Ancient Hebrew Poetry

So You Want to Learn Ancient Hebrew

If you want to learn ancient Hebrew so as to savor its sounds, understand the nuances of its words and expressions, and recognize the formal structures of its poetry and prose, then you will seek to make the language your own. A standard test of linguistic competence is the ability to engage in simultaneous translation from one language to the other, unaided by a dictionary. When you are able to translate ancient Hebrew into your mother tongue without the aid of a dictionary, you will have moved in the right direction. When you are able to translate from your mother tongue into ancient Hebrew without the help of a dictionary, you will have attained a degree of active competence in the language. Your sense of accomplishment will be great, and rightly so.

If instead your goal is to learn just enough Hebrew to meet your bar or bat mitzvah requirement, or the requirements of your community for ordination as a pastor, priest, or rabbi, then the advice I will offer will not interest you.

In order to fully master a language, it is important to know as much as possible about language with a capital “L.” In the case of a second language, it also helps to know as much as possible about the inner workings of one’s mother tongue. The best students of ancient Hebrew are, by definition, students of language in general.[1]

The corpus of ancient Hebrew literature is diverse in terms of genre. In order to appreciate the variety of generic conventions the parts of the corpus conform to, it is important to know as much as possible about literature with a capital “L.” Collections of extra-biblical texts from the ancient world are valuable for comparative and contrastive purposes. They include, at a minimum, exempla from the following genres: proverbs collections and other didactic texts; hymns, prayers, and laments; love poetry; rituals and incantations; omens, prophecies, pseudoprophecies, and apocalypses; tales and novellas; epics and legends; myth; genealogies, king lists, and related texts; historiography and royal inscriptions; legal compilations; treaties, oaths, and grants; letters, contracts, and other archival documents. The best students of ancient Hebrew literature are, by definition, students of literature in general.[2]

Three things are necessary if you wish to make ancient Hebrew your own: (1) a teacher; (2) a course of study; (3) a set of resources that will allow you to make progress on your own.

The ideal teacher of ancient Hebrew is someone who is in love with the language and the literature of the Hebrew Bible. A teacher who has a solid knowledge of a broader spectrum of ancient Hebrew texts (epigraphic Hebrew, Ben Sira, the Dead Sea Scrolls) and familiarity with other ancient literatures (e.g., Ugaritic, Phoenician, Old and Imperial Aramaic, Akkadian, and Egyptian texts) is not easy to find. Count yourself blessed if you find one. She should be able to contextualize the language and literature of the Tanakh in illuminating ways.

In many localities it is possible to find a Hebrew tutor or a Hebrew class at a university or seminary. Is modern Hebrew all you can find? Take the class. You can go on from there to ancient Hebrew, and your ancient Hebrew will benefit from the modern Hebrew you became familiar with.

Someday you will be able to find a teacher online who will teach by podcast and tutor by webcam. As far as I know, that day has not yet arrived.

The course of study to follow will be the one your teacher provides. There are many approaches to learning a language. A class in which a teacher teaches Hebrew in Hebrew is, from a pedagogical point of view, ideal, but this method of teaching is not widespread. This is the method practiced by Randall Buth and associates. He also makes use of other techniques whose effectiveness is emphasized in second language acquisition theory, such as TPR (total physical response) and the use of storytelling buildups. Two teachers are present in class, which allows for creative interchanges between teachers and clearer “immersion” communication. For more information, visit this website: www.biblicalulpan.org.

Your teacher, presumably, will choose the method that plays up his or her strengths. For a concise overview of introductory and intermediate textbooks on the market today, see Tyler Williams’ discussion here.

My ideal first year textbook would look like this. In the course of a year of ancient Hebrew, I want students to be introduced to a selection of paragraph-length units culled from the narrative, direct discourse, and poetry of the Bible and from inscriptions and the Dead Sea Scrolls. I want them to learn to tackle a sight reading from a cross-section of ancient Hebrew literature equal to about half its bulk with the aid of the textbook and a lexicon, preferably BDB, alone. Written assignments and exams featuring sight readings would measure progress along these lines.

With the help of the audiotapes and other helps the Academy of Ancient Languages features on its website (www.aoal.org), it is possible to learn to pronounce Hebrew according to current convention. For a discussion of these tapes and alternatives to them, see the comment section to a recent post by Simon Holloway (here). I would expect the students to be able to read ancient Hebrew out loud with considerable fluency. Oral assignments and exams would be used as measuring sticks.

My ideal textbook would introduce basic linguistic concepts and describe genre conventions of ancient Hebrew literature where appropriate. It would also emphasize bidirectionality in the learning process, with plenty of English-to-Hebrew exercises throughout. In the case of ancient Hebrew, a degree of bilingualism can be attained and should be attempted.

After a year of ancient Hebrew along these lines, it would be possible to go on to a year-long course, say, in which large portions of the Torah and then the latter half of the Primary History (Joshua-2 Kings) were read in their entirety. From there one might tackle Isaiah, Jeremiah, or Ezekiel, and from there the five Scrolls, Psalms, Proverbs, or Job.

