The Verbal System of Classical Hebrew in the Joseph Story: An Approach From Discourse Analysis (review)

Abstract

Hebrew Studies 39 (1998) 216 Reviews and Joseph materials by adding to them the Abraham and Isaac materials. Although the new materials are carefully built around the older texts in order to redirect them. the two sets of ancestral materials have fundamentally different concerns (p. 309). This chapter also touches upon literary aspects of reading fractures. Carr maintains that reading for fractures, using diachronic, synchronic or other methods, "holds the text open for new readings" even as it fits the text into an historical framework (pp. 333ff.); and he identifies insights this perspective offers. He also acknowledges that reading for fractures is an addition to, not a displacement of, other approaches to the text. Because of Carr's organizational procedure, initially providing a summary of his approach and later developing his exploration of these ideas, the book can be repetitious. This demurral aside, this review cannot begin to suggest the depth of scholarship and intellectual acumen in this wellwritten book. It is not light reading, but it is rewarding. Lillian R. Klein Bethesda. MD 20817 abenklein@aol.com THE VERBAL SYSTEM OF CLASSICAL HEBREW IN THE JOSEPH STORY: AN APPROACH FROM DISCOURSE ANALYSIS. By Yoshinobu Endo. Studia Semitica Neerlandica. Pp. xiii + 351. Assen: Van Gorcum, 1996. Paper. This is a curious volume, and I have pondered it somewhat at length and fmd myself still uncertain of its significance. It purports to be an approach from discourse analysis but as a matter of fact makes little use of that discipline 's insights. Only narrative discourse is admitted, although the author frequently cites examples that are obviously of a different discourse type than narrative. Furthermore, he comes even to narrative discourse quite late in the volume (pp. 232ff.). In chapter 6 (pp. 19lff.) he writes of "Syntactic Relationship in Volitive Clauses" without positing hortatory discourse from which most of his examples in that chapter seem to be taken. He devotes five chapters in the first half of the volume to a slow progress from one-clause utterances to two-clause utterances to three-clause utterances to multiple-clause utterances in an effort to work into the chapter Syntactic Relationship in Narration (chapter 7) in a manner that essentially works apart from discourse insights and instead involves what seems to me to be a traditional consideration of tense sequence from clause to clause. Hebrew Studies 39 (1998) 217 Reviews Some readers may find this material profitable-I profited occasionally from the study of particular examples-but it is not what we usually consider to be discourse analysis, which is interested more in threads of continuity characterizing discourses vertically than in atomistic ties between particular clauses. Endo's attempt to take sequentiality as basic rather than foregrounding initially impressed me as a mere tenninological squabble. After all, foregrounded clauses in narrative are sequential. Foregrounding is a general tenn which is extendible to other discourse types (e.g., expository or descriptive ) where sequentiality is not a concern. But Endo's argument tries to separate the conjunction waw from the verb fonn and say that the sequentiality is due to the latter not the fonner. Thus, on page 67 he insists that "The conjunction looks back to the preceding clause, while the sequential verb fonn looks forward to the next clause." This really is quite futile. It is precisely the combination of the waw and the following form that is distinctive in establishing a consecutive fonn; it is pointless to try to separate the two--except in such an extremely rare case (Ps 18:17-21) where we have clause-initial yqtl fonns that pattern either as old surviving preterits or historical presents. But the latter are entirely beyond the scope of this study and may involve intentional archaism in poetry. The data base of this paper is prose and is primarily based on the Joseph story. If the yqtl fonn is taken as sequential without the characteristic waw that has historically fused with it, then this would contradict Endo's treatment of yqtl in its more usual force in prose, where it is non-sequential. Admittedly, examples occur of waw conjunctive with both the imperfect and the perfect, but these are also non-sequential. So...