Ancient Hebrew Poetry

In Praise of a Comparative Psalter

A Comparative Psalter

Hebrew (Masoretic Text)

Revised Standard Version Bible

The New English Translation of the Septuagint

Greek (Septuagint)

The Complete Book of Psalms in a Parallel Format

Edited by John R. Kohlenberger III

New York: Oxford University Press, 2007

ISBN13: 9780195297607

ISBN10: 0195297601

Hardback, 288 pages. Also available in paper.

 
Suggested retail price of hardcover: $39.99; paperback: $29.99. Amazon.com lists a price of $22.79 for the hardcover right now. An error on their part, but they stand by their advertised prices. I received a copy from them at list price. Note that the stand-alone edition of A New English Translation of the Septuagint: The Psalms is out of print and available on the used book market for prices in excess of the cost to purchase it as a component of A Comparative Psalter.

The following review of A Comparative Psalter first appeared on Rick Mansfield’s blog entitled “THIS LAMP... and that's all I need.” For scholarship and readability, the review equals or surpasses reviews that appear in trade magazines like Review of Biblical Literature. Thanks, Rick and Larry, for permission to post it here. I made a few minor editorial changes, corrected a few typos, and added a couple of hot links.

A Comparative Psalter has just appeared in print. It would make a worthy addition to the library of any student of the Bible who is interested in reading the Psalter in the original languages, for prayer or for study, or has an interest in the Septuagint.

The Psalter includes four versions of the psalms: (Masoretic) Hebrew, (Septuagint) Greek, and two leading translations of each: the RSV for the Hebrew, and the New English Translation of the Septuagint (NETS) for the Greek.

The idea for the book apparently came from a similar volume for a German-language audience published in 2000 and edited by Walter Gross and Bernd Janowski.

The Hebrew is that of BHS (⁵1997) with critical apparatus but without masora parva (the notes in the margins of the BHS). The Greek is that of Rahlfs’ Septuaginta (1935). The RSV contains full textual notes (often not reproduced in electronic editions). The NETS contains textual notes and two useful longer prefaces. The NETS is a nice translation, with careful attention paid to literal rendering and gender issues, and I look forward to a complete printed edition soon. A provisional edition is found online.

The numbering of the psalms in the Hebrew uses the traditional (English) numbering as opposed to the original Hebrew numbering. The NETS uses both the English numbering and the Greek numbering. The beginning and ending of each of the five books of psalms are carefully marked. The 151st psalm (included in the Eastern Orthodox Psalter) is not included.

A simple cross reference system is found at the bottom of the right-hand pages. While I find such annotations unhelpful, the page layout makes them inconspicuous and easy to ignore.

Other than textual notes, there is no annotation in the Psalter. This is a case where less is more -- any annotation would have probably made this Psalter unacceptable to some audience.

The introduction does not explain why the RSV was chosen over the NRSV, but one can guess: the RSV is slightly more literal than the NRSV and is also approved for Roman Catholic liturgy -- while the NRSV has the imprimatur, the gender neutral language has caused the Vatican to ban its use in the liturgy. (The ban on liturgical use of the NRSV was made by Cardinal Ratzinger, who has since become Pope Benedict XVI, and was the subject of some conflict between the US Conference of Catholic Bishops.) The NRSV Psalter received special criticism from the Vatican. Similarly, although I have seen (carefully qualified) praise for the RSV from some Eastern Orthodox scholars, the NRSV seems to be much more controversial.

Still, the choice of the NRSV would have been more logical, since Albert Pietersma (the NETS translator) deviates from the NRSV only when he feels the Greek deviates from the Hebrew.

The page size is generous and there is ample space for making notes. (The paper used is thick, although perhaps absorbent -- I haven't tried writing on it yet.) For those familiar with other Oxford parallel Bibles, such as The Precise Parallel New Testament [editor’s note: out of print! Hard to find except at an exorbitant price], this work is about an inch taller and wider.

One thing that surprised me is that Oxford placed the NETS logo on the binding and back of the Psalter. Usually, Oxford doesn't put Bible logos on its Bibles. The NETS logo is especially ugly and busy, so this was a bit of a graphic design failure. However, as they say -- don't judge a book by its cover.

