Biblical Hebrew Forum

[K Randolph <kwrandolph AT gmail.com>]

Petr:

But how accurate is that tradition?

The only thing that can be reliably said about the Masorectic points is that they reflect a tradition as it existed at a time a millenium after Biblical Hebrew ceased to be a natively spoken language, after the grammar changed from the Biblical pattern to a tense based grammar, and after changes in pronunciation. How many of the points reflect the Masoretic understanding of grammar instead of the original grammar? How much did the tradition change over that millennium? How accurate is that tradition?

For example, one question that has been in the back of my mind for many years: what was the difference in meaning between Qal and Piel binyanim? What are the contextual clues that would have signaled to a pre-Babylonian exile reader to recognize when one or the other was used? Was Qal originally the sign of the perfective aspect, and Piel imperfective aspect? Do not the uses of the participles, where Piel/Pual are recognizably different from Qal, give clues that Piel is used for continuous or repeated actions, while Qal for one time actions? If so, how many Qals were incorrectly pointed as Piels by the Masoretes and visa versa, based on their understanding of grammar as it existed during the Masoretic period?

As a result, I take the Masoretic points as commentary, albeit ancient commentary, but no better than commentary, and all commentary is to be taken with a grain of salt.

Which brings back my question: when the Yiqtol conjugation is used with Lamed-He verbs has identical consonantal spellings for all binyanim except the Hitpael, how do you know which binyan was used for this verb?

Karl W. Randolph.

On Tue, Jul 2, 2013 at 2:13 AM, Petr Tomasek <tomasek AT etf.cuni.cz> wrote:

On Tue, Jul 02, 2013 at 01:09:40AM -0700, K Randolph wrote:
> Bryant:
>
> Two thoughts come to mind:
>
> 1) in the Yiqtol conjugation, in an unpointed text, there are no
> differences between the Qal, Niphal, Piel, Pual, and hophal for regular
> verbs. So how do you know which binyan was used for this verb?

But we have a pointed text which goes back to quite reliable
massoretic oral tradition...

Petr Tomasek