Jonathan Beck wrote:I didn't find his dissertation, but I did read about it. It was lambasted. You don't have a copy of it for a reason. I don't believe it was ever published.
Yes it was published. It was possible to buy copies.
Lambasted by whom? There may be ulterior reasons for lambasting his work apart from its quality, or lack thereof.
Jonathan Beck wrote:Others in the academy unanimously dismissed what he was saying as inaccurate.
His main thesis is that the verbal conjugations are tenseless. I had already come to the same conclusion years earlier based on my reading Tanakh, apart from a systematic study on that narrow subject.
Jonathan Beck wrote:But in light of the controversy surrounding him, I hope you understand why I don't consider what he says as "Gospel Truth" without question.
I don’t take his word as “Gospel Truth” either. For example, his definition of “aspect” is like nothing I have ever seen before, plus he denounced the definition found on the SIL definitions page based on his definition.
Jonathan Beck wrote:If you can make it through that paragraph without getting too angry, I will say this. Professor of Hebrew at Oslo, right? That's legitimate. He wouldn't be there if he weren't intelligent. But even good scholars have bad theories. Now, on to the main course...
Go ahead. Look at the points. Then tell me that I’m wrong.
OK! I'm in the process of going through Proverbs, as you say. Yes, there are feminine wayyiqtols because there are females as subjects, so that makes sense why they are feminine (I'm not sure what their being feminine has to do with your argument).
Because I called them “Wattiqtols” instead of “Wayyiqtols”.
Jonathan Beck wrote: But, I have found one so far, and I agree with you. It appears that they can be used to denote present action....
...in Proverbs. And other poetic texts.
I call it the Past Narrative tense for a reason -because it's used in past narrative texts. Therefore, it would stand to reason that it would serve a different function in poetic texts. I'm sorry I did not clarify that I wasn't talking about poetry. But it makes sense that this form would naturally have a different/more varied function in poetry, does it not?
Does poetry use a different grammar than prose? I say “No” therefore making poetry also source material on how to understand prose.
All verbs in historical narrative, except for quoted speech, refer to past events. That is irrespective of conjugation. It’s the context that makes that determination.
The most common use of the Wayyiqtol is in historical narrative. That’s to be expected from my understanding of the uses of the Yiqtol. My understanding is that one of the uses of the Yiqtol, the Wayyiqtol is the same, is that of a “secondary indicative” or “continuing indicative” that in historical narrative carries the narrative along by adding what comes next. In other contexts, it is to give more information about the subject. The latter use is the main use of Yiqtols (and Wayyiqtols) in Proverbs 31:10–31.
Jonathan Beck wrote:I'm planning to go through the wayyiqtol in Psalms as well to see if the same is true. It is much less common in there, I believe.
Jonathan
I was taught that the word “tense” means that certain conjugated forms indicate when an action takes place. For example, in English “go” and “went” (apart from “helper verbs”) refer to present and past actions respectively, just from the form of the verb. So when I say that the Biblical Hebrew verbs are tenseless, that means that the form of the verb, its conjugation, doesn’t determine when its action takes place, rather something else determines its action time; and in the case of Biblical Hebrew, that something else is context.
Karl W. Randolph.