The fallacy of "prophetic perfect"

Classical Hebrew morphology and syntax, aspect, linguistics, discourse analysis, and related topics
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R.J. Furuli
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Re: The fallacy of "prophetic perfect"

Post by R.J. Furuli »

Dewayne Dulaney wrote:
As Jason noted, Rolf, this isn't B-Translation. While translation can be helpful, first and formost we should focus on comprehending the Hebrew. How do these perfects, prophetic or whatever, function in the context of the Hebrew sentences, paragraphs, and chapters where they appear? What information do they add? What nuances does the speaker offer by use of a perfect? Would another verb form have served as well to get the intended point across? These are all legitimate sorts of grammatical and linguistic questions (I'm sure there may be others) that we could look at in this discussion. The problem with focusing on translations for purposes of comprehension and analysis is that it feeds into or validates the old flawed assumptions about BH and ancient languages in general.

Dear Dewayne,

With all respect for you as a knowlegable student of Hebrew, here you have missed the point. The issue that I have raised really is an issue of Hebrew grammar. This is seen by the fact that “prophetic perfect” is discussed in Hebrew grammar books. And I cannot see that issues that are mentioned in Hebrew grammars should not be discussed on b-hebrew. The issue of translation has been a secondary issue in my posts. I have argued that the consequences of a grammatical rule that has no linguistic basis, is that Bible readers are misled as far as the temporal references of the words of the prophets are concerned.

You said: “How do these perfects, prophetic or whatever, function in the context of the Hebrew sentences, paragraphs, and chapters where they appear?” That is exactly what I have done. I have argued that that the perfects in future settings in the books of the prophets have a normal future meaning, and not a past meaning as the “prophetic perfect” rule implies.

Later this year, a book of mine will be published. Half of the book discusses Hebrew grammar. It shows that Classical Hebrew does not have tenses but only aspects. And it uses basic linguistic tools, such as “deictic time,” “non-deictic time,” “event time,” and “reference time” to show what Hebrew aspects really are. It also shows that Classical Hebrew only has two conjugations and not four.

Along the lines of your words that I quoted above, I discuss the differences in meaning when imperfects and perfects are used with future reference. I also stress word order. What is the difference in meaning when a substantive or pronoun is added before a verb in contrast when it is added after the verb? What is the difference in meaning when a perfect is sentence initial and does not have a prefixed waw in contrast when it has the waw? What is the meaning when two perfects with future reference stand together and none of them has a prefixed waw? —And many other syntactical question. This is a discussion at the core of Classical Hebrew.

The second part of the book presents my translation of verses from 110 chapters in the books of the prophets. These chapters have the following numbers of verbs, all having future reference: 697 perfects, 153 perfect consecutives, 378 imperfects, and 84 imperfect consecutives. These numbers are not what we would expect of contexts referring to the future.


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Re: The fallacy of "prophetic perfect"

Post by Jason Hare »

R.J. Furuli wrote:Dear Jason,

Yes, we are clearly talking past each other. The term "prophetic perfect" is a technical term related to Bible translation.

I give two definitions of “prophetic perfect" from Hebrew Grammars:

Davidson, Hebrew Syntax, 58–63:
The simple perf. is used to express an action completed either in reality or in the thought of the speaker.

Gesenius Hebrew Grammar (312, 313): “The prophet so transports himself in imagination into the future that he describes the future event as if it had been already seen or heard by him.

So, “prophetic perfect” is not a perfect used by a prophet to tell about the future, as you suggest. “Prophetic perfect” is based on the view that Hebrew perfect represents completed action. When Hebrew perfect is used by a prophet to describe the future, it is by definition, still completed—but that is in the mind of the prophet. I have claimed that this is pure nonsense. It is a psychological or parapsychological explanation that is not based on linguistics. When a Bible writer speaks about the future, his words are never completed, except in the few cases where the context show that the Hebrew perfect has the force of future perfect.

The issue of prophetic perfect is primarily a translation issue. My translation of 697 Hebrew perfects in the prophets with English future is unprecedented! It flies in the face of all Bible translations I am aware of. A great number of these perfects are in the extant Bible translations translated by English past or perfect, and sometimes by present. My claim is that the Bible translations in these cases misuse the Hebrew text, they use the technical term "prophetic perfect," which is fiction. The result is that the readers are confused, because they have difficulties in understanding to which time particular words refer.

