Verbs and Numbers: A Study of the Frequencies of the Hebrew Verbal Tense Forms in the Books of Samuel, Kings, and Chronicles.

• Author: Parunak, H. Van Dyke

This monograph presents a statistical study of the frequencies of verbal tense forms (infinitives absolute and construct, participle, imperative, suffix conjugation, and prefix conjugation) in Samuel, Kings, and Chronicles--with the objective of characterizing late biblical Hebrew (LBH). The study uses the Massoretic Text, in spite of acknowledged textual complexities, to avoid the subjectivities inherent in an eclectic base. While at other points the work is overly conservative, this decision should be applauded. The variants most critical to this study are those that affect the tense forms, and it is difficult to see what criteria could be used to prefer one variant over another except those of the sort being tested by the study. Thus, any departure from an externally defined text (such as MT) runs a serious risk of circular reasoning.

Many factors other than diachronic change might condition the frequency of verbal forms. The study considers some of these: narrative vs. discourse; lists (1 Chron. 1-9, 23-27) vs. non-list material; synoptic vs. unique passages. Other important distinctions (such as poetry vs. prose, or different linguistic registers) are unfortunately not noted. Furthermore, in spite of the rich repertoire of functions of the Hebrew verb, only morphosyntactic features detectable by a computer program have been taken into account, in an attempt to avoid the subjectivity of human analysis.

While subjective classifications are to be avoided, it is a mistake to identify "objective" with "computer-recognizable." After forty years of research into computer processing of natural language by the Artificial Intelligence community, there is still no program capable of general language understanding, and many experts are concluding that the processing of human language intrinsically requires human intervention. Many day-to-day verbal transactions that we would consider perfectly clear and objective remain inaccessible to computer analysis. The lesson of this experience for computer-assisted biblical studies is that we should restrict the computer to its areas of strength (including tabulating, calculating, and displaying), and not permit a commendable desire for objectivity to drive us out of our particular competencies (recognizing patterns in natural language text).

The study reaches some straightforward conclusions. Samuel and Kings resemble one another and differ from Chronicles in using more verbs overall, fewer infinitives...