A printed Psalter is more useful than an electronic Psalter. First, all of the electronic versions of the RSV I have seen omit notes. Second, most electronic versions (with the exception of the Stuttgart Electronic Study Bible) omit Hebrew critical apparatus. Third, to the best of my knowledge, NETS is not integrated into any major electronic Bible package. Third, observant Jews can't use an electronic device on the Sabbath or biblical religious holidays. Fourth, I find having a computer on is distracting to prayer and prefer to pray out of a written book (and actually, I prefer to study out of a written book as well.) Fifth, as already noted, a printed book allows a person to make notes.

Aramaic Poetry in the Book of Daniel

Is there poetry in the Aramaic of the book of Daniel? You would not have guessed it if you read the book in translation until quite recently. The Jewish Publication Society Version of 1917 seems to have been the first translation to distinguish poetry from prose therein.

 It’s hard to find something you are not looking for. Prayer and prophecy are featured in the book of Daniel. In a cross-cultural perspective, it is patent that both genres of speech often take the form of verse. Awareness and appreciation of the diverse genres represented in the Bible waxed and waned through the centuries, but was not strong enough to impel readers to systematically distinguish verse from prose, either in the book of Daniel or elsewhere in the Bible, until the distinctive features of Hebrew verse were described with perspicacity by Lowth in a series of lectures at Oxford published in 1753.[1]

 According to James A. Montgomery, the first scholar to recognize that the book of Daniel contains poetry was Leonhard Bertholdt.[2] Bertholdt’s massive commentary on Daniel (publication date: 1806-08) is not widely read today, but earned him a professorship at the time.

 Most Bibles now print a number of passages in Daniel as verse. BHS versifies, to the exclusion of introductory material, 2:20-23; 3:33; 4:7-9, 11-14, 31-32; 6:27-28; 7:9-10, 13-14, 23-27; NJPSV: 2:20-23; 4:8-9, 11-14, 20, 31-32; 7:9-10, 13-14; NIV: 2:20-23; 4:3 [= MT 3:33]; 4:34-35 [= MT 4:31-32]; 6:26-27 [= MT 6:27-28]; 7:9-10; John J. Collins: 2:20-23; 4:7-9, 11-14a; 6:27-28; 7:9-10, 13-14.[3]

 The study of Aramaic poetry in the book of Daniel is nonetheless in its infancy. The most detailed study to appear to date is that of Segert.[4]

 Languages in Contact: Hebrew and Aramaic

The evidence of the books of Ezra-Nehemiah and Daniel suggests that vocabulary, set phrases, and syntactic patterns of ancient Hebrew of earlier times and of liturgical Hebrew of the Persian and Hellenistic periods were taken over into Aramaic of the same period in the context of the liturgy and in the creation of new literature. Vice versa, and not less importantly, vocabulary, set phrases, and syntactic patterns of Aramaic were taken over into Hebrew in the same period, as the same books, Chronicles, Qohelet, and Esther attest.[5]

 Daniel 2:20-23, a poetic inset composed ad hoc for the narrative in which it is found, may illustrate. A translation of the Aramaic into late classical Hebrew, with parallels in terms of phraseology and syntactic patterns noted, is offered here. Loans and calques in both directions are evident.

 The Prosody of Biblical Aramaic Verse

 The scansion I offer of Dan 2:20-23 differs from all previous inasmuch as 2:2 units are consistently treated as prosodic equivalents of 3:3 units. Go here. More generally, the scansion accords with a working hypothesis developed in the course of research on ancient Hebrew verse.[6]

Taking Stock of Biblia Hebraica Quinta

Two fascicles of Biblia Hebraica Quinta (BHQ) have now appeared: General Introduction and Megilloth (2004) and Ezra and Nehemiah (2006). They are beautifully produced and deserve a place on the shelf of every serious student of the Hebrew Bible. They will interest anyone who accepts the possibility that the received texts of the books of the Hebrew Bible contain intentional changes and inadvertent errors that distinguish them from the texts as published and disseminated at the beginning of their march through history.