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Neither Davidson nor Gesenius was talking about how one translates the perfects. They were talking about the use of the perfect (in Hebrew) being used in prophetic verses. It was the use of the Hebrew perfect that came into question. I don't see how you understand their statements otherwise.
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R.J. Furuli
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Re: The fallacy of "prophetic perfect"

Post by R.J. Furuli »

Kenneth Greifer wrote:
Rolf,
I don't fully understand the grammar of this discussion, but I think that you are analyzing future prophecies given in a poetic form as if they were prose. Since the prophecies include poetry, they are not really that literal and you are analyzing the verbs as if they were supposed to strictly follow the rules in prose. Maybe it is different when you analyze future prophecies given without poetry, but you only quoted poetic prophecies.
Dear Kenneth,

Your words seem to show that we have a different view of some sides of Classical Hebrew grammar. In my view, there is absolutely no difference between prose and poetry as far as grammar is concerned. The same grammatical rules applying to prose are applying to poetry as well. The difference between the two is one of structure, for example by the use of parallelisms in poetry.

I follow the simple rule that verbs that refer to the future, regardless of whether the text is prose or poetry, have future reference, and not past reference as the “prophetic perfect” rule requires.

If you have in mind particular rules that only can be used for prose and not for poetry, or vice versa, please let me know.


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Re: The fallacy of "prophetic perfect"

Post by kwrandolph »

I wish you guys wouldn’t use the term “perfect” to refer to the Qatal conjugation.

“Perfect” is a term denoting tense. But Biblical Hebrew didn’t have tense. For example, in prose narrations quoting speakers, the most common pre-Babylonian-exile structure of speech for action taking place at the time that the speaker mentions the action, is subject, verb in Qatal, optional object. Translating into English which has tenses, the translator should use the present tense for those Qatal verbs.

Years ago we had a grammarian from SIL who explained that the grammatical meaning of “tense” refers to verbal forms that denote point times—past, present, future—vis-à-vis the speaker as he mentions the action. “Perfect’ is a tense term referring to past action. Because the Qatal conjugation is used for past, present and future actions, it isn’t a tense marker. The same is true of other conjugations in Biblical Hebrew. Hence Biblical Hebrew has no tenses.

I call those conjugations “Qatal” and “Yiqtol” and avoid terminology that calls those “tenses”.

Karl W. Randolph.
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Re: The fallacy of "prophetic perfect"

Post by R.J. Furuli »

Jason Hare wrote:
Neither Davidson nor Gesenius was talking about how one translates the perfects. They were talking about the use of the perfect (in Hebrew) being used in prophetic verses. It was the use of the Hebrew perfect that came into question. I don't see how you understand their statements otherwise.
Dear Jason,

Honestly speaking, I become more and more surprised by your and other list-members' comments and using the "translation card", suggesting that the issue I raise is not a b-hebrew issue. From my first post I have discussed Hebrew grammar. I have argued that the concept "prophetic perfect," which is discussed in different grammars, is a psychologic or parapsychologic explanation that has no linguistic basis. This is clearly an issue for b-hebrew. I have also given examples of how different Bible translations render perfects in the prophetic books, with the result that the readers have difficulties in discerning the right time reference. I have also given examples of how the same passages can be translated without using the "prophetic perfect" hypothesis. This is exactly what Waltke/O'connor does. And they are not discussing Bible translation, but Hebrew grammar. And they have translations that illustrate hebrew grammar

So the grammatical issue is: Does Hebrew perfect (qatal) represent completed action, to the effect that when a prophet used perfect with future reference, the action represented by the perfect was already fulfilled in his mind? This is an important grammatical issue, and its answer will guide Bible translators.

I am also surprised by another side of this thread: The focus has been on the issue: Can translation issues that are related to grammatical theories be discussed on b-hebrew. So far, no one has addressed the real issue: Can the definitions of "prophetic perfect" given by Gesenius and Davidson be defended? Are there a linguistic basis for these definitions? Or is "prophetic perfect" pure fiction, as I claim.


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Re: The fallacy of "prophetic perfect"

Post by Kirk Lowery »

Let me step in here and clarify: this thread is absolutely within B-Hebrew's charter. And the discussion about "translation" is also within the charter. Translation is a form of interpretation, and puzzling out how to render a Biblical Hebrew text into a modern (or ancient) language is one way of figuring out what the text "means".

