From: "Julie Devall" <krena_li_mara AT hotmail.com>
To: b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org
Subject: [b-hebrew] Re: prophetic perfect
Date: Wed, 19 May 2004 04:14:04 +0000
Dear Rolf,
In case my posting was not clear (as I sense from subsequent posts), the
suggestion is that there is an alternative to the traditional notion of
"prophetic perfect". The passage references an event which is past - the
vision. I used the grammar as a jumping off point, showing the mental
gymnastics that must be done to understand a "future referring" perfect.
Perhaps my (instructor's) suggestion requires more gymnastics, but it
doesn't require a tortured grammar, nor some glimpse into the brain of the
author, just an understanding of the narrative frame of Isaiah.
Now taking the perfects as simple past yields two (or three) possible
conclusions:
1) Vision (as mode) predicting future events. Now ask me how I would
translate it, or how it should be translated for a mass audience, and I will
not have any idea. But that is a discussion for another day.
2) Liz's suggestion -Narrative about the events surrounding the time of
Isaiah, i.e., Tiglath-Pileser III...
3) Or, some combination thereof... (Hey, I grew up in the PoMo generation,
we can all be right...;)