Thursday, October 31, 2019

21st Century Bible Hebrew -- imperfect aspect, examples 2


The uses of imperfect aspect are as follows.
1.                  vav plus imperfect in VS order is “narrative past”, used within an episode to track the progress of the plot.
2.                  vav plus subject plus imperfect is a relative or coordinate clause.
3.                  without vav in SV order is possibly a true future tense usage.
4.                  without vav may also be an imperfect of process; this first turns up in Leviticus and may be a clue to the relationship between imperfect and progressive aspects.
5.                  vav plus imperfect in the 2nd singular or plural define the generalized or definitional envelope of commandments or refer to a known cultural feature.
6.                  in the 3rd person, in portions about sacrificial ritual, imperfect provides the framework for the ritual actions like the generalization envelope for a k’lal u-prat [u-k’lal] structure.
7.                  Preceded by ki or im is the “if” clause in a law, usually a tort. Again, this is an envelope to a klal uprat [uklal] structure.
8.                  part of a parallel structure in poetry and prophecy following a perfect verb as a parallel. They will not use the same verb root and sometimes not the same binyan.

We’re up to #5, commandments.  Imperfect aspect commandments in 2nd person usually are followed by perfect aspect verbs. It’s part of a rule called klal u-prat, a generalization followed by detail. Legally, it’s the definition of what has to happen for there to be a court case at all, followed by what consequences are actionable in court.

Probably the earliest such commandments in Torah are – not the Big Ten – but the laws of Pesach in Exodus 12 after the plague of darkness. 

ט אַל־תֹּֽאכְל֤וּ מִמֶּ֨נּוּ֙ נָ֔א וּבָשֵׁ֥ל מְבֻשָּׁ֖ל בַּמָּ֑יִם כִּ֣י אִם־צְלִי־אֵ֔שׁ רֹאשׁ֥וֹ עַל־כְּרָעָ֖יו וְעַל־קִרְבּֽוֹ:
י וְלֹא־תוֹתִ֥ירוּ מִמֶּ֖נּוּ עַד־בֹּ֑קֶר וְהַנֹּתָ֥ר מִמֶּ֛נּוּ עַד־בֹּ֖קֶר בָּאֵ֥שׁ תִּשְׂרֹֽפוּ:
יא וְכָ֘כָה֘ תֹּֽאכְל֣וּ אֹתוֹ֒ מָתְנֵיכֶ֣ם חֲגֻרִ֔ים נַֽעֲלֵיכֶם֙ בְּרַגְלֵיכֶ֔ם וּמַקֶּלְכֶ֖ם בְּיֶדְכֶ֑ם וַֽאֲכַלְתֶּ֤ם אֹתוֹ֙ בְּחִפָּז֔וֹן פֶּ֥סַח ה֖וּא לַיהוָֹֽה:

Translation: Don’t eat any of it soaked or cooked in water; but only roasted in fire, its head on its organs and its innards.
Don’t leave any of it until morning; what is left of it in the morning you shall burn with fire.
Thus you eat it: your loins girded up, your sandals on your feet, and your staff in your hands; eat it in a hurry, it is pesach l’****.

I’ll bring up verses 9 and 10 again when I discuss negation.

Verse 11 may not match how you run your Passover Seder at home, or a communal one you might go to. For example, right in the Haggadah it says that everybody reclines to eat, and that some rabbis stretched the party out until midnight, no matter how early it started (such as early in March when the sun sets sooner). That’s not exactly eating quickly in fear, as the second part of the verse has it.

There are discussions throughout rabbinic literature about which commandments in Exodus 12 applied only in Egypt, and which apply now. This detail (prat) in perfect aspect does not apply now. But the commandments for matso, maror, and finishing by midnight all still apply today.

Use of the imperfect for all the other verbs shows that they are the definition of the Passover observance. For all time. That’s why we still do things this way today.