 Biblia Hebraica Quinta 18. General Introduction and Megilloth. Ruth (Jan de Waard). Canticles (Piet B. Dirksen). Qoheleth (Yohanan A. P. Goldman). Lamentations (Rolf Schäfer). Esther (Magne Sæbø). Gen. ed. Adrian Schenker et al.; Stuttgart: Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft, 2004. Order here or here.

Biblia Hebraica Quinta 20. Ezra and Nehemiah (David Marcus). Gen. ed. Adrian Schenker et al.; Stuttgart: Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft, 2006. Order here or here.

Text criticism is not a subject that interests everyone. The traditional or masoretic text and the proto-masoretic text before that, many will point out, have served readers well since the fall of the Second Temple in the context of rabbinic Judaism, and, albeit indirectly, since the Vulgate of Jerome in the context of Latin-speaking Christianity. Alongside the official Aramaic targumim, the masoretic text remains normative in rabbinic Judaism. The masoretic text, furthermore, is now the point of departure for exegesis in all branches of western Christianity. If the masoretic text was and is good enough for the readers of the Hebrew Bible just mentioned, why shouldn’t it be good enough for you and me?[1]

There is much to be said for sticking with the masoretic text. Seamless participation in a stream of interpretation that has flowed without ceasing for more than two millennia is thereby secured. But there is also something to be said for the attempt to describe text forms of the books of the Hebrew Bible that existed before and alongside the proto-masoretic text forms in Second Temple times.

Non-masoretic text forms of the books of the Hebrew Bible are of historical interest. In some cases, furthermore, via translation into Greek and other languages, they are read as Holy Scripture to this day in orthodox branches of Christianity. Many Jews depended on non-proto-masoretic text forms of the books of the Hebrew Bible, in Hebrew and/or in translation, up to and beyond the fall of the Second Temple even after proto-masoretic text forms of the same books became the text of choice among other Jews. Philo, Josephus, Matthew, and the author of the Epistle to the Hebrews, to cite well-known examples, depended on text forms of the books of the Hebrew Bible that differ significantly from the text forms of the same books that came to be embedded in the textus receptus of rabbinic Judaism. If a non-masoretic text form of the Hebrew Bible was the text through which Philo and Josephus and Matthew heard God speak, why might the same not take place in my case and your case today?

The task of describing and reconstructing details of the text that circulated “once upon a time,” before the (proto-) masoretic text became normative for Jews and, albeit indirectly, for many Christians, can in some sense be understood as an act of devotion. The biblical text as it would have looked like then, not the text as it has come to be, is brought to life again. The text of old, we may expect, is yet able to communicate through the words it contains.

But intractable problems arise should one argue that a non-masoretic text form of a book of the Hebrew Bible, if it appears to represent a more pristine form of the text than does the masoretic form, must become the form in which scripture is received. The transmitted errors and intentional corrections that form part of the masoretic text should not be thought to disqualify said text from functioning as Holy Scripture. Said errors and intentional changes, it is possible to affirm, have positively rather than negatively contributed to the life of the people who treated and continue to treat the text form in which they are found as Holy Scripture. I would so affirm. But my interest in received texts of the books of the Hebrew Bible which predate the received text of said books we refer to as the masoretic text is not thereby diminished. The first translators of the books of the Hebrew Bible into Greek, the readers of 4QJosh^a, 4QSam^a, 4QJer^b, and 4QJer^d, and Jewish authors of the caliber of Philo and Josephus heard God speak to them through the non-proto-masoretic texts in their possession. I do not consider myself so dimwitted as to be unable to do likewise.

Update from the Leiden Peshitta Institute and Eisenbrauns

It's great to be a part of a community of scholars that takes note of valid suggestions, answers email, and recognizes the common good to be the number one priority.

Arie van der Kooij writes to say that the updating and renewing of the Peshitta Institute website is in process, and that the Peshitta text will be available through Logos in the near future (the electronic text of the Peshitta is nearing completion).

James Spinti of Eisenbrauns writes to say that the Leiden Peshitta volumes are now listed and purchasable through their online catalog. I plan to purchase a volume myself in the near future.

The post which triggered these reassurances and changes is here.

Blogrolls: A New Format

    If a blogroll is just a list of blogs with no additional information, how helpful is that?

