Biblical Hebrew Forum

[K Randolph <kwrandolph AT gmail.com>]

Vance:

On Mon, Dec 17, 2012 at 5:47 AM, Donald Vance <donaldrvance AT mac.com> wrote:

Karl's non-answer aside,

My non-answer? Are not leading questions a more effective way to communicate and debate than simple statements?

 

we would, of course, assign a past time sphere, to use the question's terminology, and we would do so because the wayyiqtol pattern preserves or retains an old perfective form. The introduction to Leviticus makes this clear.

What old perfective form? Where does that come from? If it’s from the mythological proto-Semitic, why should we accept it as evidence? 

Or is the Wayyiqtol introduction a sign that the following is a narrative? Did you look at the introductions to all the narrative books? Didn’t you notice that except for Genesis and 1 Chronicles, both which start at the very beginning, all but a couple of the narratives, including a couple of the prophets who told their stories as narratives (Jonah, Ezekiel), start with Wayyiqtols? So rather than being a sign of the perfective, wouldn’t this be merely a sign of narrative, continuation?

Sent from my iPad

Donald R. Vance

dvance@oru.edu

donaldrvance AT mac.com

Going back to the question that started this thread, don’t the number of cases where the Wayyiqtol is found in non-past contexts make it impossible to say whether or not a single Wayyiqtol standing alone refers to a past event apart from a context that indicates past tense?

Karl W. Randolph.

On Dec 13, 2012, at 11:16 AM, "Dr. Frank Matheus" <post AT matheus.de> wrote:

Dear list,

 

if we perceived a text comprising only of one word, e.g. וַיֹּ֙אמֶר , to which time sphere would we sort the proposition, and why would we do so?

 

Frank