Innovative Morphological Distinctions in Verbal Forms in the Samaritan and Tiberian Reading Traditions of Biblical Hebrew

Abstract

The Samaritan oral tradition of the Pentateuch reflects a wider range of morphological forms of the qal active participle than the Tiberian tradition. Several of these are innovations borrowed from Aramaic. In some cases the Samaritan tradition exploits its larger pool of morphological patterns of the participle to express semantic distinctions that are not expressed in the morphology of the Tiberian tradition. The central semantic distinction that is expressed is between participles of a nominal character that express time-stable properties and those of a verbal character that express contingent properties. This same process can be identified in several places in the Tiberian tradition. This casts light on the interpretation tradition of the forms in question in the Tiberian tradition.