    I am slowly expanding my blogroll, and to make it more user-friendly, I will list the authors (if known) and a favorite post or two. That way, the blogreader has a better chance of landing on something that is of interest.

Online Resources of Interest to Text Critics of the Bible

Textual criticism is a glorious field of study whose landscape is dotted with monuments of past and present erudition. The question I address in this post is to the degree to which the field is currently navigable online, and prospects for voyages in the future. In the interests of brevity, I confine my attention to a few aspects of the question only.

 The subject matter is of interest to anyone who cares about examples of poetry in ancient texts, because the nuances and prosody of a poetic text are especially sensitive to textual difference.

 A new dynamic is operative in the world of information exchange, whereby, more and more often, something new from the point of view of method or content first becomes available free of charge online and only later is repackaged for sale in a market. For this and other reasons, there are a number of online resources out there for anyone to use that lack as yet a better equivalent in the commercial sphere. This holds true for the field of text criticism as much as for any other field of study.

 This is a healthy situation, unless one holds to the view that Mammon must always be king. For my part, I have a demythologized view of Mammon, with a corollary: the purpose of an information market is not to make money per se, but to provide a venue that ensures support for and dissemination of original research and tools of the trade. To ring the changes on an eternal verity, the market was, or should be, made for man, not man for the market.

 The line between online resources available free of charge and those which cost a pretty penny needs to become blurrier than it is now, so that access to the former becomes a portal to access to the latter, and ownership of a paid-for resource brings with it enhanced access to resources available to all. Someday any book worth paying for will include an online dimension. Reference works will be updated electronically on a continuous basis. Examples of both, of course, are already out there.

 How this works for the moment and how it should work are often two different things. An example or two may serve to illustrate.

Let’s say I am interested in researching the Peshitta as a text-critical resource for the study of the Hebrew Bible and/or the New Testament, a key component of the Aramaic linguistic and literary heritage, and a magnum opus in its own right, knowledge of which is essential for an understanding of Syriac Christianity.

Ideally, in my view, I would be able to go to the site of the Leiden Peshitta Institute, access the text in the form of a tagged database free of charge, and in that context be offered other tools, both free and commercial, that will allow me to study the Peshitta in its various facets. In reality, when I go to the site, I find no more than a list of the Institute’s ongoing projects and links to lists of the fascicles of the Major Edition and the monographs of the Institute which have so far appeared. The cute picture of an unidentified researcher, of course, makes up for this. But still.

At the very least, one would have wished for a link to CAL, where part of the Peshitta Institute’s own database has graciously been made available to those who use CAL online. On the other hand, the OT Peshitta is not available in the for-pay version of CAL through Logos-Bible-Software. This is unfortunate.

Links to www.peshitta.org, www.assyrianlanguage.com, and so on would also have been helpful. (The music of Linda George on the first site is a nice throw-in.) A link to the online Syriac Studies Encyclopedia (editor: George A. Kiraz) would have opened a door in another direction.

Furthermore, the purchasable items in the Institute’s lists are cold, so one has to look elsewhere for a place to buy them. In this regard, a good place to start is Eisenbrauns, and if one plugs “Syriac” or “Peshitta” into the online search engine, all kinds of excellent purchasable resources pop up, but not the Leiden Peshitta edition itself! The best way to examine and purchase volumes of the Leiden Peshitta online is to go to Brill’s site, and from there to its links to books.google.com via ISBN number. It is then possible to take a look at a volume’s cover, peruse its table of contents and so on, and choose a bookseller from which to purchase. Here’s an example of what I mean: books.google.com/leiden-peshitta-isaiah. Beyond that, an almost complete listing of the Institute’s published monographs purchasable new or used is available at amazon.com-search-keywords=Monographs+Leiden+Peshitta.

One more example. Let’s say I’m interested in the Septuagint for reasons like those stated above with respect to the Peshitta. Here the situation is different, thanks to the marvelous site on the Septuagint and resources in the field offered by Joel Kalvesmaki. The site is literally priceless.

On the other hand, despite what Joel says, it’s not necessary to buy the Göttingen critical editions of the Septuagint via their publisher. You can purchase them at Eisenbrauns. After winning the lottery first.

Tyler Williams’ brief introduction to the study of the Septuagint is also very helpful.

