Exegetical needs sometimes give rise to grammatical superstitions like the
ludicrous idea that Hebrew lacked tenses. See how many advocates of that
bizarre assumption are around, even though there is not a single language
around--nor could there be for obvious semantical reasons--that lack
tenses.
Chinese, for example, has tenses in adverbial format, but since there is
no
comparable constructs in Hebrew, Rolf et al want us to believe that
Hebrews
did not distinguish between past and future. Thus, exegetical needs
produce
not only the garbled grammar, but garbled philosophy.
Regarding the tenses and aspects, I posted a question before, and here
repeat the challenge: let anyone offer a single example (ok, besides
perhaps
a few grammatical errors) of a verb which is meaningless in its tense and
is
only meaningful if it has aspect. Something like "yesterday he will say."
I
contend there are no such entries in Tanakh, and all the thousand entries
that Rolf collected for aspects that are clearly not tenses, are clear
only
in the light of his preconceptions.
Best regards
Vadim Cherny
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