Books in Brief
012
Pottery, Poetry, and Prophecy: Studies in Early Hebrew Poetry
David Noel Freedman
(Eisenbrauns, 1980) 376 pp. $15.00
There is no mystery more resistant to modern scholarship than Biblical poetry. How does it differ from prose? Does it have meter? Or does it have some systematic arrangement outside of meter? Since the rise of modern Biblical scholarship, these questions have been investigated long and hard, but even today the answers are far from certain. Although some of the broad characteristics of Hebrew verse have been identified, there is still no consensus on what governs its form, or even on what parts of the Bible are in fact poetry.
Those who first wrote about the poetry of the Bible, Greek-speaking Jews like the historian Josephus (first century A.D.) and, later, Greek-speaking Christians, described it by using the terms of classical Greek and Latin verse. Thus according to Josephus, Moses wrote the Song of the Sea (Exodus 15) “in hexameter verse;” David wrote the Psalms “some in trimeter, some in pentameter.” These ideas were passed on (with modifications) by St. Jerome, and were widely accepted throughout the Middle Ages. Renaissance scholars, equipped with a scientific spirit and a newly-acquired knowledge of Hebrew, tried to test Jerome’s statements, and, finding them wanting, propounded their own. Some argued that Biblical poetry is not constructed, as Greek and Latin is, through an arrangement of long and short syllables into feet, but rather is like the vernacular poetries of Europe, consisting simply of a fixed, overall number of syllables or, perhaps, stress-accents.
In the eighteenth century, an Oxford professor (and later bishop), Robert Lowth, espoused a new approach. Biblical meter, he said, is forever lost: Since the Hebrew text contains only consonants (the vowel marks are an early medieval addition), it is impossible to know how many syllables a word had or how it was pronounced; hence, speculation about meter is little more than wild guessing. But, he argued, we can deduce the existence of some meter by considering the phenomenon of parallelismus membrorum (“the parallelism of the clauses”)—the tendency of one half of a verse to echo or parallel the other (thus: “The heavens declare the glory of God // and the firmament proclaims His handiwork”—Psalm 19:2). The fact that the units delineated by the parallelism are apparently of the same approximate length proved to Lowth that some meter was at work. At the same time, because of Lowth’s writings, parallelism itself has come to be recognized as a major feature of Biblical poetry. Some scholars have even argued that parallelism alone is what distinguishes poetry from prose in the Bible.
Among contemporary theorists, David Noel Freedman is one of the most assiduous investigators of Biblical poetry, and in the present volume he brings together the results of his research as published in various scholarly journals and collections over the last decade. These essays, if they do not quite provide an answer to the age-old mystery, at least chart one man’s mighty struggles with it, and, in the process, furnish some magnificent readings of many songs and psalms from the Hebrew Bible.
In the matter of Biblical meter, Freedman’s approach has increasingly tended to the descriptive: By counting syllables as indicated in the (admittedly late) vowel signs of the Hebrew text, he has sought to fix broad ranges for the length of lines, and, by comparing successive lines, to establish in rough terms a given song’s meter. Sometimes it is difficult to know where lines begin and end, for even Lowth’s parallelism is only an intermittent feature.
One of Freedman’s most interesting studies measures line-length in various alphabetical acrostics—compositions like Psalm 145 or the closing verses of Proverbs, in which each successive line begins with a new letter of the alphabet. With this sure guide to lineation, Freedman concludes that the various compositions he examines seem to divide up according to two different metrical systems, the one consisting of lines of roughly sixteen syllables, the other of lines of approximately thirteen syllables.
In addition to meter, Freedman investigates such issues as the dating of Hebrew poetry, stanzaic patterns and other matters of structure, and the relationship of Biblical poetry to other parts of the Bible. Surely some of the most distinguished contributions in this volume are his sensitive close readings of individual compositions: his minute dissection of the form and meaning of Psalm 23 (“The Lord is my shepherd … ”), Psalm 137 (“By the waters of Babylon … ”), and the Song of the Sea. In the title essay, Freedman takes a step back and surveys the issue of poetry as a whole, its basic characteristics, and its close alliance with Israelite prophecy.
As to the future, Freedman seems to put his faith in statistical analyses and computer linguistics; these, he believes, “will provide powerful weapons in the scientific assault on the Biblical bastion with its unsolved questions and inaccessible secrets.” I cannot agree with him here. Recent use of such techniques have provided some insights into the constraints governing Hebrew style, but I think that as these techniques are refined they will only focus attention more squarely on the heart of the problem, the fact that what we call poetry in the Bible differs from prose through a complex of heightening factors—terseness, parallelism, ellipsis—none of which, however, is unique to poetry. As Freedman himself has said, the difference between poetry and prose in the Bible is only a matter of degree, and not systematic; in this sense the heart of the problem of Biblical poetry may be the very terms in which the problem is posed.
Archaeology, the Rabbis and Early Christianity
Eric M. Meyers and James F. Strange
(Abingdon, 1981) 208 pp. $7.95
This new work by two prominent “archaeological historians” brings together texts and monuments as they relate to early Christianity and contemporaneous Judaism. Previously this period has been dealt with primarily by literary historians. Meyers and Strange now propose to re-examine the Judeo-Christian heritage of Roman Palestine from the dual perspective of archaeology and literature. Their inquiry provides many new insights and interpretations.
A great deal of recent material is assembled here for the first time in English. The authors evaluate the latest archaeological evidence for pre-Constantinian Christianity at Jerusalem, Capernaum and Nazareth. The phenomenon of church building in the Holy Land during the early Byzantine period is explained as part of an indigenous Palestinian Jewish Christianity for whom the sacred-land theology was of primary importance.
The authors also discuss the archaeological artifacts which pertain to the development of Palestinian Judaism—primarily Jewish epigraphy, funerary monuments and synagogue remains. These remains indicate that the Judaism of the Second Temple period survived intact in the Land of Israel until the end of the Byzantine period. Both language and art serve to enhance our understanding of this historical era usually understood almost exclusively from Babylonian talmudic sources. The juxtaposition of a reconstructed picture of the Jewish community alongside a Palestinian Church provides new insights into the social dynamics operating in Roman-Byzantine Palestine.
Pottery, Poetry, and Prophecy: Studies in Early Hebrew Poetry
David Noel Freedman
(Eisenbrauns, 1980) 376 pp. $15.00
You have already read your free article for this month. Please join the BAS Library or become an All Access member of BAS to gain full access to this article and so much more.