Stand-Alone Perfect and Imperfect examples with identical 'time' meanings

[kwrandolph]

That means that instead of depending on medieval theologians to recognize what the text says, I need to look at grammar, syntax, context, word meanings to discover what the text says. Yes, it’s not uncommon that those clues give a different reading than how the Masoretes, based on medieval Hebrew, understood the text.

If there were such a dichotomy, I would agree with you. We need to consider the grammar, syntax, context, word usages, etc. This is, however, a false dichotomy. The choice is not between the points and all of these things.

How about the many times that the points don’t agree with the consonantal text?

In fact, I have a feeling that real mastery of biblical Hebrew grammar cannot be grasped without the points. I have not seen that your mastery of the grammar is strong enough to teach the language and present it to the next generation of Hebrew readers.

LOL! The attitude is mutual.

The fact that you don't distinguish between qal and piel in most forms doesn't speak well for your non-systematic system.

How would you distinguish between a Qal and a Piel in most forms in unpointed texts such as the DSS and earlier?

In all other languages I’ve studied, a change in form indicates a change in function. Do you know the difference in function between Qal and Piel? Do you have any idea of which contextual clues would indicate whether a verb is Qal or Piel? The participle derivatives indicate that the Piel exists apart from the Qal—what are the functional differences in the uses of the Piel participles vs. the Qal participles? How many times did the Masoretes incorrectly point a Qal as a Piel and visa versa? Did the Piel originally have certain forms that are not recognized today?

Until you can provide a functional substitute for the traditional grammar that covers accidence and phonology, your system is only your own.

As for accidence, how much of that is caused by incorrect for meaning pointing? As for phonology, what’s wrong with admitting that Biblical era pronunciations have been irretrievably lost? However, there are clues that the writing was originally a syllabary, not a true alphabet, in which every consonant was followed by a vowel.

I don't agree with the rabbis theologically, either. But, I don't make theological agreement part of my argument for every discussion that I involve myself in.

And you don’t insert any theology in your statements? When you wrote “Seeing the Bible as the product of human invention, just like the Iliad and the Aenid,…” how is that not a theological statement? Are you hypocritical when you post your theology and expect people to agree with you, but object when others post their theology? I don’t expect you to agree with my theology, but I expect you to be adult enough not to be offended when others post their theology, just as I’m not offended when you post your theology even though I disagree with it.

I don't need to agree with someone's theology, nor do I generally care about what people believe individually. We can settle discussions apart from theological matters. There's no reason that I need to agree with someone's theology when the question is on how to understand the language of a text. It's either well presented and well argued, or it isn't. Theology shouldn't come into play.

History comes into play. The claim that Moses wrote Torah is first and foremost a historical claim. It is a historical claim made in the text of Tanakh itself. Whenever I made mention of that historical claim, I meant it as a historical claim, not a theological claim. True, that historical claim has theological implications, but where have I brought out the theological implications? It is a linguistic and literary argument that there are evidences in Genesis that indicate that the compiler of Genesis used older documents to compile Genesis. Do you object to historical, linguistic and literary arguments in these posts?

By the way, other than quoting one of your theological statements, where have I made a single theological statement in this response?

Karl W. Randolph.

[Jason Hare]

Karl,

I'm truly not interested in going any further with you. Not on this, nor on anything else. You really wear me out with your constant repetition of the same tropes over and over. Your attempts to goad me into arguing with you have worn out. Please, consider me as having disinclined your invitation to conversation from this point on. Address whomever you wish, but consider me unwilling to respond to your comments.

Having said that, you will be reminded to keep your posts in-bounds of the rules of the forum. From this point on, I am your moderator, not your interlocutor.

Jason

[kwrandolph]

• The points often don’t follow the consonantal text

That's simply because they're making a correction because the text as it is doesn't make any sense. Nothing unusual here. This very thing should serve to discredit your point below.

While reading Tanakh, when I come across a Ketiv/Qere pair, I find that the Ketiv almost always makes better sense than the Qere.

• The point that cinched it for me—I read many years ago, where? I don’t remember, where it was reported that rabbis don’t consider themselves bound by the points, rather they may change the points and teach accordingly if they think the points are wrong.

If you're saying that the vowel pointings are infallible in the same way that Scripture as whole is, then you are wrong. No Hebrew scholar, much less a Rabbi, thinks this. You disproved this point when you talked about the Masoretes' willingness to amend the text. It's not infallible. Moreover, the Rabbis don't even consider the main CONSONANTAL text to be infallible. If you do, then that's your faith tradition getting in the way.

