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HEBREW TENSES ILLUSTRATED BY THOSE OF OTHER LANGUAGES
------ RABBINICAL WRITINGS.
THE oldest writings in the Hebrew language, after the Old Testament, are the "Talmuds", large portions of which we have examined to find some examples of Waw Conversive, but in vain; we have not found a single instance of a preterite converted into a future, or any thing that bears the slightest resemblance to it.
With the same view we have read large portions of the best Rabbinical Commentators, Kimchi, Jarchi, Aben-Ezra; the Jewish Prayer-Books, the Hebrew translations of the New Testament, of the Pilgrim's Progress, of Dr M'Caul's Old Paths, and have looked over other Hebrew works too numerous to mention, and all with the same negative result. How is it at all possible that the Hebrew language, as found in the Old Testament, can have a Waw Conversive, if it be wanting in all the oldest and most valued later Hebrew writings? Can credulity go farther?
The "astounding fact" is: that, out of the hundreds of languages which are, and have been, spoken on the earth, not one, except the Hebrew, is supposed to have the Waw Conversive; while, out of the hundreds of volumes which have been published in the Hebrew language, not one, except the Old Testament, has the Waw Conversive!