How will you know when you have made ancient Hebrew your own? Robert Frost remarked, “. . . I could define poetry this way: it is that which is lost out of both prose and verse in translation.”[3] You will know you have made ancient Hebrew your own when you translate from it into your mother tongue and you realize that half of what the Hebrew is saying you left out of translation, and there is no obvious to way to put it in.

In my next post, I will survey online resources you might find helpful in the study of ancient Hebrew.

For a printable version of this post, go  here.

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[1] A satisfactory description of ancient Hebrew from a linguistic perspective has yet to be written. For the time being, I recommend reading a chapter in Rosén or Glinert and asking: and how does that work in ancient Hebrew? See Haiim B. Rosén, A Textbook of Israeli Hebrew with an Introduction to the Classical Language (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 21966 [1962]); Lewis Glinert, The Grammar of Modern Hebrew (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004 [1989]). For competent descriptions of English, see Randolph Quirk, Sidney Greenbaum, Geoffrey Leech, and Jan Svartvik, A Comprehensive Grammar of the English Language (Essex: Longman, 2000 [1985]); Rodney Huddleston and Geoffrey K. Pullum, The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002). Once again, the question to ask upon reading a chapter of these works is: and in ancient Hebrew, what do we find that is comparable?

[2] For an introduction, see Kenton L. Sparks, Ancient Texts for the Study of the Hebrew Bible: A Guide to the Background Literature (Peabody: Hendrickson, 2005).

[3] Taken from “Conversations on the Craft of Poetry,” Robert Frost: Collected Poems, Prose, & Plays (New York: The Library of America, 1995) 856.

Translating Isaiah 7:14 - A Modest Proposal

Christian translators of passages in the Hebrew Bible whose importance for New Testament messianic interpretation is paramount often feel compelled to translate in accordance with said interpretation. I have discussed an example of this in my post on Zech 9:9.

 Isa 7:14 is probably the most controversial example of the problem. To be sure, Matt 1:22-23’s take on this passage is not necessarily innovative vis-à-vis pre-occurring exegetical trends. OG Isaiah, a translation two centuries old by the time Matthew wrote his gospel and quoted from it, may have already interpreted Isa 7:14 in terms of an expectation that the ideal king who would usher in a new era, the messiah promised to the Jewish people, would be born of a virgin. These were matters of great moment. It would not be especially surprising if the translation reflected an expectation of this kind. Scholars are divided on the issue.[1]

 In any case, the underlying Hebrew of Isa 7:14 bears no hint of a virgin birth. A review of recent commentaries, including those written by Catholics and evangelicals, reveals a consensus on this point. Two examples may illustrate.

 7,14-15 “La joven” es, en el contexto histórico, la esposa del rey. El niño es Ezequias, que asegura la continuidad de la dinastia. . . . La tradición judía ha interpretado “virgen”; así aparece en la versión griega (parthenos) y así pasa a la tradición cristiana, que aplica la frase a Maria (Mt 1, 23).[2]

    (Luis Alonso Schökel, ed., Biblia del Peregrino. Antiguo Testamento. Poesía. Edición de Estudio. Tomo II (“con las debida licencias de la Conferencia Episcopal Española”; Estella: Verbo Divino, 2005 [1997] 77).

 Matthew (1:22-23) finds in the LXX rendition of 7:14 a coincidental convergence of this sentence in Scripture with the events he is recounting and interprets it as prophecy and fulfillment. He quotes the LXX almost verbatim, with only the variation καλέσουσιν, “they will call,” for καλέσεις, “you [sg.] will call.” The translation ἠ παρθένος, “the virgin,” suits Matthew’s intention perfectly. If one supposes a divine intention in this connection, part of God’s work was done through the Greek translator.[3]
    (John D. W. Watts, Isaiah 1-33 (WBC 24; Nashville: Nelson, 2005 [1984] 140-41).

 The consensus is that Isa 7:14 in the Hebrew refers to a non-virgin birth in the days of Ahaz. How shall one then translate? NAB (Catholic) and NIV (evangelical) both translate - “directly from the Hebrew” - in terms of the virgin birth. Now that’s what I call chutzpah.

 What I will now say is irrelevant to the issue at hand. But it will matter to a lot of people who might otherwise be convinced that this post is written by someone incapable of imagining a miracle-working God. As it is, I am a joyful believer in the virgin birth of Mary’s son. I believe that Mary’s son was God’s answer to the prayers of her people who expected a Messiah to come and secure the fulfillment of all the promises found in the Law, the Prophets, and David.

 As a general rule, when God answers prayer, God accommodates the answer to our needs and expectations. Simultaneously, the answer transcends our expectations. That seems to be the way things go throughout the trajectory of the life and death of the son of Mary. The circumstances of the birth of Mary’s son both accommodated and transcended the expectations of those who in that day awaited the Coming One.

 It does not follow, however, that Isaiah predicted that the Messiah would be born of a virgin. It only follows that Christians who read Isa 7:14 in the authorized Greek translation of the day, and in Jerome’s Vulgate thereafter, with its triumphant ecco virgo, would have naturally and inevitably thought so.

