The time has come the walrus said ...

In this post I suggest that the binyanim in Biblical Hebrew are best understood as functioning to indicate semantic roles rather than coding specific verbal elements such as voice. The semantics of each verb form is first considered, before I look briefly at the usage of the binyanim within the Old Testament text. The Qal Verb Form The Qal form of the verb is straightforward. Stative and quasi-stative verbs are conjugated for their semantic subject, and fientive verbs for their actor. For this and the the following verb forms I adopt a schematic notation to describe their semantics, with upper case letters for semantic roles and lower case for semantic relations. The Qal form of a stative verb has a subject S which is in some state denoted by s . Quasi-fientive forms, such as 'to know' may also have a theme T . Fientive verbs have an actor A and an optional patient P . The schematics for subsequent verb forms are represented in such a way that A , P and S always refe...

There is widespread agreement among scholars that Biblical Hebrew (BH) has a Qal passive which was subsequently obscured by the Massoretic vocalisation. Waltke & O'Connor 1 suggest there are some 160 verb forms which are probably Qal passive, rising to nearly 200 if participles are included. The version of the parsed Hebrew Old Testament that I have lists a more conservative 81 occurrences. The textual argument has a number of components. Firstly, it is argued that some suffix conjugation (SC) forms vocalised as Pual are actually Qal passive, as the Piel/Hithpael is unattested, has a different sense, or the Piel occurs less frequently than the Pual. Likewise, some prefix conjugation (PC) forms are vocalised as Hophal, but Hiphil forms are unattested or have a different sense. This leads to some verbs having SC Pual complementing PC Hophal. Further examples of Qal passive SC forms can be found improperly vocalised as Niphal PC forms. Finally, some participles have forms that ...

The rich variety of leaf shapes on deciduous trees make their identification relatively easy in the summer months. Some tree guides offer silhouettes of the denuded trees as an aid to their winter identification. In practice this is difficult, as not only are the differences often quite subtle, but you need a free-standing tree, both for it to adopt its textbook shape, and to be able to see it clearly. Bark can be a helpful identification aid, but only for a limited range of trees including birches, cherries and poplars. I have found it much easier to identify trees in winter (at least to the genus level) by means of their buds, and have found the rich variety of buds a source of endless fascination in itself. Below I offer pictures of the buds of ten common deciduous trees to give some indication of the range of bud types that may be found. Of course, even before looking at the bud itself, the arrangement of buds helps distinguish opposite-leaved and alternate-leaved trees. Most twi...

Many years ago, my wife and I, accompanied by our two young children, spent several years in China, teaching English and researching minority languages. For the last eighteen months of that period we taught in Jishou University in Hunan Province, and carried out research into the Tujia language under the auspices of the university. Besides a grammar of the language, published by Lincom, we produced a popular-level introduction to the Tujia, Imperial Tiger Hunters , which is now available as a free download (click on the link, the 5.5Mb PDF file is formatted for A5). The Tujia ethnic group are unusual among the 56 ethnic minority groups officially recognised in modern China. Very few of them speak the Tujia language, and the majority are not markedly culturally distinct from the Han population. As a result, although they are a very large group, they were not officially recognised until 1964, ten years after the original determination of ethnic groups. The reasons for this lie in their...

Between Josiah's death in 609BC, and the fall of Jerusalem in 587/6BC, Judah gets through four more kings; about par for Israel in one of her more unsettled phases, but decidedly high for Judah. There is considerable disagreement as to the precise year that each event in the period happened (due to uncertainty as to when the new year was considered to begin), but the sequence is clear. Below I suggest a possible sequence of events to try to explain why things happened as they did. My sources are the Old Testament (2 Kings, 2 Chronicles and Jeremiah) and the Babylonian Chronicles. I have not included Josephus' commentary as he is unlikely to have had access to any first-hand information. Firstly, one must understand that the Babylonian Chronicles (which unfortunately are not extant as far as the fall of Jerusalem) primarily record what the emperor (Nebuchadnezzar for the years of our interest) is doing, rather than what his army is doing. Nebuchadnezzar may be at home with his ...

Is it possible to define a globally applicable, height and prominence-free definition of a significant hill? As a child I could reel off the highest points in each continent and in numerous countries around the world. Soon after we were married, my wife and I made a point of climbing the highest summits at least in England, Wales and Scotland, although tentative plans to work through the Munros ground to a halt after three Cairngorm summits plus Schiehallion. All hills are worth climbing of course, because they're there, but are some hills more worth climbing than others? There are many lists of hills out there, of which the Munros are by far the most famous. But, stuck in East Anglia, with even the Peak District barely in range, and certainly nothing approaching 3000 feet, does that mean one should give up? Well, even in the South-East there are Marilyns. The definitions of a [significant] hill seem so arbitrary though, 3000 feet for Munros, 2500 feet for Corbetts, 150m promine...

In an accompanying post I propose a model to explain how the verb conjugations function in Biblical Hebrew. Here I seek to put my money where my mouth is by applying the model to the translation of a psalm. I should stress that the model was developed and tested on prose, as only with prose are clause boundaries (usually) obvious, and furthermore poetry may override standard word orders for stylistic effect. Thus some of the analysis and translation below is tentative as it depends on assumptions as to clause boundaries and structure. I chose Psalm 44 as it exhibits a good mix of clause-initial and non-clause-initial qatal and yiqtol verb forms, as well as frequent wayyiqtol . The accompanying gloss is stilted as I wanted to highlight the verbal semantics for each verse. The comments explain the resultant pragmatics and semantics, but you will need to read the post describing the verb model, and preferable the full paper to really get to grips with it. The NIV translation uses a ...