The Verb in Archaic Biblical Poetry

Book excerpt: The Verb in Archaic Biblical Poetry: A Discursive, Typological, and Historical Investigation of the Tense System offers a comprehensive analysis of the syntactic, semantic, pragmatic, and discursive properties of the verb in the corpus of archaic" biblical poetry (The Song of Moses, Song of the Sea, Song of Deborah, Song of David, Blessing of Jacob, Oracles of Balaam, Blessing of Moses, and Song of Hannah). The approach integrates modern research on tense, aspect, and modality, while also addressing the complicated philological issues in these texts. The study presents discursive analysis of biblical poetic texts, systemic description of each text’s tense system, and reconstruction of the archaic verbal tenses as attested in part of the corpus.