 I have a modest proposal. In a case like Isaiah 7:14, instead of translating the Hebrew inaccurately, translate it as it stands. NJB, NRSV, and NJPSV so translate. When the day arrives in which a widely used evangelical translation renders likewise, it will merely have caught up with conclusions a host of evangelical scholars have already reached. My own translation goes like this: ‘Look, this young woman is pregnant and will bear a son whom she will call Emmanuel.’ The details of the sign Yahweh gives to Ahaz follow. They apply of course to the situation of Ahaz. That need not and has not stopped interpreters of later generations from seeking to understand how the passage in question might be fulfilled in their day.

 There is no shame in admitting that a distinction must be made between the text per se and later interpretation of it. Gerhard Ebeling somewhere tells the story of confessing Christians under Hitler and in the midst of a terribly destructive war reading Isaiah 13 and knowing that the text spoke of Hitler and what was happening. It does, even though it doesn’t. It’s important to be nimble enough intellectually to affirm both propositions.

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[1] For a discussion, see Ronald Troxel, “Isaiah 7,14-16 through the Eyes of the Septuagint,” ETL 79 (2003) 1-22. Moises Silva translates parthenos with ‘virgin’ here (A New English Translation of the Septuagint. Esaias. Provisional Edition [IOSCS, 2005] 12; online here.) The translation misleads unless the sense Silva deems to be that intended by the translator is ‘virgin’ in the specialized sense ‘virgin’ regularly has in English.

[2] [Isaiah] 7:14-15. “The young woman” is, in the historical context, the wife of the king. The child is Hezekiah, who assures the continuity of the dynasty. . . . Jewish tradition interpreted in the sense of “virgin”; so it appears in the Greek version (parthenos), and from there the interpretation made its way into Christian tradition, which applied the phrase to Mary (Matt 1:23).

[3] For a carefully argued defense of the view that Isaiah 7:14 points to a child that will be born during the lifetime of King Ahaz, and that Matthew claims in Jesus a typological rather than a predictive fulfillment of Isaiah 7:14, see James M. Hamilton, Jr., “The Virgin will Conceive: Typology in Isaiah and Fulfillment in Matthew, The Use of Isaiah 7:14 in Matthew 1:18-23,” Tyndale Fellowship, 2005, online here.

For a printable version of this post, go  here.

A Brief Guide to Dictionaries of Biblical Hebrew

Dictionaries of ancient Hebrew have their share of idiosyncrasies. It is important to remember that there is nothing sacred about the subdivisions of meaning a given dictionary offers.

Three Hebrew-to-English dictionaries deserve mention. Each has its strengths and weaknesses. The first is classic and is based on the work of the great lexicographer Wilhelm Gesenius. The second is based on a revision of Koehler-Baumgartner, another formidable tradition of lexicography. The last is the most innovative, with full coverage of ancient Hebrew inscriptions, DSS vocabulary, and proposals by comparative philologists. It is not yet finished. 

(1) Francis Brown, Samuel Rolles Driver, and Charles Augustus Briggs, The Brown-Driver-Briggs Hebrew and English Lexicon (repr. of 1906 edition; Peabody: Hendrickson, 2004). Known as BDB. Order from Eisenbrauns.

 

(2) M. E. J. Richardson, ed., The Hebrew and Aramaic Lexicon of the Old Testament: Study Edition. Vols. 1-2 (translation and revision of HALAT [see below]; Leiden: E. J. Brill, 2002 [1994-1999]). Known as HALOT. Order from Eisenbrauns .

 

(3) David J. A. Clines, The Dictionary of Classical Hebrew (Sheffield: Sheffield Phoenix Press, 1993-). Known as DCH. Order from Eisenbrauns.

 

Volume 1, Alef (1993)

Volume 2, Bet-Vav (1995)

Volume 3, Zayin-Teth (1996)

Volume 4, Yodh-Lamedh (1998)

Volume 5, Mem-Nun (2001)

Volume 6, Samekh-Pe (2007, forthcoming)

Two Hebrew-to-German dictionaries deserve mention. The first exists in an English edition, much revised, and not always for the better. The second, like BDB, is based on the work of Gesenius. It is beautifully done, but not yet finished.

(4) Walter Baumgartner, Ludwig Koehler, and Johann Jakob Stamm, eds., Hebräisches und aramäisches Lexicon zum Alten Testament (5 vols; Leiden: Brill, 1967-1997). Order from Brill. Known as HALAT.

 

(5) Rudolf Meyer and Herbert Donner, Hebräisches und aramäisches Handwörterbuch über das Alte Testament (18th ed.; Berlin: Springer-Verlag, 1987-). Order from Springer. Abbreviation: HAT.

 

1. Lieferung, alef - gimel (1987)

2. Lieferung, dalet - yod (1995)

3. Lieferung, kaf - mem (2005)

4. Lieferung, nun-pe (2007)

An excellent Hebrew-to-Spanish dictionary deserves mention. In some ways, this dictionary beats all the others! It is impossible not to learn new things from reading its entries carefully.

(6) Luis Alonso Schökel et al, Diccionario bíblico hebreo-español (ed. Víctor Morla y Vicente; Madrid: Editorial Trotta, ²1999 [1994]). Order from Distribuciones Libreria de Habla Hispana. Abbreviation: DBHE.

