Just to get all of my cards on the table, I am a Theistic Evolutionist.
I've also heard or read somewhere that the Hebrew language (Genesis' native) has a tense for literal accounts and a separate tense for figurative accounts.
This is not true. Hebrew actually does not truly have tense, at least not like English does. That is the main indicator for any given verb is not
when it happened but rather
how it happened. In other words, when you look at the verb in a sentence like this (from Genesis 1:1a):
בְּרֵאשִׁית, בָּרָא אֱלֹהִים
The verb, which is in read and means 'he created' in and of itself does not really indicate
when the action took place as it does,
how. Note this from
C. L. Seow's Hebrew Grammar:
page 147 said:
Biblical Hebrew does not have tenses in the strict sense of the word. Time of occurrence is indicated in context by certain adverbs (time words) and... by the way the sentence is constructed. The finite verbs themselves do not indicate tence, but aspect - that is, whether the situation is viewed by the speaker/writer as an outsider looking at a situation as a complete whole ("perfect"_, or as an insider looking at a situation as it develops ("imperfect").
This is often talked about as incomplete versus complete action. Has what the verb described been completed or is it something that is continuing on?
In the case of the example above, the verb is in the perfect qal form. This means that it is completed (aspect). But the verb itself does not tell us whether the speaker intends for the verb to have been completed in the past, present, or future (tense). We get this information, not by the verb but by the sentence itself.
Why is this important to your question? Because this is probably what the person that told you that there was a different tense for different concepts had in mind. Tense is not as straight forward in Hebrew because it is not the main point of a verb, the main point of a verb is how the action took/is taking/will take place.
ChristianT said:
but you could just mention a general idea of where you learned your information.
I have been studying Hebrew in various academic settings for years and will be getting my second advanced degree in a field relating to it in a few weeks. I don't say this out of pride or in an attempt to tell you that you must agree with me, but to show that I am not just making this up.
I would consider myself an origin-agnostic. I would like to figure out which side of the debate I stand on, however. I can see the points of both sides, and (minus the "radical*" YEC) agree with them.
Welcome to the journey!
gluadys said:
Personally I haven't got much past learning the Hebrew alphabet yet, but I am pretty sure you will find this is incorrect. Let's see what some people more knowledgeable about the language will say.
You are correct. The person that told the OP this was mistaken.
shernren said:
I can't see any way a language could work like this. Take, for example, the English expression "heartbreak". It is clearly figurative (one's literal heart does not literally break). But the figure of speech has impact precisely because one's knowledge of literal hearts is invoked. If every figure of speech was fenced off with a "this is a figure of speech" device or tense, would any literature ever be worth reading?
I would also add that a narrative, even a completely historical one, will oscillate between figurative and 'non'-figurative language.
As to the article that shernren cites, I am very leery of AnswersinGenesis, which should come as no surprise. Let's look at their claims.
AiG said:
Genesis chapter 1 was written in the Hebrew language which is consistent in using one structure for narrative and quite a different one for poetry.
This is partly true. As shernren points out, no one claims that Genesis 1 is a poem like a Psalm which is lyrical. But it is a
Framework poem. That in and of itself does not mean that it is not also historical, even literal in the way that AiG wants it to be, but it is absolutely a poem of some nature.
Linguists divide the worlds languages into groups according to the structure they use for their normal matter-of-fact statements, as opposed to questions, literary devices and so on. All languages have sentences, and so far no language has been discovered which doesnt have them.
This is misleading. Not all languages have sentences, at least not like we think of them. Notably, Hebrew (the language in question) did not have them in any normal sense. Lacking punctuation and even spaces for that matter, Classical Hebrew was more a bunch of phrases or clauses strung together. Functionally, this does not amount to any difference, I only point it out to demonstrate the weaknesses of the article.
After establishing that the standard word order in Hebrew is Verb, Subject, Object (a claim which isn't correct mind you, as Hebrew does not have a strict word order, but I will grant that this is a word order that is often used) the article states this:
How does
Genesis 1:1 go?
At-start created God the heavens and the earth
verb(V) subject(S) object(O)
This is standard VSO, so it is narrative, not poetry.
One has to wonder, however, why a poem must deviate from the normal word order? If this is the case then the poem Annabel Lee must not really be a poem because it uses standard Subject, Verb, Object word order throughout. Also, Yoda must be a great poet because standard word order he does not use.
So we are dealing with narrative, or better still, history, because if the Hebrew writer was just telling a tale hed make it stylish and use a lot of other devices. But he doesnt.
Even if it was a narrative, this does not mean that it is history. You can make up a narrative while being quite minimalistic in your style. The writings of Ernest Hemingway come to mind. But it is a moot point because it turns out that the author of Genesis 1 actually does use literary devices throughout and it is quite stylized. Again, that does not prove that it is not also history as AiG wants it to be.