I am familiar with the (existence of) Targums, but am intrigued by your comment that they are very useful. Do you mean for textual variants, for understanding how the text was viewed 2000 years ago, or both?

From my own perspective, I would think both, but I understand that Jews generally consider the Masoretic Text to be authoritative and would dismiss any notion that the Targums (or LXX or DSS or Samaritan Pentateuch) is of any use in determining the autographs.

I am not familiar with Ibn Ezra's commentary - I will be sure to check it out.

@Davïd After writing this I ran across the Thayer's lexicon entry which, happily, appears to agree with my decision about labelling parts of speech (I was having trouble), but also says that ἕως οὗ is attested:

> first in Herodotus 2, 143; but after that only in later authors, as Plutarch, et al.

A quick look wikipedia indicates that the first was pre-LXX and the latter post-LXX. But I'm finding it all over in the LXX (both with indicative and subjunctive). Does that not count because it's a translation or something?

That would make sense on some level, I guess, but this appears to be pretty clearly not-a-calque (probably a majority עד אשר but only a slim majority, and not infrequently translating just עד which suggests to me that it was just part of the Greek language), and also in the sub-entry right above there are examples drawn from Ezk. and Chr., so it seems open for discussion. I'm obviously missing something.

P.S. Do you use Hatch-Redpath for anything? That sounds like a silly question, but it’s so easy for me to search for a lemma (or more complex things) and browse the results with the MT lined up verse-to-verse in parallel so that....I’ve actually never even looked at that book, even though I know it is available online and has lots of information I’m interested in. I’m just trying to figure out if I should change that.

^^^Any other library patrons with opinions on the topic are also welcome to answer. All of the above actually.

@ThaddeusB Yes (downvotes too), and thank you for your help addressing that issue recently. :-)

@Susan For single searches the electronic tools beat H&R, but if you want a quick "snapshot" of patterns and tendencies, H&R is very useful. I think we once chatted about this entry which provides a case in point. Admittedly, it doesn't come off my shelf as often as it once did. When I was doing more LXX stuff, it sometimes felt like I was living in it!

There's an index to the page scans (can't remember if I've linked that before), but I think you can see H&R in Google Books (as I can't from the UK).

@Susan Thayers: could it be that the bracketed comment refers only to "classical" (non-biblical) authors? I have never used Thayers much, though, so I'm just guessing.

The front matter explains some things, but not that specifically. It might be implied from one comment given. Here's your entry in the Real Thing.

@Davïd Hm, maybe. Just seems like a fairly large and arbitrary corpus to exclude. Anyway, thanks for looking at it.

You and I discussed it? Don't recall that. I can see how that might be useful, especially for me for whom it's often not obvious at first glance of the Hebrew what's going on in translation.

Although.... I recently learned how to map my search results (in either language) onto Tov's MT-LXX 'interlinear' (complete with his reconstructed vorlage- very helpful!), which provides something almost succinct as that (except with 'reconstructions' in place of the implausible ones). If I could generate summary statistics from that...

I was irked that with all this technology I wasn't able to restrict the LXX ἕως οὗ search by clause in order to find only the indicatives as I did in the NT. (AFAIK nobody has syntax-mapped the LXX yet. Surely you know somebody who wants to undertake that? ;-))

@Susan The power of search -- although overshadowed by hat-chat at the time, I see.

@Davïd Oh. Yeah. But hats cast big shadows.

Indubitably.

@Davïd FYI, supposedly giving the reference for Tertullian on Lucifer=Satan. I think this was questioning the existence of that.

@Susan Couldn't resist - though could have used more space! :)

@Davïd There's still an "add a comment" button there at the bottom if you'd like to go on.... ;-)

@Susan Ha. I did - but posted as answer instead of postscript! Ah well. Teach me for being a drive-by commenter.

@Davïd I imagine you'd do fine at an answer.

@David I'd love to see an answer of yours on this question. :)

@Susan @Davïd I am no Hebrew expert (but I can get around with it, given the proper tools; and I know Susan is an enthusiast). I would be interested in a few comments from Davïd about the link I posted in this comment...

"Interesting" was also my word. :-) Mostly because I didn't exactly follow it all....

His argument makes sense to me, yet still appears to honor the idea that the construction is for past tense use (unlike Blessed Geek's rant in his answer there). It also appears to clarify the use with the Perfect. There may be newer literature on this, but I do not have much time to read just on Hebrew.

@Susan Ah, so this article was previously noted.

@ScottS Everything on ancienthebrewgrammar.wordpress.com strikes me as interesting, yet most of it (like this) I can't quite get my head around. I feel like I know more after I read things there anyway.

Thanks for asking David, though; that should be interesting.

(It's good I'm getting some help tormenting David today. I like collaborators. I think I'l just sit bak and not ask any more questions for the rest of the day.)

@ThaddeusB Thanks, but in this case (as in many others!) it would be highly derivative!

@Susan @ScottS - plagued more by miserable domestic internet connectivity. >.< Hampers my scanty BH.SE evening moments these days! Hopefully fixed soon.

@Davïd What does that mean, derivative? (I think it's after midnight somewhere so the "rest of the day" comment flew out the window. :P) I know (inconsistently, apparently) what the word means, but not how it applies to a (hypothetical) SE answer. Like derived from others' analyses? Not sure how an historical account could be much else.

Oh, look at that, that's actually a normal usage. Still seems like a noun to me, but OK.

Amusingly, -ive words seem to be some of the few in English that go back and forth smoothly between being substantive [s/ words] and attributive [s/ words]. I was amused anyway.