Two Hebrew-to-Hebrew dictionaries deserves note. The first is incorporated into a concordance of the Hebrew Bible. Use of this dictionary will significantly improve one’s competence in ancient Hebrew. The author attempts to gloss ancient Hebrew words with other ancient Hebrew words as much as possible. The second is the best Hebrew-to-Hebrew dictionary available.

 (7) Abraham Even-Shoshan, A New Concordance of the Old Testament Using the Hebrew and Aramaic Text (Jerusalem: Magnes Press, 2000). Order from Eisenbrauns. A serviceable earlier edition may be purchased from www.judaicapress.com. Abbreviation: NCOT.

(8) Menachem Zevi Kaddari, אוצר לשון המקרא מאלף עד תו Dictionary of Biblical Hebrew (Alef-Taw) ׁ(Hebrew; Bar-Ilan University Press, 2006). Order from Eisenbrauns.

Beginning students might consider purchasing (1) and (7). Scholars with an interest in classical Hebrew philology will need to have all eight! I leave out a discussion of the electronic versions of these and other dictionaries (where they exist). My hands-on experience with them is too limited.

For a printable version of this post, go here.

Spotlight on Roland Meynet

Roland Meynet is a professor of New Testament Exegesis in the Theology Department of the Gregorian University, Rome, Italy. He has written extensively on the gospel of Luke, the book of Amos (with Pietro Bovati), a number of psalms, and a variety of other texts.

Hebrew to English Translation

I’m not an expert in translation theory, but experience has taught me a couple of things. First of all, a mastery of both source and target languages is the fundamental prerequisite for the work of translation. By mastery, I mean the ability to engage in simultaneous translation from one language to the other, unaided by a dictionary.

The mechanisms by which this skill level is attained are various. Mastery of a modern language usually requires full immersion of 8 to 16 months. Or bilingualism may be accomplished in fits and spurts, as in the case of my children, whose mother tongue (literally) is Italian, but whose primary language outside of the home is English. Their Italian is latent most of the time, but comes out fine and continues to improve in an Italian-only environment, as when in Italy with cugini e amici.

In the case of an ancient language, a degree of bilingualism can be attained and should be attempted. Trained in the old school, I did all the English-to-Hebrew exercises in Jacob Weingreen’s Classical Hebrew Composition (Oxford: Clarendon, 1966 [1959]) under the tutelage of Menahem Mansoor. Those of us who did this sweat bullets along the way, but I know of no better way to attain bilingualism than by moving from source to target language and back again. Want to get good at translating from Hebrew to English? Learn to translate from English to Hebrew. 

The other way was listening to audio tapes of portions of the Tanakh until I got to the point where I could understand what was being said both word-for-word and in terms of Gestalt perception, such that I could translate from the tape simultaneously. It is also an excellent way to memorize Scripture. Thanks to Gary Martin of the  Academy of Ancient Languages, anyone may do this today from the comfort of their home. Go here. 

Mansoor liked to tell his students the story of an atheist he knew in Israel who knew all the psalms by heart. It was an effective way of needling pious Christians into doing likewise. He gave me a pocket edition of the Psalms in Hebrew as a gift, and clearly expected me to memorize as many of the Psalms as I could. He also liked to tell us the story (perhaps apocryphal) of the first students of divinity at Yale (or was it Harvard?) who were required to memorize Psalm 23 in Hebrew so that, if and when they made it to heaven, they could chime in with the angels.

More here.

Why Poetry Theory is Important

In discussions with a publisher about getting what appears on this site in book form, it was pointed out to me that it will be a Herculean task to interest people in questions of prosody. Poetry, yes, everyone likes how it sounds. But poetry theory, that’s for the birds.

 

It’s like music and music theory. Almost everyone likes to listen to music, but few make the effort to learn to read music. Fewer still want to know enough about music to understand how its harmonies work and how it is composed.

 

The situation is exacerbated in the field of ancient Hebrew poetry by widespread disillusionment with past attempts to understand the nature of its prosody. In the absence of meter in the sense of tightly controlled recurring sequences of iambic feet or similar, like those of traditional English verse and Greek and Latin verse before that, it has been assumed that ancient Hebrew verse lacks prosodic regularities worth describing with care.

 

The dicta of Kugel, O’Connor, and Pardee, furthermore, have had a chilling effect on those who might otherwise be inclined to investigate the subject matter. All three reject the notion that ancient Hebrew verse is metrical in a strict sense. To a degree, this is a terminological dispute of the kind scholars enjoy to no end.[1] One might think that the measured-out quality of ancient Hebrew verse would be obvious to all, and despite the huffing and puffing, it probably is. On the other hand, there is a sense that if ancient Hebrew verse conforms to precise organizing principles, they have yet to be recovered. The jury, one might say, is out. It is not clear when, if ever, it will render a verdict.