Beyond that, the number of online resources for the study of the Septuagint is steadily increasing. A few examples will have to suffice.

 A Database of Septuagint Greek

Martin Roesel’s Introduction to the Septuagint

Marguerite Harl’s Introduction to the Septuagint

July 2007 Colloquium on the Greek Bible in Byzantine Judaism

Hengel’s The Septuagint as Christian Scripture (review by K. de Troyer)

I keep hoping that I will wake up someday, go to eisenbrauns.com, and discover that it has become a one-stop shop for all my needs as a biblical scholar. It’s not that I’m expecting, necessarily, to find Gabriel Afram’s Swedish-Syriac-Dictionary among its listings, the very existence of which warms my cockles. But it is my hope that a commercially viable way will be found for Eisenbrauns’ book catalogues to become a comprehensive portal to the purchasable print and electronic resources of the fields of study they cover. I can dream, can’t I?

I also keep hoping that someone will introduce to the rest of us the most important resources available in other subfields of the textual criticism of the Bible with the same alacrity as Joel and Tyler have done for the Septuagint.

 If you look long enough, you can find real gems, like this. But who has time to do all that looking?

 For a printable version of this post, go here.

Isaiah 1:2-3 Again

After a lengthy exchange with Al Pietersma, I have revised and updated my earlier note on Isa 1:2-3. The conclusions I reach, of course, are attributable to me alone.

Determining what a translator – ancient or modern – had in mind in translating as he/she does is a complex task. A determination hinges in part on the presumed relationship of translation production and reception. To my mind, a translator – ancient or modern – is the first receptor of his/her own translation. Translation reception takes place first of all within a feedback loop in the act of translation production. The feedback loop may be described in the following way. The tendency is for a translator to receive the source text indirectly, through the glosses in her mother tongue she associates with its words. In the process of making said associations, the translator is asking the question, what, globally speaking, does the text mean. The answer that is reached depends on the glosses the translator tentatively associated with the words of the original as much as, and probably more than, the words of the original per se. What the words of a text in translation mean, for the translator herself, depends on what they mean in the larger context of the translation, not what they mean (any longer) in the source text.

 Bottom line: one must be careful not to infer too much about the meaning of a word in translation Greek based on the meaning of the word it translates in Hebrew or Aramaic.

 The revised note is here.

The Genre of Genesis 1

A question that comes up in the case of Genesis 1 is the following: what is its genre?[1] In terms of what conventions and expectations are we to read it?

It is a question most people ask, so I might as well address it. I happen to be a pastor in a just-about-anything-goes denomination, so I can speak my mind without fear of someone challenging my call to preaching and teaching if I cross one of someone else’s red lines.

 In general terms, it might first be observed that the narratives of Genesis 1-11, Genesis 12-50, and 2 Kings 11-25, for example, relate to history in diverse ways. The Primary History (Gen – 2 Kgs) reworks sources whose closest extra-biblical parallels, in terms of genre, range from myth to chronicle. It is not without interest that the myths the biblical text plays off of are demythologized in a variety of ways and recast in monotheistic terms.

 For its part, Genesis 1 might be called a cosmological treatise. Traces of myth are detectable, but they have been thoroughly resignified. The result, it seems to me, is absolutely striking: the refining power of the affirmation of a single, all-powerful creation-affirming God was so great that Genesis 1, which derives from that matrix, succeeds as does no other text, ancient or modern, in describing an orderly, intelligible, and positively splendid creation in which humankind is given awesome responsibilities by the author of all. It is not too much to say that the text has a scientific cast. It also provides cogent grounds for pursuing science in every imaginable direction.

 This is not to say that Gen 1 is meant as science as the term is usually understood. It aims far higher than that. It seeks to answer questions that are beyond the purview of science as conventionally defined.

 Here Thomas Aquinas got it right: theology properly understood is the queen of the sciences. From its theological viewpoint, Gen 1 is able to address questions with a full reconnaissance of data, questions which other sciences can only address in a fragmentary way. The subject matter of theology is God, of course. According to Gen 1, God is the creator of heaven and earth, who saw what he made and liked it very much. These affirmations entail many things the importance of which is difficult to overestimate.[2]

 But if Gen 1 is a cosmological treatise which plays off of and reworks motifs whose origin lies in the realm of myth rather than in history as these terms are usually understood, it is confusing to describe Gen 1 as “fully historical.”