Exodus 29:38-42 is a long stretch of imperfect commandments which define the tamid offering. It’s one long definition of what the tamid is. There are no perfect aspect verbs in it. If somebody went to court to claim that a priest did the tamid wrong, the court could ask which pratim did the priest violate. The person bringing the case would have no answer. As you read the rest of Torah, when you come to statements of ritual, notice what features if any are expressed in perfect aspect. Those are the only issues an earthly court can try.

And that is how BH grammar is the basis of Jewish law.

Thursday, October 24, 2019

21st Century Bible Hebrew -- imperfect aspect examples part 1


The uses of imperfect aspect are as follows.
1.                  vav plus imperfect in VS order is “narrative past”, used within an episode to track the progress of the plot.
2.                  vav plus subject plus imperfect is a relative or coordinate clause.
3.                  without vav in SV order is possibly a true future tense usage.
4.                  without vav may also be an imperfect of process; this first turns up in Leviticus and may be a clue to the relationship between imperfect and progressive aspects.
5.                  vav plus imperfect in the 2nd singular or plural define the generalized or definitional envelope of commandments or refer to a known cultural feature.
6.                  in the 3rd person, in portions about sacrificial ritual, imperfect provides the framework for the ritual actions like the generalization envelope for a k’lal u-prat [u-k’lal] structure.
7.                  Preceded by ki or im is the “if” clause in a law, usually a tort. Again, this is an envelope to a klal uprat [uklal] structure.
8.                  part of a parallel structure in poetry and prophecy following a perfect verb as a parallel. They will not use the same verb root and sometimes not the same binyan.

You’ve had examples of narrative past already but in case you have forgotten where they were, go to Mechon Mamre’s free online copy of Tannakh and go through the first five chapters of Genesis looking for them.

The relative or coordinate clauses (#2) include Genesis 2:5-6 about the difference between the world before man’s creation, and the ordinary world known to the audience of the narrator.

Genesis 4:14 had an example of a future use of imperfect, in Qain’s yahargeni. 

The first time we get an imperfect of process is Leviticus 1:9.
ט וְקִרְבּ֥וֹ וּכְרָעָ֖יו יִרְחַ֣ץ בַּמָּ֑יִם וְהִקְטִ֨יר הַכֹּהֵ֤ן אֶת־הַכֹּל֙ הַמִּזְבֵּ֔חָה עֹלָ֛ה אִשֵּׁ֥ה רֵֽיחַ־נִיח֖וֹחַ לַֽיהוָֹֽה:

Translation: Its innards and organs he washes in water; the kohen makes every thing smoke on the altar, it is an olah, isheh reach nichoach l’****

This verse is part of a paragraph that starts with a bunch of imperfect aspects that define what is happening so that everybody knows where they are as far as the sacrificial ritual. Then later material can just say olah for other offerings that are processed the same way.

Verses 4-8 contain a number of perfect aspect verbs showing what actions have to be completed to perform the ritual acceptably.

Verse 6 says to cut the animal up; at this point the innards and organs can actually be reached, taken out, and washed in water while the other actions, like flaying the carcass, are on-going.

It’s important to know that the basics of the olah sacrifice are covered in Exodus 29. That’s in the middle of the instructions for making the tabernacle. It’s also in the middle of the instructions for the consecration ceremony. Why isn’t this covered in Leviticus?

I have a discussion about that on the Fact-Checking blog. It’s based on something a rabbi said in some audio lectures on Talmud, which I took and ran with. It’s part of Torah being an oral tradition.

Thursday, October 17, 2019

21st Century Bible Hebrew -- The complete paradigm from the top


Now it’s time to start all over again and organize things by subject.

First, BH is not a tense language. It is an aspect language, like modern Arabic, Russian, and Chinese as well as ancient Semitic languages.

The aspectual world hinges on expressing repetition, process, or completion, in aspects called imperfec(ive), progressive, or perfect(ive). Russian and Arabic do not have the progressive aspect in morphology; they express the same concept in other ways.

Aspectual languages generally leave out the copula in equational sentences because equation is not one of the above.

Aspectual languages generally have a separate form that is called in when the nuances of the aspects don’t apply to a given context.