Now, setting aside my moderator's hat, I'll enter the discussion this far: it seems that the phenomenon known as the "prophetic perfect" is problematic because it does not have a unique morphological form distinct from the rest of the qatal forms, unlike, say, the yiqtol and the wayyiqtol forms.

In that case, how do we know that any particular qatal verb points to a future time or not? Are there genre features and patterns? Are there syntactic signals? Lexical or semantic clues? Or just the intuition of the reader? Or the eschatology of the reader?
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R.J. Furuli
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Re: The fallacy of "prophetic perfect"

Post by R.J. Furuli »

Kirk Lowery wrote:
Now, setting aside my moderator's hat, I'll enter the discussion this far: it seems that the phenomenon known as the "prophetic perfect" is problematic because it does not have a unique morphological form distinct from the rest of the qatal forms, unlike, say, the yiqtol and the wayyiqtol forms.

In that case, how do we know that any particular qatal verb points to a future time or not? Are there genre features and patterns? Are there syntactic signals? Lexical or semantic clues? Or just the intuition of the reader? Or the eschatology of the reader?

Dear Kirk,

Your questions are important. To the best of my knowledge, no scholar has been able to show that there are particular characteristics with verbs believed to be “prophetic perfect” compared with other perfects. So I think that intuition or the gut feeling is what is used.

The best attempt of which I am aware, is that of G.L Klein (“The ‘Prophetic Perfect’.” Journal of the Northwest Semitic Languages, 16 (1990) 48). Klein uses three requirements for the identification of “prophetic perfect: (1) the text must be sound, (2) the verb must have the indicative mood, and (3) the reference must be future. (p. 48). His conclusion is: “This study demonstrates that it is difficult, but possible, to prove the ‘prophetic perfect’ despite the grammarians’ numerous dubious examples.”(p. 59). I cannot find anything in Klein’s article that really support the “prophetic perfect.”

One example of “prophetic perfect” used by Klain is Isaiah 10:27,28, which I have quoted before. NJB says:

27 When that day comes (perf c ), his burden will fall (impf) from your shoulder, and his yoke from your neck, and the yoke will be destroyed (perf) 28 He has reached (perf) Aiath, he has moved (perf) on to Migron, he has left (impf) his baggage train at Michmash.

I cannot see any characteristic in the two perfects in verse 28 that is different from the perfect in verse 27.

Klein also uses Isaiah 11:8, 9.

NJB says:

8 A babe shall play (weqatal) Over a viper’s hole, And an infant pass (qatal) his hand Over an adder’s den. 9 In all of My sacred mount Nothing evil (yiqtol) or vile shall be done (yiqtol); For the land shall be filled (qatal) with devotion to the LORD As water covers (part) the sea.

Again there is nothing special with the two qatals in these verses.

I will also add Isaiah 9:5.
NJB says:

For a child has been born (qatal) to us, A son has been given (qatal) us. And authority has settled (wayyiqtol) on his shoulders. He has been named (wayyiqtol) “The Mighty God is planning grace; The Eternal Father, a peaceable ruler”

I will translate the two qatals and the two wayyiqtols in these verses with simple future. And the same I will do with the other verbs in the two examples above.

So back to your questions. I have never seen any scholar point out a difference between the supposed “prophetic perfects” and other perfects.



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Re: The fallacy of "prophetic perfect"

Post by kwrandolph »

R.J. Furuli wrote:… Hebrew neither has tenses nor aspects referring to completed time. But the issues need some elucidation. Tense is defined as “grammaticalization of location in time,” and words marked for tense will always show the same tense. For example, the words “went” and “thought” have an intrinsic past tense that never change. Tense is an objective property that is the same in all languages.
Not true. Not all languages grammaticalize location in time.

For example, in Cantonese, time is told by context, not grammaticalization. Different contexts can be used to indicate the pragmatics of time. To give an example:

• I go to the store. (Doesn’t tell when.)
• Yesterday I go to the store. (Past reference)
• I go do to the store. (The “do” is often used to indicate past action.)

And there are a few more ways to indicate past action that differ from each other. Hence, Cantonese doesn’t grammaticalize location in time.