 On this view of things, Genesis 1 is a scientific (=wissenschaftliche) text without having to be a historical (=historische) text.

 Another way of seeing things goes back to e.g. John Calvin and before that to Jewish tradition. On this view, the biblical text does not recast and demythologize pre-existing myth but is based on independent oral tradition transmitted by an unbroken chain extending from Moses back to Abraham, Noah, and Adam.

 On this view of things, the full historicity of the text in the sense of creation in seven days must be defended against all naysayers.

 But, as far as I can see, the view that imagines the book of Genesis and Gen 1 in particular to be a product of an unbroken chain of oral tradition extending back to Adam is a case of pure supposition which tradition, not the biblical text, deemed necessary to make in the light of the dangers of affirming a view like the one I affirmed above.

 Is it not rather the case that the fence which tradition builds around Scripture to preserve it from misunderstanding is, in this and other instances, a sign of little faith? Is it not true that apart from questions of genre and tradition history, the book of Genesis (and Gen 1 in particular) is a self-authenticating text? In theological terms, the text on its own, through the witness of the Holy Spirit, is sufficient to impress upon the one who reads it that she or he is in the presence of absolute truth.

That the well-wrought urn in which we find this truth turns out to be a cosmological treatise the motifs of which originate in part in the realm of myth, a sociologically unexceptionable but historically inaccurate genealogy, or a tribal legend recast and retold for a purpose dear to the heart of God, is beside the point.

 Those who find such earthen vessels objectionable suffer, it seems to me, from a lack of spiritual and intellectual discernment. Like Peter of old, who saw all manner of unclean things spread out before him in a dream, and heard God say, to his amazement, “Eat!”, those with scruples about what literary genres God might use as a means of grace need to get over them.

 Theologians have often been in love with history,. I for one am not an exception to this rule. But to assert that Genesis 1 is and must be “fully historical” is an inappropriate way of defending its truth.

 It is wrong to prop Genesis 1 up with ill-fitting crutches. As a scientific treatise in the sense defined above, Genesis 1 stands on its own.

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[1] In this post, Gen[esis] 1 is shorthand for Gen 1:1 - 2:3.

[2] For a classic statement, see Langdon Gilkey, Maker of Heaven and Earth: The Christian Doctrine of Creation in the Light of Modern Knowledge (New York: Doubleday, 1965 [1959]).

Genesis 1:26-28 - Exegetical Odds and Ends

For the text and a translation of Genesis 1:26-28, go to the previous post entitled: Is Genesis 1:27 Poetry?

 The most plausible explanation for the first person plural in 1:26 (‘let us make’) is that God is addressing his heavenly court and makes them co-responsible for the action he will take. The usage is comparable to that of Gen 11:7 ('Let us go down') and Isa 6:8 ('Who will go for us?'). The thought that human beings are made ‘like’ both God and the members of the heavenly court is close to that of Ps 8:6, where God is said to have ‘made [humanity] little less than divine’ (like God and ‘the sons of God’ or ‘gods,’ as God’s celestial retinue is variously called).

Clines’ long essay on “The Image of God in Man” is readily available and makes for a delightful read.[1] His conclusion that in Gen 1:26-28 humankind is charged with being God’s representative on earth in the sense of exercising lordship over the animal kingdom stands up to critical scrutiny.

In view of ‘let us make humankind in our image, after our likeness,’ one might add the following observation. The exercise of dominion over the animal kingdom makes humankind like God who is lord and master of all, and like the members of the heavenly court each of whom is charged, as is said elsewhere, with being the lord and patron of one of the earth’s nations.[2]

But if dominion over the zoo sphere is exercised irresponsibly, it seems safe to conclude that humankind then falls under the same sentence of death as do the gods in Ps 82, whose malfeasance as champions of justice among the nations leads to the lord of all calling them to account.

For a printable version of this post, go here .

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[1] David Clines, "The Image of God in Man" TynBul 19 (1968) 53-103; online here.

