By Charles Halton on Friday, 15 June 2007 at 8:34 am
As we continue our series on the Kaufman School I thought I might summarize Stephen A. Kaufman’s article, Paragogic nun in Biblical Hebrew: Hypercorrection as a Clue to a Lost Scribal Practice.1 In this article Dr. Kaufman breaks from the traditional explainations of the “paragogic nun” found in Waltke and O’Connor’s grammar as well as Hoftijer’s explanation which WO more or less adopted.
Kaufman states that the paragogic nun arises out of a living scribal tradition that attempted to reflect earlier traditions or alternative dialects of Hebrew: “[A]t the stage of Hebrew reflected in the scribal tradition, the imperfect indicative forms with final long vowel did end in final nun, but the nun was not always pronounced…Nun assimilates to a following consonant in Hebrew; thus, in spoken Hebrew, an imperfect with long vowel would have been followed by a doubled consonant (the ancient consonantal Hebrew orthography would not indicate that doubling, of course); but in pause the now-final nun remains, in both pronunciation and orthography” (97).
Furthermore, Kaufman states, “The scribal curriculum of Ancient Israel must have included a lesson detailing when and when not to add a paragogic nun, in conformity with ancient practice” (97). The discussion goes on from here, examining individual cases of the phenomenon.
What do you think about Kaufman’s theory concerning the paragogic nun? How about his introduction of the scribal curriculum? We have seen the idea of scribal curriculum surface again recently in Christopher Rollston’s article in BASOR in which he tried to demonstrate a standardized scribal curriculum in ancient Israel based on spelling and orthographic conventions. Do you think a more or less standardized scribal curriculum existed in Ancient Israel?
- found in Solving Riddles and Untying Knots: Biblical, Epigraphic, and Semitic Studies in Honor of Jonas C. Greenfield ed. by Ziony Zevit et al (Winona Lake: Eisenbrauns, 1995): 95-99 [back]
Comments (6)
Category: All,Biblical Hebrew Language,The Kaufman School
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Comment by Simon Holloway
Made Friday, 15 of June , 2007 at 10:09 am
An interesting idea. Is this same distinction (between pausal and non-pausal forms) reflected in extra-biblical texts as well? I have wondered before about the presence of the dagesh in words like ×ר×ך (Gen 12:1) but, while I am familiar with the general notion of the paragogic nun, have never felt that it was particularly consistent.
Comment by Duane
Made Friday, 15 of June , 2007 at 4:38 pm
Charles,
I sure think there was a core standard curriculum. Notice my weasel word “core.” My attempts to pull all the evidence together and address the counter evidence keeps being stalled. And great posts like this one add to the stalling; now I have something else to consider. I once was aware of Kaufman’s paper on the paragogic nun but it had fallen in to the black hole that is sometimes my memory. I next megapost on scribal schools will come; I swear it will.
Duane
Comment by jake mccarty
Made Tuesday, 19 of June , 2007 at 12:12 am
Charles,
My thoughts:
1. We know there was a yaqtulu form with nun’s (however you choose to explain them), in Ugaritic.
2. The paragogic nun’s occur often, though not always, in Pause.
3. I think they were generally restricted to 3mp and 2mp forms, right?
4. Don’t forget Garr’s argument about their rhetorical function.
In the end, I’m not entirely satisfied with Kaufman’s explanation, especially with passages like Is. 45:5. I’m sympathetic to them being a historical vestige (which your quote and my reading of Kaufman suggested, rather than “alternative dialects of Hebrew” as you seem to have read), but I don’t know what more I can really conclude.
I’ve also never looked at them in Mishnaic Hebrew. That’s because I don’t own accordance.
As a corollary, the pseudo-cohortatives in LBH seem to be a similar phenomenon of historical spellings.
Comment by tim bulkeley
Made Monday, 10 of December , 2007 at 3:43 pm
Last time I looked seriously at paragogic nuns I was fairly convinced that most could be understood as a polite marker, this does not either explain all cases, but does seem to me to fit most… I never understood how W & O could go for the other semantic option… I must look more closely at the pausal hypothesis…
Pingback by Awilum.com » The Kaufman School: The Pitfalls of Typology
Made Thursday, 3 of January , 2008 at 8:34 am
[...] I return to a series that I started a while ago in which I summarize some of Stephen A. Kaufman’s writings and perspectives on semitics and biblical studies. I previously discussed his critique on the traditional employment of source criticism to the Hebrew Bible in which he said that higher criticism is a fruitless endeavor as well as his explanation of the paragogic nun. [...]
Pingback by biblicalia » Blog Archive » Biblical Studies Carnival XXVI
Made Thursday, 31 of January , 2008 at 7:04 pm
[...] eds. Ziony Zevit, Seymour Gitin, and Michael Sokoloff [Winona Lake: Eisenbrauns, 1995], 95-99). Charles Halton and Duane Smith brought the subject up last June, and it was revisited in January by Duane and by [...]
