com> wrote:

Hi Barry,

 

…

  

(2) The idea of the prophetic past tense probably arises from the desire to make passages like Isaiah 53 pertain only to a future figure, rather than being about a more immediate personage in the author's own time and context.

These were the traditional understandings, the attempt to make them fit the author’s own time and context is modern. 

 

(3) Having said that, I am, however, not convinced that the Hebrew verbal system is tenseless.

I agree with Rolf on this, but unlike him my understanding is by seat-of-the-pants reading the text, instead of careful analysis as he did.

 

  To be sure, context is the real determining factor, but it seems to me that it can be appropriately stated that there is at least a general tendency to use particular verb forms to describe past situations, others to describe present situations, and others to describe future situations.  Wayyiqtol is overwhelmingly past tense.  Qatal is primarily past and present.  Yiqtol is primarily present and future.  Qotel, when used as the main verb, is primarily present and future.  For these last two, I'd be hard pressed to say whether present or future is more predominant.

The weakness of this analysis is that one needs to analyze their contexts as well. Is the Wayyiqtol overwhelming past tense, or does it merely appear so to our Indo-European tense based understandings in that it was widely used in historical narrative? And as part of narrative, its purpose was to indicate continuation of narrative, not tense at all? How many Wayyiqtols are present or future, and in those cases do they indicate continuation just as in the historical narratives?

The same with Qatals.

Yiqtol is primarily present and future? How much of that is a result of the use of Yiqtol to represent intent (which is translated in English as “will” which makes the use appear to be future when actually indicating present actions) or the conclusion of an action? Or its use as a marker for subjunctive, and as subjunctive usually refers to present to future actions, and the apparent tense is a result of its use as a subjunctive than as a marker for tense?

 

  No one ever sits down and designs a spoken language, and I am not arguing that these verb forms were actually marked for tense.  However, usage over time tends to fall into patterns, and I would argue these patterns of usage developed over time.

And also changed over time. I don’t know which language was most influential in changing Hebrew to a tense based language, but what I’ve read that that change was done before the Masoretes, and probably led to many incorrect pointings of the text. 

 

(4) If, as seems reasonable, the Hebrew verbal system is best understood as being aspectual, we can still see how certain aspects would lend themselves to certain tenses.  So the perfect, understood as "action seen as a complete whole," lends itself to describing past actions.  So, perhaps it is possible for a prophet, when describing a future situation, to use a perfect form of the verb, and the use of that form would have been a bit jarring to the hearers or readers.  I wouldn't refer to this a prophetic past tense; but the use of the perfect could have a "certainty" or "wholeness" quality to it that would not be so easily conveyed by imperfect or participle.   Others may tell you I'm out to lunch on this one; and that may be the case.

Already your use of terminology muddies the waters. That you call the Qatal “perfect” and Yiqtol “imperfect” already predisposes you to think of them as tense or with a little stretching aspect. Because I see no evidence that the Qatal and Yiqtol coded for either tense or aspect, I now refuse to use those terms when denoting the Qatal or Yiqtol to try to avoid confusion in my hearers.

Oh yes, I think you’re out to lunch on this.   ..... ;-)

 

I, too, would be interested in seeing Rolf's comments.

 

Blessings,

 

Jerry

 

Karl W. Randolph.