[2] See MT Deut 4:19 and OG Deut 32:8. It seems likely that Deut 32:8 originally concluded with בני אל as in 4QDt^j, and that 32:9 originally began with ויהי (reflected in G καί ε̉γενήθη). For a discussion, see Jeffrey H. Tigay, Deuteronomy: The Traditional Hebrew Text with the New JPS Translation [and] Commentary (JPSTC; Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1996) 302-303, 402-403, 513-18, 546-47. A historical setting for a series of ancient emendations at Gen 46:27; Exod 1:5; and Deut 32:8, 43 is hypothesized by Arie van der Kooij, “Ancient Emendations in MT,” in L’Ecrit et l’Esprit: Etudes d’histoire du text et de théologique biblique en homage à Adrian Schenker (ed. Dieter Böhler, Innocent Himbaza, and Philippe Hugo; OBO 214; Fribourg/Göttingen: Academic Press / Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2005) 152-159; 155-59.

Is Genesis 1 Poetry?

It is sometimes claimed that Genesis 1 is poetry. To be sure, it reminds one of poetry in some ways, but it lacks the tightly controlled prosodic parallelisms characteristic of verse elsewhere in the Bible.[1]

 It is more often suggested that Genesis 1 is written in elevated prose. This, however, says very little. Virtually all prose in the Hebrew Bible is characterized by an elevated style of one kind or another.

 The Hebrew Bible is written in a variety of sociolinguistic registers, all but one of which, I would argue, is an elevated style. A five-way distinction in register is possible.

 As Frank Polak has shown in his pioneering research, two narrative prose registers are distinguishable: (1) A rhythmic-verbal style. It shares a number of features with its most important cultural forbear, ancient Semitic epic poetry, known to us from Ugaritic and Akkadian literature. Examples include the Abraham and Jacob narratives in Genesis, the Saul-David cycle in the books of Samuel, and the tales of Elijah and Elisha. These texts are characterized by a high frequency of short clauses conjoined by a simple ‘and,’ a low number of noun groups, especially complex ones, and a low number of subordinate clauses. (2) A complex-nominal style. It is characterized by the frequent use of hypotaxis (subordination, clauses embedded into clauses, etc.) and a high number of noun groups and complex noun groups. Examples include the historiography of 1 Kings 3-16 and 2 Kings 11-25. Similar but distinguishable styles are found in: Chronicles, Ezra-Nehemiah, Esther, and Daniel.[2]

 

A text like Genesis 1 does not neatly fit into the dichotomy just presented. Its rhythmic-verbal propensities shine in verse 27, and a plethora of verbs characterizes the direct discourse contained within it, but the chapter’s frequent use of noun groups and hypotaxis militates in favor of a hybrid classification.

 As already noted, Genesis 1 contains examples of one of two attested direct discourse registers: (3) Formal speech. The divine fiats of Genesis 1 are an example. Similar but distinguishable formal speech styles are found in all the various strata of the Primary History (JE, P, H, D, and Dtr) and in Chronicles, Ezra-Nehemiah, Esther, and Daniel. (4) Colloquial speech, or spontaneous direct discourse. It is mimicked here and there in the Primary History and elsewhere in blocks of narrative prose.

 Finally, about a third of the Hebrew Bible is in (5) Verse. I would distinguish three subvarieties.[3]

 Of the five linguistic registers just mentioned, all but one is high or elevated from a stylistic point of view. The exception is the register of colloquial speech. However, it does not occur on its own in the Hebrew Bible, but comes wrapped, so to speak, in the literary clothes of the narrative in which it is found.

For a printable version of this post, go  here.

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[1] For an introduction to the prosody of ancient Hebrew verse, go here.

[2] For further details about narrative prose styles, see Frank Polak, “Linguistic and Stylistic Aspects of Epic Formulae in Ancient Semitic Poetry and Biblical Narrative,” in Biblical Hebrew in Its Northwest Semitic Setting: Typological and Historical Perspectives (ed. Steven E. Fassberg and Avi Hurvitz; Publication of the Institute for Advanced Studies, the Hebrew University of Jerusalem 1; Winona Lake: Eisenbrauns; Jerusalem: Magnes, 2006) 285-304; 300-301; and bibliographical references there.

[3] For a brief description, go here.