 

The situation is reversed with respect to the study of Greek and Latin verse. In a recent monograph, Jeffrey Wills sets out to correct an imbalance in the study of Latin poetics. “Although the task of poetics in full is the study of all the markers of poetic language,” he says, “the Latin tradition has been dominated by work on diction and metre. . . . The effort here is to provide both the evidence and argument for including other linguistic and stylistic features in the study of poetics. In particular, this book studies the repetition of words, i.e., the syntactic figures where sound and sense overlap.”[2] Ancient Hebrew poetry studies, on the other hand, have been dominated by the study of the trope of parallelism in its semantic and syntactic facets. The study of prosodic structure remains at an elementary level.

 

This is a curious situation. Poetry typically involves the continuous correspondence of successive segments which come in certain shapes and sizes, phonologically speaking, and not others. According to specific expectations, prosodic phrases form packets referred to as lines, and groups of lines form chunks. The phrases, lines, and line-groups provide a mold into which a poet pours semantic content. In the case of ancient Hebrew verse, it is not difficult to see that it is structured in terms of prosodic frames. The study of prosodic regularities in ancient Hebrew verse ought therefore to be of considerable interest.

 

The semantic and prosodic dimensions of a text are two different things, but a correct understanding of the latter naturally leads for a more precise understanding of the former.

 

In the course of evoking her grandfather for posterity, the American poet Robert Frost, Lesley Lee Francis remembers that according to him, “certain poems, like haphazard knowledge, stick to you like burrs in the field” (here). That is a fitting description of Psalms 104 and 137; Isaiah 1:2-20; 5:1-7, and 40:1-11; Job 3 and 28; and other great poems of the Bible.

 

But the statement of Robert Frost describes what poetry does, not what it is. What is poetry? Frost makes two suggestions:

 

...I have a tune [when writing poetry], but it's a tune of the blend of these two things [meter and rhythm]. Something rises--it's neither one of those things. It's neither the meter nor the rhythm; it's a tune arising from the stress on those--same as your fingers on the strings, you know. The twang!

 

. . . I could define poetry this way: it is that which is lost out of both prose and verse in translation.[3]

  
Meter and Rhythm in Poetry

 

Meter and rhythm are two different things. Frost understood that, and knew that the best poetry fights against both even as it falls under their sway. It isn’t difficult to sense both meter and rhythm at work in his poetry.

 

An example may prove helpful. The meter of Frost’s A Peck of Gold is describable in terms of twice-repeated duple counts of strong stresses across the components of its units. Variation in the shapes and sizes of the units dominated by a single strong stress determine its ever-changing rhythm. I have slightly altered the formatting of the original.

A Peck of Gold

 

Dust always blowing about the town,

Except when sea-fog laid it down,

And I was one of the children told

Some  of the blowing  dust  was gold.

 

All  the dust  the wind  blew high

Appeared  like god  in the sunset sky,

 
But I  was one  of the children  told

Some of the dust was really gold.

 

Such  was life  in the Golden  Gate:

Gold dusted  all  we drank  and ate,

 
And I  was one  of the children told,

‘We all  must eat  our peck  of gold.’

 

This poem is not written in iambic pentameter, but is nonetheless prosodically regular. Twice-repeated duple counts of strong stresses characterize each line. Enjambment is universal across the half-lines that make up a line, in coincidence, usually, with natural syntactic breaks. Enjambment is frequent across the lines that make up a couplet.

Sequences of feet of fixed type and length as found in some traditional forms of verse are not a continuously operating principle of organization in Frost’s poetry. But the sequences that occur are far from haphazard. The opening line of each quatrain begins with a strong-stressed first syllable. The last line of the last quatrain, on the other hand, is purely iambic.

Meter, rhythm, and rhyme, each plain to the ear, contribute to the sound orchestration of A Peck of Gold. Meter and rhyme occur at fixed intervals. Rhythm does not. Its variability de-monotonizes the acoustic effect of the whole.

Research carried out in connection with this project supports the conclusion that ancient Hebrew verse possesses meter in the same sense that Frost’s poetry does. Duple and triple counts of strong stresses follow one another and make up the parts of a line. Lines occur in couplets and triplets. Enjambment commonly occurs as well. Its rhythm and meter are distinct.

In its own way, the meter of ancient Hebrew verse is just as regular as that of Frost’s verse. An example in translation is given below. It is formatted after the same fashion adopted for A Peck of Gold above, except that each part-line or verset is assigned a line of its own.

Hear o heavens,

give ear o earth!

Yahweh has spoken.

 

Sons I reared and raised,

and they rebelled against me.

 

An ox knows its owner,

an ass its master’s pen;

 

Israel does not know,
my people do not consider.

O errant nation,

iniquity laden people,

 

Brood of evildoers,

miscreant sons,

 

Who abandoned Yahweh,

despised Israel’s Holy One,
turned back!

 

Where shall one strike you again?

You go on turning away!

 

The whole head is injured,

the whole  heart sick;

 

From sole of foot to head,

no soundness in it:

 

Sore and gash,

raw wound,

Not drained,
not dressed,
not softened with oil. (Isaiah 1:2-6)[4]

For the distinction between meter and rhythm, the comments of Viktor Zhirmunsky are worth keeping in mind:

     Pure tonic verse is based on a count of the stressed syllables; the number of unstressed syllables is a variable quantity . . . When attention is focused on the stressed syllables, groups of unstressed syllables – even though they contain varying numbers of syllables – may be perceived as equivalent to each other.