I have heard that Japanese is the same in not grammaticalizing location in time.
R.J. Furuli wrote:The reason why we can say that Hebrew does not have tenses is that no verb form always refers to the future or to the past.
That is the definition of not grammaticalizing location in time.
R.J. Furuli wrote:The only form that could have been viewed as a tense, is imperfect consecutive. However, in my analysis of the 49,384 verbs in the Tanakh, I found that 997 imperfect consecutives have non-past reference. Therefore, imperfect consecutive is not a tense (there is a rather simple explanation why 13,539 imperfct consecutives have past reference).
Yes, that simple explanation is that they are used in narration of past events, i.e. history. Context indicates their past reference.
R.J. Furuli wrote:While tense is the same in all tense-languages (a few languages are tenseless), aspect is language specific. A failure to realize this is a cardinal error in Hebrew studies. In English, perfect represents the perfective aspect,…
Not true. Take the sentences, “I have worked there for 25 years. I enjoyed it so much that I still work there.” While English grammaticalizes location in time, it does not grammaticalize aspect (duration or quality of time), rather aspect is told through context. In the first sentence, we have the perfect tense, but the aspect could be either perfective or imperfective, depending on further context. In the second sentence, the aspect is imperfective as told through context and gives the further context needed by the first sentence to tell that the aspect in the first sentence is imperfective.
R.J. Furuli wrote:One problem with the definition of Hebrew verbs is that the aspectual properties of the English aspects have been projected to the Hebrew verbal system.
My understanding, based on when I was in class and was taught Tiberian Hebrew and was taught that that was Biblical Hebrew, and from reading Waltke & O’Connor’s description of late second temple Hebrew, is that the Hebrew used from late second temple period and later had adopted Indo-European grammar, which included aspects and tenses.
R.J. Furuli wrote:So, as you suggest, no Hebrew verb form signals completed action. as does the English perfective aspect. Hebrew imperfect, imperfect conjunctive, imperfect consecutive, perfect, and perfect consecutive all can refer to the past, present, and future, as well as to completed and uncompleted events.
This is an admission that Biblical Hebrew grammaticalizes for neither tense nor aspect.
R.J. Furuli wrote:The mentioned facts show that Hebrew does not have aspects like the English aspects. But they do not show that Hebrew does not have aspects. Hebrew does have aspects! But the definition of these aspects are different from the definition of English aspects.
I suspect that the Piel and Pual binyanim refer to repeated and/or continuing action. That is a type of aspect that is neither perfective nor imperfective.

What makes this difficult to ascertain is that in an unpointed text, the Piel has the same forms as the Qal except in its participles.
R.J. Furuli wrote:Best regards,


Rolf J. Furuli
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Same to you, Karl W. Randolph.
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Re: The fallacy of "prophetic perfect"

Post by R.J. Furuli »

Dear Karl,

You have made several good observations in your last post. One important observation of yours is that in narrative texts the past reference can be based on the context, and need not be an intrinsic part of the verb forms.

When it comes to aspect, you need to do some more reading. Aspect is always connected with a verb form, and it cannot be expressed by the context. English has one perfective and one imperfective aspect.

There are many different definitions of aspect, and it is dangerous to take one of these definitions and say: “This is the correct definition of aspect.” The best way from a linguistic point of view, would be to use the relevant linguistic parameters to define both tense and aspect. I will give a glimpse of this, and I start with aspect.

Apart from instantaneous actions and states, an event consisting of action takes some time. The time of the event from beginning to end is called “event time” (ET). When we speak about an event, often we do not refer to the whole ET, but our words make visible a part of ET. Please look at the examples below. In both examples ET represents the event of reading the Bible from beginning to end; the length of this reading event is not stated. In 1) the participle makes visible a part of the progressive reading after the beginning and before the end. Everything else in ET, including the beginning and end remains invisible. This part of the reading action that is made visible is "reference time" (RT). Thus, ET is an objective property. However, RT is a subjective property, because RT does not introduce anything new. But it makes visible a part of what already is there. This is the imperfective aspect in English. To use linguistic terminology: When the English imperfective aspect is used, RT intersects ET in the middle of ET and make a part of the progressive action of ET visible.

1) Yesterday John was reading the Bible.
2) John has read the Bible.

Example 2) also makes visible a part of ET, namely the end, and the beginning and the progression of the action remains invisible. Thus, when the English perfective aspect is used, RT intersects ET at the end. This is the perfective aspect in English. The English perfective aspect is in contrast with the imperfective aspect and objective property: It always shows that the end of an event is reached. The imperfective aspect makes visible a part of the progressive action of an event. But it does not signal that the event has not ended. Progressive action is made visible in 1). But the words “yesterday” and “was” shows that the event had ended when it was spoken about.

