Biblical Hebrew Forum

[K Randolph <kwrandolph AT gmail.com>]

Robert:

On Wed, Sep 25, 2013 at 3:21 PM, Ken Penner <kpenner AT stfx.ca> wrote:

Karl is right that these two are Hebrew participles. Hebrew participles, unlike Greek, are not inflected for aspect (or tense for that matter).

 

I should caution you, though, that Karl’s views on Hebrew tenses are unconventional.

Unconventional? LOL! But not unique.

Unlike Greek, where we have numerous writings, inscriptions and other literature surviving from ancient times, Biblical Hebrew has only the Bible and a few surviving letters and other short inscriptions. That makes it more of a challenge to study the language.

Apparently from about New Testament times and later Hebrew was conjugated for tense. This was also a time when Hebrew was not spoken as a native tongue, rather it was like medieval Latin, spoken as a second language. Because these later forms of the language conjugated for tense, people for generations have tried to claim that Biblical Hebrew also is a tense based language.

Already a half century ago Hebrew scholars were challenging the claim that Biblical Hebrew conjugated for tense. The most common proposal among those challengers is that Biblical Hebrew conjugates for aspect, but that is not without its problems too, which makes some scholars return to the claim that tense is the reason for the conjugations. I’m among a small group that says that neither tense nor aspect, nor a combination of the two, explain the conjugation patterns we see in the Hebrew Bible.

Then there are other problems, such as the Masoretic points that are sometimes wrong as far as meaning is concerned (they don’t reflect Biblical pronunciation) and many vocabulary items are either unknown or uncertain as to their meanings. All this uncertainty should make you retreat back to New Testament Greek, which, though complex, is well known. 

In the New Testament I have only one disagreement—in ancient Greek society there were two main groups of religions—philosophically derived ones such as taught by Plato and Aristotle, and those dependent on getting a revelation. That revelation in Greek was called a μυστηριον, which revelation was a mystery (English meaning) to those who didn’t get that revelation. Unfortunately, too many people translate μυστηριον as “mystery”, not realizing that the two terms have almost opposite meanings. (A good example of what’s called the “etymological fallacy”.)

Because Biblical Hebrew is not that well known, not even by top experts with their PhDs (sorry, Ken), makes the Hebrew Bible a challenge, as well as a frustration, to those of us who study it. Yet, in spite of the problems, the main themes can still be recognized by undergrad students, advanced studies only fill in some of the blanks.

Karl W. Randolph.

 

Ken M. Penner, Ph.D.

Associate Professor, Religious Studies

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