 
Of course, the number of unstressed syllables between stresses is of essential importance in shaping the rhythm of individual lines or of the poem as a whole: since, however, such syllables form no part of the compositional structure, they belong to the area of rhythm, not meter.[5]

A Definition of Poetry

 

Poetry is that which is lost out of both prose and verse in translation, says Frost. Two experiences in my life brought this truth home. The first was the impact of reading the Iliad in the original while in college, and being forced to memorize the first hundred lines for an oral exam. By the end of that trauma, I had a bit of prosody in my bones, and I began to understand how prosody cooperates with other textual features to create the effect of an orchestra on the ears of the soul.

 

The second experience occurred after I had lived in Italy for many years, and had come to feel at home in that linguistic medium. Years before, with no Italian in my system, I had tried to read Dante in translation. I was repulsed. Then I picked it up again, almost by accident, and was stunned by its beauty. The magic of its meter and rhythm are overwhelming.

 

The moral of the story ought to be clear. If you haven’t learned Hebrew, it’s time you do. Elsewhere I offer advice about how to go about learning Hebrew.

 

 

 

The Theory of Poetry

 

It’s a rare musician who, like Fred Lerdahl, loves the theory and not just the practice of music.[6] Even so, it’s not possible to get a degree in music without completing a number of courses in theory. That one can get a degree in literature without taking a course in poetry theory is not a positive sign. That one can read poetry in ancient Hebrew and not seek to understand its organizing principles bespeaks a lack of intellectual curiosity. An understanding of the art of poetry, its meter and rhythm included, has it own rewards. As Rainer Maria Rilke once wrote - he was speaking about life in general:

 

“Don’t be confused by surfaces; in the depths everything becomes law.”

 

Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet (trans., Stephen Mitchell, trans., Vintage Books 1984) 39 [To Franz Xaver Kappus, Worpswede, near Bremen, July 16, 1903. The original reads: “Lassen Sie sich nicht beirren durch die Oberfläche; in den Tiefen wird alles Gesetz.”].

For a printable version of this post, go here.

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[1] For an overview of the debate, see A History of Modern Research. For full references to Kugel, O’Connor, and Pardee’s contributions, see Annotated Bibliography.

[2] Jeffery Wills, Repetition in Latin Poetry: Figures of Allusion (Oxford: Clarendon, 1996) 1.

[3] Taken from “Conversations on the Craft of Poetry,” Robert Frost: Collected Poems, Prose, & Plays (New York: The Library of America, 1995) 856-57. Hat tip to the blogger who posts about Frost here. The use and contents of the material in brackets I pick up from her.

[4] I discuss this passage at length in “The Poetic Structure of Isaiah 1:2-20: A Programmatic Essay.” Go here.

[5] Viktor Maksimovich Zhirmunsky, Introduction to Metrics: The Theory of Verse (tr. and ed. C.E. Brown; introd. Edward Stankiewicz and Walter N. Vickery; The Hague: Mouton, 1966) 171.

[6] Fred Lerdahl and Ray Jackendoff, A Generative Theory of Tonal Music (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1996 [1983]); Fred Lerdahl, Tonal Pitch Space  (New York: Oxford University Press, 2001). Lerdahl’s approach to music theory has ramifications for poetry theory. See Fred Lerdahl, “A Music-Theoretic Approach to the Sounds of Poetry,” in manuscript; “The Sounds of Poetry Viewed as Music,” in The Cognitive Neuroscience of Music (ed. Isabelle Peretz and Robert J. Zatorre; New York: Oxford University Press, 2003).

On the Need for Vernacular Translations

Over at englishbibles.blogspot.com, Wayne Leman makes an excellent case for translations in vernacular English. He has a great C. S. Lewis quote to back up his contention.

I concur on the need for natural, vernacular translations. When I was 13 and 14 years old, before reading widely in English literature, the only translation that spoke to me was the Good News Bible. I am grateful for that kind of translation. A translation that excels at dynamic equivalence provides a familiar-sounding point of entry into the world of meaning the text evokes.

But I also think there is room for at least three other kinds of translations. It's a both/and kind of thing. In a previous parish, I remember receiving a memorial gift designated for the purchase of pew Bibles. The question to decide: what translation to buy. I gave the worship committee a choice of three translations: the NRSV, the NIV, and the ESV. The choice was easy for them: the ESV. Of course. They were raised on the RSV, and are, generally speaking, very well-read people. The NRSV and NIV did not resonate with them the way ESV does. 

In the same congregation, I had one person whom I would sometimes ask to read Scripture before my sermon. She is an English professor and an author in her own right. She would read from the KJV, and it worked beautifully. She could make that translation sing, and enunciate it in such a way that we caught its nuances. A rare gift, to be sure. 

Finally, there is a place for paraphrases like Peterson's The Message. They defamiliarize the text for us, and thus allow it to speak to us afresh.

As for the translations of ancient Hebrew poetry I offer on this site, they are, unavoidably, a contradiction in terms. Why will become clear in my next post.

