Rabbinic Elements in the Verbal System of Maskilic Hebrew Fiction 1857-1881

This paper proposes that the verbal system of the Maskilic Hebrew fiction composed between 1857 and 1881 by authors such as P. Smolenskin, J. L. Gordon, A. Mapu, and I. M. Dick exhibits a substantial number of rabbinic morphological and syntactic elements. Rabbinic features include the use of nitpa'el verbs, for example Dick's נתאלמנו the employment of the masculine plural qotel ending in nun, such as Gordon's נמחקין the infinitive construct of verbs with first-radical nun, as in Mapu's ליתן the periphrastic construction consisting of a qatal of the root ה.י.ה. followed by a qotel used to convey past habitual actions; and the tendency to avoid the wayyiqtol. In many cases these rabbinic elements are used inconsistently in maskilic texts and appear to be fully interchangeable with their biblical counterparts. Similarly, for the most part there is no indication of a conscious semantic motivation underlying the authors' decision to use such features, and the circumstances in which they appear are identical to those of their counterparts in classical sources such as the Mishnah and Talmud. However, in some cases, such as Mapu's use of ליתן and Gordon's selection of נמחקין the rabbinic form may have been employed intentionally as a tool to convey the feeling of vernacular speech. This paper proposes an alternative to the traditional scholarly perception that Maskilic Hebrew is predominantly biblical in both morphology and syntax.