Smith Mark S. The Origins and Development of the Waw-consecutive: Northwest Semitic Evidence from Ugarit to Qumran

Leiden, Boston: Brill, 1991. — 114 p. — (Harvard Semitic Studies 39).Most studies concerning BH waw-consecutive address issues pertaining to either its history or its forms. This work is devoted primarily to the first of these two areas. This essay does not address many questions regarding the waw-consecutive's morphology; nor does it survey the vast literature pertaining to this subject. Rather, the main purpose of this presentation is to address three historical questions: (1) the grammatical origins of the waw-consecutive; (2) the development of the form in biblical Hebrew prose; and (3) the distribution of the form in the Hebrew texts of Qurnran. The subtitle reflects the primary emphasis in this work, namely the comparative evidence from the Amarna letters, the Ugaritic texts, first millennium NWS inscriptions and the Hebrew texts from Qumran.