Exploring the Frontiers of Online Biblical Scholarship

The future of information exchange is online. Books will not go away, but their most useful form will be as components of online tagged and searchable databases. Any book worth paying for will have an online dimension or extension. The reference materials we depend on will be continuously updated. The act of identifying a needed resource will coincide in real time with the ability to download and peruse said resource.

And the more things change, the more they will stay the same. Nothing will replace a thorough familiarity with the texts and the realia which interest us. Nothing can substitute for the community effort that stands behind the best scholarship. The community, however, more and more, will be online.

It is sometimes said that the future of biblical studies, and the study of antiquity in general, will be spoken and written in English. Just for fun, let me prove the opposite. As far as I can see, some of the most impressive resources in development online are in German.

There are five sites in German that, so far as I know, lack an equivalent in the English speaking realm. In each case, the lack is grievous.

(1) www.ubka.uni-karlsruhe.de

(2) www.isatex.de

(3) www.wibilex.de (on its way; now www.wilat.de)

(4) bildi.uibk.ac.at

(5) www.bible-orient-museum.ch/

Site number one is the Karlsruher Virtueller Katalog (KVK). It was first conceived as a union catalog of German language libraries, but now includes many other European language libraries. It is not free of glitches, but is continually expanding. It includes COPAC, the British union catalog, which is useful on its own. If a few more libraries were added to it, like those in Israel, the best elsewhere (the Regenstein, HUC, Robarts, the PIB, Harvard, Yale, and so on), it would come close to a one-stop shop. It even has online booksellers in the mix should you want them, amazon.de, of course, not amazon.com! The various amazons seem to share information more and more, so in the end it might not matter. Question number one: Why don’t we have anything like this in English?

Site number two is the Informations-Stelle für Alt-Testamentliche Exegese (ISATEX). So far the coverage is uneven, but it has many excellent features. It’s great to find in one place master lists of courses and syllabi, webpages, and email addresses of individual scholars; research projects short and long-term with links; museums; and so on. Question number two: German-speaking people have all of the above and more. Why don’t we?

Site number three is the Wissenschaftliche Bibellexikon im Internet (WiBiLex) edited by Michaela Bauks und Klaus Koenen. This is a project of the Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft, the same people who bring us the Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia (BHS). It has just begun, but the sample articles are very promising. More than 2000 articles are planned. This spring the free access encyclopedia will be fully launched with 230 articles from more than 100 authors. Question number three: Wikipedia is pathetic in the field of Hebrew Bible, New Testament, and so on, so it’s not as if an equivalent exists in English. Why isn’t there an up-to-date multimedia online lexicon of the Bible in the language of the empire?

Site number four: the Bibelwissenschaftliche Literaturdokumentation Innsbruck (BILDI). It actually comes with the choice of an English interface. Many of us have access to ATLA and/or JSTOR and so on, so this site may seem superfluous. The bibliographical information is encoded in a format that seems designed to discourage cutting and pasting, which is stupid. But they have the basic principle right. All important bibliographical information in the field should be available free of charge to anyone who wants it. Punkt. Question number four: you know it already.

Site number five emanates from the Bibel+Orient Museum, a sister institution of the Department of Biblical Studies, Freiburg University, Switzerland (where Othmar Keel teaches). It comes with the choice of a German or French interface. Two online projects of the museum are of particular interest. An online course on the “The World of the Bible” is in development. A demo version is available. The quality and graphics of the section on “Bodies of Water” in Palestine/Israel, for example, is superb. For a peek, go here. The 12 week course will be divided into the following modules:

• Geographie
• Archäologie
• Wirtschaft und Soziologie
• Politische Geschichte I: Palästina und Ägypten
• Politische Geschichte II: Palästina und Vorderasien
• Politische Geschichte III:  Palästina und der Westen
• Ethnographie I: Israeliten, Aramäer, Ammoniter, Moabiter
• Ethnographie II: Judäer,  Phönizier, Philister, Edomiter, Araber
• Religionsgeschichte I: Polytheismus
• Religionsgeschichte II:  Monotheismus
• Religionsgeschichte III: Abrahamitische Religionen
• Die Bibel im Umfeld der altorientalischen Literaturen

The other project is an online catalog of photos and classificatory data of artifacts held by museums and private collectors around the world. The databank contains to date ancient near eastern stamp seal collections of iconographic significance.

There are plenty of excellent resources online in other modern languages. In modern Hebrew, for example. I’m not qualified to provide an overview, since my grasp of Israeli Hebrew is far from perfect. In a future post, I will describe resources online in English that I have found helpful.

Go here for a printable version of this post.

In Praise of a New Commentary on Isaiah 1-5

H. G. M. Williamson, A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on Isaiah 1-27. Volume 1. Commentary on Isaiah 1-5 (ICC; London: T & T Clark, 2006)

Williamson’s commentary on Isaiah 1-5 arrived in the mail a few months ago. I have referred to it often since. The strengths of the work are in the areas of text-criticism, philology, and literary and redaction-critical research. For those whose who wish to pore over Isaiah in the original with the greatest care, W’s commentary will prove a worthy companion. 

