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Hebrew: Past, Present or Future Tense?
“The name ‘tenses’ as applied to Hebrew verbs is misleading. The so-called Hebrew ‘tenses’ do not express the time but merely the state of an action. Indeed were it not for the confusion that would arise through the application of the term ‘state’ to both nouns and verbs,’states’ would be a far better designation than ‘tenses.’ It must always be borne in mind that it is impossible to translate a Hebrew verb into English without employing a limitation (viz. of time) which is entirely absent in the Hebrew. The ancient Hebrews never thought of an action as past, present, or future, but simply as perfect, i.e. complete, or imperfect, i.e. as in course of development. When we say that a certain Hebrew tense corresponds to a Perfect, Pluperfect, or Future in English, we do not mean that the Hebrews thought of it as Perfect, Pluperfect, or Future, but merely that it must be so translated in English. The time of an action the Hebrews did not attempt to express by any verbal form.”
Since tenses are contextually determined in Hebrew, translators ‘literally’ must choose a suitable tense when translating Hebrew into English. Naturally this can lead to disagreements such as in Isaiah 65 and elsewhere. Typically new Bible translations are very reluctant to change the traditional tenses, even as they reword everything else! Frequently the tense changes from past to future even within the same context for no logical or apparent reason other than tradition. Isaiah 65, as an example is a watershed chapter that makes far more sense with consistent past* tense wording, as so marked*.
Imagine using a language that ordinarily does not bother including any vowels unless on occasion tiny ones are retro inserted (vowels are also contextually discerned), has no punctuation, doesn’t even use a space between words!
The Aramaic language is the basis language for the entire Bible. Hebrew is a branch of it, forming most of the so called “Old Testament”, tho even parts of that, like most of Daniel were from Hebrew’s mother language, Aramaic.
From my HOME PAGE:
But Was the “New Testament” Really Written in Greek?
The easiest point to consider when questioning whether the so called “New Testament” was written in Aramaic or Greek is to consider the man who was by far the most notable historian of the era—the Jewish priest Flavius Josephus (born AD 37/38, Jerusalem—died AD 100). He was recruited by the Romans as the best translator available in the region, and even he did not know Greek. He said that the Jews would rather have had their children eat swine than to speak Greek! His massive complete works found here, were originally written in Aramaic. It was only when the Romans began destroying every document written Aramaic that he traveled to Rome to learn Greek! Not one Aramaic copy survived. So would Yeshua’s (Jesus’) followers, already “credibility challenged” have written their accounts about Him to the then exclusively Jewish audience in the detested language of their captors? Other than Paul, did they even know Greek?