You bring up another issue, and that is theological. I won’t go into it at this time.

If even rabbis, with whom I disagree theologically, don’t consider the points on the same level as the consonantal text of Tanakh (the Masoretes already considered the consonantal text as having copyist errors, hence the Kethiv/Qere “corrections”), why should I consider the points as without error? Why should I even follow them? Why not go back to the original and read the unpointed text?

Like I said above, they don't consider it infallible. Nobody does (or at least, nobody should). The vowel points are secondary to the text, which is the very reason why the editors were so willing to amend the text. They CORRECTED the text. And there were Jews on this board.

In closing, once again, nobody is saying that the points are infallible. They're not. They're a starting point - a best guess. Yes, there are mistakes and they are imperfect. But that doesn't mean you should jettison the system entirely.

Jonathan

When I studied Hebrew in college, the professor taught that the points were preserved Biblical era pronunciations or close to them. He was a graduate of Brandeis Hebrew graduate program. Though he finished his classwork for a PhD, the college where he taught didn’t give him time off to finish his dissertation. He did his classwork at Brandeis about 3/4 century ago, I doubt that the Brandeis program is the same as when he was there.

Where the points are wrong as in indicating an incorrect meaning, they are a distraction. Where they are right, which is most of the time, they are clutter on the page. It’s just easier to read clean type on the page. I also find it easier to read using archaic Hebrew script instead of the Aramaic square characters. There are no points in archaic Hebrew script.

I don’t think I have any particular antipathy towards the Masoretic points. Rather I see them as flawed human invention that can serve as proof of nothing.

Karl W. Randolph.

[kwrandolph]

Karl,

I'm truly not interested in going any further with you. Not on this, nor on anything else.

Do as you wish.

Your attempts to goad me into arguing with you have worn out.

When did I try to goad you into arguing? You made certain claims, and all I did was to ask you for evidence to back up those claims. You were either unable, or unwilling, to provide that evidence.

Please, consider me as having disinclined your invitation to conversation from this point on. Address whomever you wish, but consider me unwilling to respond to your comments.

That’s fine with me. I don’t expect you to answer this post.

Having said that, you will be reminded to keep your posts in-bounds of the rules of the forum. From this point on, I am your moderator, not your interlocutor.

Jason

I will do as I usually do, discuss the language and things that may give insight into the language such as history. But I will not initiate anything outside of that realm.

I was uncomfortable when you brought up theology and intimated that your theology is superior because it is an atheistic theology. I would not have gone along with that except that you initiated that discussion. Did you notice how I shut down Jonathan Beck when he brought up a theological issue? Though part of the reason is because that theological issue involved a long, complex answer to explain, and I didn’t want to take the time.

Karl W. Randolph.

[Chris Watts]

I wish to make absolutely clear that I am not arguing or challenging anything in this post which I have been following closely. At this point I am a student in a classroom sticking his hand up and wishing to raise a few points:

1. What gives this generation, 1500 years later living in a totally alien world, culture and linguistic bubble as compared to the masoretes and Rabbis of those days, to exclaim "Hey you made mistakes"? They were so much closer to the left over original pronounciations, sounds and meanings than we are today surely? I would prefer to ask the question, what knowledge or wisdom did they have which was unfortunately lost to us and therefore causes us to doubt their admirable abilities.

2. Scripture was handed down scribe to scribe in both vocal and document, synagogues still flourished, that the preservation of both older texts and pronounciation was for a greater part retained? Old men to younger men, learned man to learned man, And that the scribes who cemented pronounciation were not necessarily influenced by medieval hebrew since they began their works around 400 Ad and continued on for another few hundred years, this is not Medieval. I have no doubt at all that they travelled all over the middle east bringing with them various pronounciation differences, they would have had more experience that any of us today, more knowledge and more authority, they had tradition, livelihood, cultural exchanges, they eat and drank the words, and no doubt even in conversation also. So who in their right mind alive 1500 years later, has any concrete authority to say: Rabbi Masorete, you had it wrong on that vowel, you made a mistake on that point, your grammar is a bit skew-wiff there"?

3. And finally, I wonder, is there no possibility at all that the very first scribe who decided to invent points came to his revelation by another older scribe who had perhaps assigned points to a whole scriptural chapter in 100 AD or 200 AD late one evening over a goblet of wine and few figs after hearing his students arguing over a few words with different pronounciations, and these different parchments that he wrote landed in the hands of later scribes having been handed down over many years. It is this hypothetical scenario that would establish further the credibility and authority of the scribes that gave us something that no other language in the history of the world has been able to provide from the Mesopotamian or near eastern lands. A level of such unsurpassed consistency in documents from different eras and historical timelines and having survived fires, temple destuctions and invasions that no other empire, country or land has ever been able to do with its own literature, including Rome.

