358 The Testimony, September 2001 “walk away” is indicative of the hold which John Paul II and the Palestinian leader Yasser the Middle East has on the nations of the world. Arafat. As events continue to develop in the Mid- The article goes on to write of how the European dle East we should exhort one another as we see Union has been involved and how (in MacAskill’s the day approaching (Heb. 10:25). Let us remain opinion) there is scope for more involvement in faithful so that we might be with Christ as he the crisis. The Catholic Church is also increas- marches through Bozrah (Isa. 34:6) and moves to ingly becoming involved in the crisis. On 2 Au- Israel to carry out the “recompences for the con- gust 2001 a meeting took place between Pope troversy of Zion” (v. 8). 1234 1234 1234 EDITOR: John Nicholls, 17 Upper Trinity Road, Halstead, 1234 1234 1234 Essex, CO9 1EE. Tel. 01787 473089; 1234 1234 e-mail: [email protected] 1234 1234 Reviews 1234 1234 Some things that concordances do not tell you John Carder N ENGLISH the tense of a verb shows its That form is often referred to as the stem or root relation to time, that is, past tense, present of the verb. Itense or future tense. English is a very time- From that basic and most simple form, usu- orientated language, with distinct tenses. The ally consisting of just three Hebrew letters, all Hebrew of the Bible is completely different. It other parts of each Hebrew verb are derived. has no tenses in the strict sense. Instead it has That is done by adding letters in front of the root two ‘formations’, one related to completed ac- letters (prefixes), in between them (infixes) and/ tions and the other to actions regarded as con- or behind them (suffixes), and by modifying the tinuing over time. vowels. The formation denoting completion is called In Hebrew, both Biblical and modern, nouns the avar in Hebrew or the perfect in English, are either masculine or feminine, whatever they while the other is called the atiyd in Hebrew and refer to. There is no neuter. So there are four continuous or imperfect in English. It is best to forms that Hebrew nouns may take: masculine use those terms, and not to use the term ‘tenses’ singular or plural, or feminine singular or plu- at all. Both formations can refer to past, present ral. Hebrew verbs have similar but more com- or future actions or states, a feature which Eng- plex features, but their form is such that there is lish-speakers find hard to visualise. There are no mistaking whether masculine or feminine, subtle clues as to which is meant. singular or plural is meant. Centuries after the Bible was completed, Thus the first verb in Genesis 1, ‘created’, is changes were made in Hebrew grammar to de- clearly masculine singular. The first verb in Gen- note past, present and future more distinctly. esis 1:2, “And the earth was without form”, is Modern Hebrew grammar is in this respect more clearly feminine singular—in Hebrew the earth in line with English and other European lan- is grammatically feminine. guages. Now, with the above in mind, we will look at The basic form of Hebrew verbs is the third the most frequently used reference books about person singular masculine in the avar (perfect), Biblical Hebrew. as in the form ‘[he] said’. That is the form under which Hebrew verbs are listed in most concord- Gesenius ances and dictionaries. It is a point which those Wilhelm Gesenius, 1786-1842, was Professor of sources assume you know without being told. Oriental Languages at the University of Halle, The Testimony, September 2001 359 Germany. The volumes we usually speak of as book to consult. It now appears in a smaller ‘Gesenius’ derive from his Lexicon Manuale, writ- format and includes Strong’s numbering system. ten in Latin and published in 1833. Gesenius also Most of the abbreviations are references to wrote other related works, both in German and scholarly works, and only about a dozen, mostly in Latin, which was still from medieval times the symbols, are needed by the general reader. The scholarly language of Europe. Oxford does not refer to ‘preterite’ or ‘future’, Obviously Gesenius was not the first Euro- but uses ‘Pf.’ for perfect formation and ‘Impf.’ pean to study Hebrew, but he belonged to the for imperfect (continuous) formation. It gives a German group of scholars who pioneered ‘scien- great many references, the complete range of all tific’ and ‘rationalist’ methods of analysis of He- except the most common words, and examples brew as a language and the Hebrew Scriptures. of meanings. Although it has its own biases, it is His works provide a basis, almost a quarry, for on the whole more reliable than the Tregelles other well-known