One reason why the Hebrew aspects are so misunderstood, is that the English aspects have been used as patterns. So the definition of Hebrew aspects in the view of many, including grammars, is "completed action" versus "uncompleted action."

There is a great difference between English and Hebrew aspects. The English aspects makes visible a small part of ET, and there are only two options, the middle of the event or the end. The Hebrew aspects have nine different options for intersections of ET by RT, and the breadth of the part ET that is made visible in each case can, in contrast with the English aspects, be small or wide.

The concept “tense” is much easier to grasp when we introduce the concept “deictic center” (C). This is the vantage point from which an action is seen. When the tense is future, reference time occurs after the deictic center (C>RT). When the tense is past, reference time occurs before the deictic center (RT>C). There is no present tense, because present verbs can refer to past present and future. But when the reference is present, reference time is contemporaneous with the deictic center (RT=C).

The conclusion is that aspect is the relationship between RT and ET, and tense is the relationship between RT and C. Both aspects represent time, but aspects represent non-deictime (time not seen in relation to a deictic center) while tense represents deictic time.



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Re: The fallacy of "prophetic perfect"

Post by kwrandolph »

Dear Rolf:

You are the only one I’ve met (we’ve met on line, though not in person) who calls “aspect” = “event time”. Further, no one else I’ve met or read about talks about making part of event time visible while the whole may remain invisible.

No one else that I know of talks about objective and subjective aspect. Aspect has been defined by every other source that I know of as an objective measure of time.

I was first introduced to the concept of aspect when I read J. Wash Watts’ book “A survey of syntax in the Hebrew Old Testament”, a book I don’t recommend today. The same definition he used in that book is the definition of aspect that was taught when I studied Russian, a language that grammaticalizes aspect. That’s the same definition of aspect that I learned while studying linguistics. It’s the definition of aspect I see on the SIL site, though the SIL definition is defective because of its brevity.

As a native American English speaker, I will repeat, English does not grammaticalize aspect. Rather, aspect is indicated by context. To give examples from what you wrote:

1) Yesterday John was reading the Bible.

What does this sentence tell us?
• It fixes the time (tense) when the action was done
• That John spent some time in the activity.
What does it not tell us?
* Is this a one-time event that is finished, or part of an ongoing practice?

If it was a one-time event that is finished, then the aspect is perfective.

If it is part of an ongoing practice, and the speaker just wanted to emphasize that John was involved in that practice yesterday, then the aspect is imperfective.

More information is needed.

2) John has read the Bible.

The same questions and answers apply to this sentence. Is this a one-time event (perfective) or a continuing pattern (imperfective)? The sentence doesn’t give enough data to answer this question. It doesn’t give the end.

To give an example from my own life, I have read Tanakh cover to cover in Hebrew. But that isn’t the end of it, rather it is part of a continuing practice of rereading Tanakh in Hebrew over and over again, including some today. Therefore, my statement in imperfective, because so far it has had no end.

Contrast that with another person no longer on this list, when asked if he had read Tanakh in Hebrew, admitted that he had done so “twice, 35 years ago”. In his admission, we have an end date. Hence his answer is perfective.

Besides perfective and imperfective aspects, there are other types of aspect, even in English. What ties them together is that they are types of objective measurements of time.

Now we come to the question, does Biblical Hebrew grammaticalize aspect? According to the definition that it is an objective measurement of time, no. Biblical Hebrew doesn’t grammaticalize for any measurement of time, neither tense nor aspect.

After reading J. Wash Watts on his interpretation of Biblical Hebrew grammar, I tried following his teachings when reading Tanakh, and found it impossible. It seems to work in a few select places, but not the whole. Basically, he said that Biblical Hebrew grammaticalizes for aspect, not tense.

In his interpretation, the Qatal when used for the future, is a perfective future, i.e. something that will happen only once or so sure to happen that it is as if it had already happened. That’s his take on the “prophetic perfect”.

These comments on J. Wash Watts are from memory from decades ago, I no longer have the book.

In closing, since Biblical Hebrew grammaticalizes for neither tense nor aspect, out of TAM that leaves us that Biblical Hebrew grammaticalizes for mood. Further that the moods are not necessarily the same as in English.

Wish you well,

Karl W. Randolph.
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