Chris watts

[Jason Hare]

I was uncomfortable when you brought up theology and intimated that your theology is superior because it is an atheistic theology. I would not have gone along with that except that you initiated that discussion.

In this post I mentioned historical linguistic forms. You responded by referring to Mosaic authorship of the Torah and God mixing up languages at Babel in this post (both of these claims are faith-based and not historically supported). My response was to say in this post that it was problematic to just assume Mosaic authorship, to which you launched into your faith statement and how my non-faith is faith, etc. etc.

As I said, let's just stop engaging. You don't need to say anything further. I've set the record straight. You began it by declaring your faith statement as a rejection of historical linguistics. All readers can see that for themselves. I'm finished with the discussion. Stop trying to play the victim as if I somehow offended your gentle senses with my militant anti-religion. No such thing happened, and I didn't initiate ANYTHING about faith. I'm done.

[kwrandolph]

I wish to make absolutely clear that I am not arguing or challenging anything in this post which I have been following closely. At this point I am a student in a classroom sticking his hand up and wishing to raise a few points:

First of all, those are legit questions deserving of an answer.

1. What gives this generation, 1500 years later living in a totally alien world, culture and linguistic bubble as compared to the masoretes and Rabbis of those days, to exclaim "Hey you made mistakes"? They were so much closer to the left over original pronounciations, sounds and meanings than we are today surely? I would prefer to ask the question, what knowledge or wisdom did they have which was unfortunately lost to us and therefore causes us to doubt their admirable abilities.

How do we know that the Masoretes had the original pronunciations?

To give another example: we know that in spite of the written language having both consonants and vowels, that in the six centuries from the end of the Roman empire to the high medieval period, the pronunciation of Latin changed. Much of the change was caused by the fact that Latin had become a second, learned language spoken natively by no one.

Now we turn to Hebrew—the written language had only consonants. The last native speaker of Biblical Hebrew died about 500 BC. Until the 20th century, no one spoke any form of Hebrew natively. So for over a thousand years from the death of the last native speaker of Biblical Hebrew to the time the Masoretic points, what is the probability of people speaking different native languages with Hebrew only as a learned, second language, would manage to preserve Biblical era pronunciations?

Further, we have a few scattered references to changes in pronunciation. For example, the name יפת was transliterated by the early Greeks as Yapete. Centuries later the Romans pronounced it as Yupeter. The word לבי (lion) got transliterated as labaya. First century backwards Galilee pronounced ναζαρετ, never ναζαρεθ. The same with καπερναυμ. We find also the backwards Galileans saying ιεροσολυμα while the high fallutin’ educated people and those in the Diaspora said ιερυσαλημ. And was αββα a remembered Hebrew pronunciation for אב instead of it being an Aramaic pronunciation as assumed by many today? That pronunciation change was already evident among the urbane, sophisticated, third century BC Jews living in Alexandria who translated the LXX.

Besides pronunciation changes, there was a grammar change. We see the first glimpses of that change in the Book of Esther. By the time of late second temple period, the verbal conjugations had dropped their Biblical meanings to a pure tense-based system that has carried over to modern Israeli Hebrew.

Then there are some words that have different definitions in Tiberian Hebrew from what they had in Biblical times. I have seen no list of such, but I have seen some words whose meanings had been forgotten by the time the LXX was translated.

So what’s the probability that the Masoretes, basing their points on the changed pronunciations and changed grammar of Tiberian Hebrew, got the points correct for Biblical Hebrew?

2. Scripture was handed down scribe to scribe in both vocal and document, synagogues still flourished, that the preservation of both older texts and pronounciation was for a greater part retained? Old men to younger men, learned man to learned man,

See above.

And that the scribes who cemented pronounciation were not necessarily influenced by medieval hebrew since they began their works around 400 Ad and continued on for another few hundred years, this is not Medieval.

Again, see above.

I have no doubt at all that they travelled all over the middle east bringing with them various pronounciation differences, they would have had more experience that any of us today, more knowledge and more authority, they had tradition, livelihood, cultural exchanges, they eat and drank the words, and no doubt even in conversation also. So who in their right mind alive 1500 years later, has any concrete authority to say: Rabbi Masorete, you had it wrong on that vowel, you made a mistake on that point, your grammar is a bit skew-wiff there"?