reference works. Several trans- version, though Tregelles is useful as a simpler, lations into English of Gesenius’ works were pro- quick-reference work, especially as it has a brief duced quite promptly in America, notably one English index at the back. by Dr. Edward Robinson in 1836. Copies were scarce in England, and a rival version in English Strong’s Comprehensive Concordance was published ‘for students’ (unspecified) by Dr. Strong’s is, of course, most useful for its num- Samuel Prideaux Tregelles. bering system for those who cannot read He- brew or Greek. The attached Hebrew dictionary, Tregelles dated 1890 (American copyright), is clearly based Tregelles’ English edition of Gesenius first ap- on the Tregelles version of Gesenius (see also the peared in 1846, with a last edition in 1859. (It is comments on ‘The New Englishman’s’, follow- now published in America.) In his preface, ing). Tregelles admits that he has used Gesenius’s Strong’s ignores the interior pointing that in- work as a vehicle for his own views. He wanted dicates whether the Hebrew letter bet is pro- particularly to counter what he termed the “neo- nounced ‘b’ or ‘v’. The general pronunciation logian tendencies” of Gesenius, that is, his inter- guide in English is grotesque; it is liberally pep- pretations, which Tregelles regarded as not pered with misleading and totally unnecessary supporting the inspiration of Scripture. Tregelles letters ‘w’. If the reader erases, physically or tells his readers that he has included various mentally, all the ‘w’s it would be a great im- remarks to alert them to these “neologisms”, but provement. Strong’s also has too many letters ‘h’ he also introduces his own interpretations of in its pronunciation guides, but to that there is some words without warning his readers that he no simple solution. Hebrew is difficult enough is doing so. for those who know only English, and it is a pity Tregelles’ book has no list of abbreviations that the guides make it appear even more diffi- used. A frequent entry in the text is the abbre- cult. That is quite apart from the genuine diffi- viation ‘fut.’, which presumably means ‘future’ culty that Hebrew has some letters with sounds (tense). Another is ‘pret.’ or preterite (simple past which cannot be represented by single, standard tense), which is a term derived from Latin gram- English letters. mar and so is not very helpful to students of Hebrew. As we showed above, neither ‘future The New Englishman’s Concordance tense’ nor ‘preterite’ apply to the Hebrew of the The New Englishman’s is clearly based on the Bible. Tregelles version of Gesenius; indeed, its first draft was thoroughly revised by Tregelles him- The ‘Oxford Gesenius’ self. Its preface advises those who cannot read The Oxford University scholars Brown, Driver Hebrew to use it in conjunction with Strong’s, and Briggs published another English edition of and it uses Strong’s numbering system. In many Gesenius, much expanded, first in 1907, and with ways it is superior to Strong’s and Tregelles, and various reprints with corrections appearing up its present layout is much more clear. to fifty years later. It goes to the opposite ex- Unlike Strong’s it does distinguish the ‘b’ and treme to Tregelles; it has six-and-a-half closely ‘v’ forms of the Hebrew bet, as the first few pages printed pages listing abbreviations used. Those clearly show. The English pronunciation guide abbreviations make it a difficult and irritating is much better than Strong’s, eliminating the 360 The Testimony, September 2001 redundant letters ‘w’, but it still has too many 2 Kgs. 11:1. and destroyed all the seed royal letters ‘h’. In this connection there is a curious . but very minor point: the design on the title 2 Kgs. 19:18. therefore they have destroyed page shows the Hebrew alphabet in the now them. rarely-seen Ashkenazi (German or East Euro- (future?) pean) script, in which the simple ‘h’ is barely And so the process can be continued. But distinguishable from the guttural ‘h’ (chet). surely enough examples have been given to raise The very clear layout also makes clear the the question, Have the King James translators faults in the Tregelles system in a way which can been so horribly wrong throughout the Old Tes- be seen and checked by readers with little or no tament, or is it the headings that are wrong? knowledge of Hebrew. For instance, examine the The answer is: the headings ‘kal’, ‘pi’el’ and so first verb, the entry number 6 on page 8, mean- on (and terms such as ‘infinitive’, ‘imperative’ ing ‘perish’. (Englishman’s does not always and ‘participle’, which we have not dealt with specify which entries are verbs and which are here) are correct.