In Biblical Hebrew (BH), the uses of imperfect aspect are as follows.
1.                  vav plus imperfect in VS order is “narrative past”, used within an episode to track the progress of the plot.
2.                  vav plus subject plus imperfect is a relative or coordinate clause.
3.                  without vav in SV order is possibly a true future tense usage.
4.                  without vav may also be an imperfect of process; this first turns up in Leviticus and may be a clue to the relationship between imperfect and progressive aspects.
5.                  vav plus imperfect in the 2nd singular or plural define the generalized or definitional envelope of commandments or refer to a known cultural feature.
6.                  in the 3rd person, in portions about sacrificial ritual, imperfect provides the framework for the ritual actions like the generalization envelope for a k’lal u-prat [u-k’lal] structure.
7.                  Preceded by ki or im is the “if” clause in a law, usually a tort. Again, this is an envelope to a klal uprat [uklal] structure.
8.                  part of a parallel structure in poetry and prophecy following a perfect verb as a parallel. They will not use the same verb root and sometimes not the same binyan.

Next week I’ll start giving examples of these usages.

Notice how the focus of the imperfect on action, rather than completion, leads us directly to one of Olrik’s principles. The normal world of an oral narrative is the culture-related actions which the protagonist performs on his way to the denouement. Yes, he has to complete each one of them to progress through the narrative, but it’s the progress that matters, not the completion. This suggests a relationship between narrative past and progressive aspect, although narrative past is the normal verb form in narratives.


Thursday, October 10, 2019

21st Century Bible Hebrew -- segolate nouns


All right, let me catch up on something I didn’t discuss before because we haven’t seen an example.

Some nouns and adjectives have the vowel segol in both halves. When they conjugate, they do something even siach doesn’t do. Here’s melekh, “king” for an example.

Absolute
construct
Gender
מֶלֶךְ
מֶלֶךְ
singular
מְלָכִים
מַלְכֵי
masculine

A feminine adjective will be m’lachot in the plural absolute, and malkat in the construct singular.

There’s no adjective melekh that I know of, I’m just saying that when an adjective has segol for both vowels, change the vowels as you see here for the masculine plural, and use the feminine plural endings.

Perach, “flower”, is a special case because not only does it have a segol in the first syllable, it has the –ach ending that siach has. This word is an exception to the –ach nouns being feminine, too. So it’s perach, p’rachim, perach, pirchey. There are no examples of this in Tannakh but like it is pereq, “chapter”, the plural construct of which is pirqey, as in pirqey avot, “chapters of the fathers”, a famous Mishnaic tractate, parts of which are very well known and for which there is a commentary, Avot d’Rabbi Natan. You can read Avot d’Rabbi Natan here:

Don’t choke over the Hebrew having no vowels. There is an English translation under it. Their copy of Pirqey Avot is here.

There are vowels on that one.

Thursday, October 3, 2019

21st Century Bible Hebrew -- frequent verbs


Here is a list of the 30 most frequent verb roots in Genesis, sorted from least to most common.  Learn these verbs in all aspects in qal, and learn bo in hifil, BUT learn diber in piel (although the qal does come up from time to time) and you won’t have to use the dictionary nearly so much.  If you have bought Bolozky’s 501 Hebrew Verbs, you can use that; the Biblical Hebrew versions are much like modern Hebrew, which is what the book focuses on, aside from pesky things like modal morphology and narrative past and necessity. 


אהב
Love
חלם
Dream
אסף
Add
עלה
Go up
שים
Place, put, set
קום
Get up
דבר
Speak
ירד
Go down
ידע
Know
מצא
Find
שמע
Hear
מות
Die
ישב
Sit, live
עשה
Do, make
שוב
Return
ילד
Give birth
יצא
Go out
ברך
Bless
אכל
Eat
יגד
Tell
קרא
Call, name, read
ראה
See, look
הלך
Walk, go
לקח
Take, marry, buy
חיה
Live
נתן
Give, put, set in place
בוא
Come, go
היה
Be
אמר
Say