Rabbi Masorete was already going around saying that the consonantal text was messed up. Your question applies equally to them, who were they to say that the consonantal text was wrong?

3. And finally, I wonder, is there no possibility at all that the very first scribe who decided to invent points came to his revelation by another older scribe who had perhaps assigned points to a whole scriptural chapter in 100 AD or 200 AD late one evening over a goblet of wine and few figs after hearing his students arguing over a few words with different pronounciations, and these different parchments that he wrote landed in the hands of later scribes having been handed down over many years. It is this hypothetical scenario that would establish further the credibility and authority of the scribes that gave us something that no other language in the history of the world has been able to provide from the Mesopotamian or near eastern lands. A level of such unsurpassed consistency in documents from different eras and historical timelines and having survived fires, temple destuctions and invasions that no other empire, country or land has ever been able to do with its own literature, including Rome.

Chris watts

Your final paragraph is pure speculation, with no evidence to back it up. While the evidences we have reveal significant pronunciation and grammar changes.

Good questions.

Karl W. Randolph.

[kwrandolph]

First of all, I expected you not to answer me.

I was uncomfortable when you brought up theology and intimated that your theology is superior because it is an atheistic theology. I would not have gone along with that except that you initiated that discussion.

In this post I mentioned historical linguistic forms.

You mentioned it, a few times, without providing any evidence to back it up.

You responded by referring to Mosaic authorship of the Torah and God mixing up languages at Babel in this post (both of these claims are faith-based and not historically supported).

One of the claims of the Bible is that it is an accurate history, down to the year, from the time Adam and Eve were expelled from the garden to after Cyrus took over the Persian Empire from his father-in-law Darius the Mede. We have a recorded history. In competition to that history, we have another history pushed by academics, a history where there are people who point it out as being flakey and very likely wrong. But the academic mafia makes sure that anyone who questions their presentation won’t get an academic position. (I grew up in academia, I’ve seen the academic mafia in action.)

The question becomes, which historical claims do you trust?

My response was to say in this post that it was problematic to just assume Mosaic authorship, to which you launched into your faith statement and how my non-faith is faith, etc. etc.

From this and previous statements, you indicate that you are ignorant of comparative religions and philosophy. These are what I studied after dyslexia forced me out of STEM (in math heavy upper studies in science, my dyslexia caused me to garble formulae and misread numbers, hardly a recipe for success). Are you too proud to acknowledge your lack?

As I said, let's just stop engaging. You don't need to say anything further. I've set the record straight. You began it by declaring your faith statement as a rejection of historical linguistics.

Well, where is your evidence? So far, all you’ve presented is a statement that you expect us to take on faith. I’ve seen nothing from anyone else that is evidence for your statement. I don’t think you have any evidence.

All readers can see that for themselves. I'm finished with the discussion. Stop trying to play the victim as if I somehow offended your gentle senses with my militant anti-religion. No such thing happened, and I didn't initiate ANYTHING about faith. I'm done.

You? Offend me? Are you kidding? Don’t you realize that anyone who does original research, as I have done, needs to develop a thick skin and not be easily offended?

Is it not you who is offended, when I dare disagree with you?

Karl W. Randolph.

Ps. I expect you to follow your original intention, and not answer this.

[Chris Watts]

Karl wrote :

The last native speaker of Biblical Hebrew died about 500 BC. Until the 20th century, no one spoke any form of Hebrew natively.

Karl, I note your comments with interest. I have no knowledge of Greek at all, and having tediously attempted to read Angel Saenz-Badillos's book History of the Hebrew language, withot much success, I am in no position to question people who write on this subject. I do however take an issue with your above comment, surely this is speculation?

chris watts

[talmid56]

I would question it also, as those who have spent time with the non-Biblical Qumran documents consider them Biblical in their language and grammar. That is, part of classical Hebrew (as opposed to later forms such as Mishnaic). If so, this extends this date way past 500 B.C. to at least the first century A.D. Indications from language used are that the authors spoke Hebrew natively. What about the Hebrew of Ezra, Nehemiah, Esther, Daniel, Zechariah, Haggai, Malachi? Some of these were written after 500 B.C., surely. I see no evidence that they were written by non-native speakers. Those who have studied Mishnaic Hebrew posit that it was based on a spoken dialect of Hebrew. We have included in it discussions about Hebrew words and phrases used by non-scholars that the rabbis discussed. This would mean that the Hebrew of that period was not just a learned, scholarly second language.