The first of 3 volumes allotted to the author, the trilogy will reach no further than Isaiah 27. In 410 pages, Williamson canvasses a total of 115 verses. If he keeps to the same regimen in future volumes, and adds a weighty introduction to the set, he will bequeath us with a total of 2000 to 3000 pages of commentary by the time he’s done. Will that earn him a mention in the Guinness Book of World Records? 

Goldingay and Payne’s yet-to-arrive two volume commentary on Isaiah 40-55 in the ICC series is 424 + 432 pages. They are slackers in comparison to Williamson. Volumes on Isa 28-39 and 55-66 have not yet appeared, but it is already seems clear that the new ICC Isaiah will run over 5000 pages in length. A fitting tribute to one of the most influential texts in cultural history. 

Williamson treats the reader to a thorough discussion of Qumran variants, the ancient versions, and previously proposed emendations to the text. He develops his arguments with acumen and seldom claims too much for the conclusions he reaches.

After reading Williamson’s remarks on Isa 1:2-2:5 and 5:1-7, I revised my posts on these passages in light of what I learned. It did not occur to me, for example, that the first two words of Isa 5:6 might belong with the last four words of 5:5, and form together a tripartite line. Williamson’s proposal makes admirable sense. 

I disagree with Williamson in matters great and small, but that is in the nature of the enterprise. Interaction with the content of the commentary is scattered throughout the following posts: 

A Brief Introduction to the Book of Isaiah

The Prophetic Poetry of Isaiah 1:2-20: A Programmatic Essay

The Rhetoric of Isaiah 1:2-20: An Exploration

Isaiah 5:1-7: A Brief Introduction

Go to: Williamson.pdf for a printable version of this post

Isaiah 1:2-3 and Luke 2:7

In an excursus to the post entitled “Compare and Understand: The Use of Translations in the Study of Biblical Literature: Isaiah 1:2-3 as a Test Case,” I point out that the traditional image of oxen and donkeys gathered around a manger with their Lord Jesus in it is the result of allowing Isa 1:2-3 to interpret Luke 2:7 and Luke 2:7 to interpret Isa 1:2-3. This amounts to what one might call an arbitrary textual codetermination. How might we react to this kind of interpretation? Shall we rule it out of bounds, or follow suit? 

For reflections on this subject, see Stephen L. Cook, “Isaiah 1:3 and the Creche Scene,” online at http://biblische.blogspot.com/2006/12/isaiah-13-and-creche-scene.html.
 

I would answer: neither one nor the other. The imaginative construal of the biblical witness by past tradition, even when it depends on the conflation of disparate texts, is not a gift to snort at. The conflation comes across as arbitrary from one point of view, but from another, it is not. In terms of the metanarrative that triggered it, the conflation serves to reiterate a number of theological points. The conflation becomes an icon of those points. In the context of the metanarrative, the construal is not arbitrary at all. 

If interpretation that takes its cue from a metanarrative is to be welcomed, are we also justified in being as arbitrary as premodern interpreters in our acts of interpretation? 

The almighty reader of our postmodern age seems to think so. This reader accepts, rejects, or subordinates a text in accordance with a pre-established ideological framework. There is in fact no essential methodological difference between premodern and postmodern biblical interpretation. Only the metanarrative governing the choice of intertextual operations is changed. 

Another kind of interpretation is possible. The task of reconstructing the sense the text had “once upon a time” is also worth undertaking. The goal of historical interpretation is to bring to life the text as it would have been understood then, not the text as it came to be understood in some other time and place, or as I the omnipotent reader construe it based on the world view I espouse. 

Historical interpretation, for it to succeed, must be fiercely in love with the otherness of the text as it once would have been construed. It operates on the premise that the text of old is yet able to speak through the words it contains. Those words are still able to pose a danger to the status quo, and still able to enhance our lives. 

The degree to which we interpreters censor the text should not be underestimated. I remember being invited to preach at my aunt’s church in Edina, Missouri. I relayed the scripture I would preach on and the title of my sermon. The text was Ezekiel 16. Overwhelmed by the text, my aunt’s pastor, bless his heart, told me on arrival that he would read the text before I preached. He chose to read from the King James. That way, people would miss the original’s blatant use of sexual imagery. 

But I had come prepared with a translation of my own from the Hebrew. I read Ezekiel again. All was quiet. You couldn’t hear a pin drop. I had their full, flushed attention. I’m sure Ezekiel garnered the full attention of his audiences too. 

We are all prone to censor Scripture. A text depicting an angry God disturbs the postmodern conscience. We are abashed by its contents. We know of no place for anger in our lives. We know of no acceptable outlet for it. 

But perhaps there is a time for anger, as there is a time for war, and a time to make love. The planet “Mars” cannot and should not be removed from Holst’s “The Planets.” I wouldn’t want to listen to the violent episodes in Ralph Vaughan Williams’ symphonies every day. But Williams was right to embrace anger and violence in his music. 

Scripture is like a grand edifice built over the centuries by many and diverse hands. Its very disharmonies and rough edges contribute to its grandeur. Those who remove them commit an act of vandalism. 

[To print this item, go to:  Isa 1 2-3 and Luke 2 7.pdf]