Symposium Discussion Session: An Edited Transcription

SYMPOSIUM DISCUSSION SESSION: AN EDITED TRANSCRIPTION* Ziony Zevit University of Judaism Zevit: There is a problem with the way quantitative terms are used in our discussions. Often, numbers are presented as if they are statistics when they are simple arithmetic expressions. Since the number of examples in many cases is a single digit, presenting them as statistics doesn’t mean much. For example, fifteen percent of five examples doesn’t mean much, and fifteen percent of thirty means little, but fifteen percent of one hundred may have greater relevance. When we work with the Bible we deal with a closed, limited corpus of texts and can supply complete numbers. Therefore, rather than use the expressions “common or uncommon, high or low proportions,” why not supply the actual numbers, say twelve examples of phenomenon X in the whole Bible or in a particular book, twenty of verbal form Y, and thirteen of noun Z? Question: Is there any way we can control statistics more insofar as literary genre or the topic of discussion in a text goes? For example, if 2 m.s. forms don’t appear often in a text, could it be because we wouldn’t expect 2 m.s. forms in that type of passage or in that genre? * !I recorded the discussion and question and answer session following the presentations on a hand-held recorder that picked up with greater and lesser success what was said during the half-hour period. Linda Diaz transcribed the tape initially and I reviewed her work, making additions and corrections as needed, especially where discussants employed technical terminology. What follows is a highly edited version of the first transcription. False starts and various hiccups characteristic of informal speech, joking asides, and misstatements that speakers corrected, were eliminated. Overly long digressions were edited or eliminated. Ideas started in one part of a question/comment or response and then developed later in the manner of an afterthought were combined into single statements. In addition, I eliminated a discussion of orthography and linguistic typology in the Dead Sea Scrolls because it was largely irrelevant to the papers and topic at hand, and I eliminated a longish discussion about the work of Professor Frank Polak that impinges seriously on the topic because he was not present to respond. Polak will present a paper at the continuation of the panel at the 2005 NAPH meeting with the SBL. Because of my editing, readers must understand that this is not an exact transcript of what was said, and cannot hold speakers responsible for all that is attributed to them. They maintain the right of plausible deniability. Nevertheless, this edited transcript reflects as accurately as possible the concerns of the audience and presenters, the tone, rhetoric, and contents of what was conveyed—I tried to maintain the oral quality of remarks—as well as the generally constructive atmosphere in which the conversation took place. —Ziony Zevit Hebrew Studies 46 (2005) 372 Zevit: Discussion Session Joosten: In Classical Biblical Hebrew there are only two cases of watiqtol, but there are one thousand cases of weqatalta and three hundred fifty cases of uqetol. I put on the table all the ways it could be said and how it is actually said. But I didn’t tell you the numbers for Late Biblical Hebrew. In Late Biblical Hebrew—you cannot simply type the form on your computer because weqatal is often past tense—I counted by hand. There are about seventy cases of weqatalta, about forty of uqetol, and nine of watiqtol. I am not a statistician. I try to stay away from difficult formulas, but I am sure that even a statistician would say that there is an important divergence in the forms. Now you have all the figures. Question: What about the breakdown by genre or topic? Joosten: The judgment I make is that it is more or less the same genre: prose narrative with lots of conversation. But maybe not. Even if it is not exactly the same genre, there are a lot of second person future forms. Question/Comment: I’d like to direct my question to Ian. When we talk about dating a particular writing, we...