Supposed “Conversive” Imperfects and Perfects in the Aramaic Texts from Qumran

This article discusses the phenomenon of “conversive” (or “consecutive”) verb forms in the Aramaic documents from Qumran. A number of scholars have argued that cases of Hebrew-style “conversive” imperfects (wayyiqtols) occur as Hebraisms in the Aramaic texts. In other cases, modern translations of Aramaic imperfect forms with the conjunction “and” as simple past tense imply that the translators must have interpreted the forms according to classical Hebrew usage. Similarly, the complement of wayyiqtol in the classical Hebrew system, the “conversive” perfect (weqatal), has been argued to be present in the Aramaic material, or—more often—its presence seems to be implied when perfect forms with the conjunction “and” are rendered as future tense. The article provides a detailed and critical discussion of the occurrences claimed or implied by various scholars and concludes that the corpus in fact contains no unambiguous cases of the phenomenon.