Biblical Hebrew Forum

["Nir cohen - Prof. Mat." <nir AT ccet.ufrn.br>]

karl,

>>> I don’t see that, because I find Qatal used for past, present and future,
including remote future. 

i recommend that you read rogland's 2003 work (thesis) on the future use of
qatal as "future". he shows that most of these cases are not really "future".
i discuss many of these example in my ch XX. often, the point is that although
the verb form represents a true future event, it is seen from a MORE REMOTE
point of view. this would correspond to the english WILL HAVE DONE. observe
that english takes a mixed approach here: WILL is future, HAVE DONE is (may be
used as) past. BH simply omits the WILL. this includes many examples in the
prophets, where they describe a future process (often,
destruction) viewed from the point of view of the destruction aftermath.

again, this is the use of qatal as RELATIVE PAST. now, if we insist on a
tripartite approach to qatal, using only absolute time, this cannot be 
explained.

the same point of view is also expressed in notarius 2011, with many examples
of the "future qatal".

>>> I find Yiqtol used for past, present and future. 

you are correct!!! for example, yiqtol describes REPEATED events in past,
present and future. now, i ask the following: what is the essence of a
repeated event, say "he fasts every saturday"?  "present tense" as in english
or "future tense" in BH? of course, we shall always reply: "present tense",
because we all have english as reference. but in greek the answer might be
even more complex than in hebrew (gnomic aorist has past, present and future
forms, if i understand correctly).

>>> I find both used for perfective and imperfective aspects. I find some
differences in modalities, but they both are used for indicative and
possibility modalities.

maybe you failed to make some more subtle distinctions here, and simply throw
everything into one big bag.

>>> What you describe may be true for modern Hebrew (a language I don’t know)
and maybe as early as Mishnaic Hebrew (another language I don’t know), 

you are wrong: all subsequent hebrew dialects are esentially tripartite. it is
often claimed that this represents the aramaization of BH during (or even
before) the babylonian-persian era. in this respect, much of the richness of
BH disappeared. many people have expressed the feeling that modern hebrew
sounds "flat" in comparison to BH. 

>>> but when you take Tanakh as a whole, is not true for Biblical Hebrew. It
seems true only by means of cherry-picking. 

you are choosing the easy way. i wish at some point you abandoned the
generalities and discussed details.

nir cohen