Biblical "Alternation" and Its Poetics (original) (raw)

The Poetic and Narrative Shape of the Hebrew Bible and Literary Forms of Antithesis

2013

Linguistic and stylistic properties of various literatures can only be assessed when evaluated on the basis of the specific way of thinking, of the philosophy of life in general and of the religion in particular, as related to their specific concerns and answers. While dealing with the Hebrew Bible it becomes evident, that the most characteristic unifying force is the following fundamental antithesis: the verticality and radicality of God, evident in his promises, his deeds, and by the attitude of those who follow him versus the horizontality of idols and of human disobedi­ ence and its consequences. In spite of thematic and formal variety, the same vertical-horizontal dimension is conspicuous everywhere. The fundamentally inadequate relationship between transcendental realities and our available expressive categories is the main reason for using poetic and narrative means of expression. Literary forms of antithesis are used to express theological-moral motivations by conjoining ter...

Metathesis in the Hebrew Bible: Wordplay as a Literary and Exegetical Device by Isaac Kalimi

Catholic Biblical Quarterly, 2021

in Mainz. He is a major authority on the Hebrew Bible and the history of its interpretation. Metathesis in the Hebrew Bible is Kalimi's sixteenth published book. This concise volume defines literary-stylistic metathesis (pp. 1-16, 156-163) and analyzes 342 examples of this phenomenon in the Hebrew Bible (pp. 53-131); another twenty-six examples in the ancient and medieval Hebrew manuscripts of the Wisdom of Ben Sira (originally composed ca. 180 BCE) (pp. 136-144); an additional seven examples from the missing portions of the Hebrew Ben Sira, which Moshe Zvi Segal retroverted from the Greek version produced by Ben Sira's grandson in ca. 117 BCE (pp. 144-149); thirteen examples of literary-stylistic metathesis from ancient and medieval Rabbinic literature (pp. 151-155); and two examples in ancient and medieval Rabbinic literature of the related literary device called anagram (pp. 155-156). Literary-stylistic metathesis is 'an intentional use by an author or editor of two or more words within a text-unit that contain a similar or identical combination of letters but in inverted sequences' (pp. 1-2). Typical examples of this phenomenon are found in Isa. 9:1, Job 3:16, and Job 37:21, in each of which the verb 'they saw' (r'w) and the noun 'light' ('wr) are juxtaposed (numbered examples 3-5, p. 54). Another typical example of literary-stylistic metathesis, which Kalimi analyzes, is found in Micah 3:3-5, where we find the following three pairs:'šr-š'r, wprśw-wkbśr, and hnškym-bšnyhm. The entire biblical passage, in Kalimi's rendering, reads as follows: 'Those who eat the flesh of my people, strip their skin from them, break their bones in pieces, and chop them up like that which is [or emend to: flesh] in a pot, like flesh in a cauldron. Then they will cry to the LORD, but he will not answer them; he will hide his face from them at that time, because they have committed evil deeds. Thus says the LORD concerning the prophets who lead my Reviews 251

On the Newer Literary-Critical Approach to Biblical Poetry

Kairos, 2023

This presentation discusses the views of three renowned authors-James Kugel, Robert Alter, and Jan Fokkelman-known for their literary-critical approach to the Bible, concerning biblical poetry. According to Kugel, looking at the Bible through the lens of division into poetry and prose (lyrical and epic literature) means looking at it wrongly. He maintains that even meticulous analyses of parallelism can be distorted if viewed through this lens. Therefore, Kugel asserts that there is no poetry in the Bible but rather a "continuum" of loosely connected parallel structures in what we see as prose sections and "heightened rhetoric" in what we often erroneously consider verses. According to Alter, biblical poetry is based on semantic parallelism. However, he points out that poetic expression deliberately avoids complete parallelism, just as language resists mere synonyms by introducing subtle differences between related terms. In contrast, Fokkelman believes that combining prose and poetry, and even transitioning between them, is possible because most Hebrew sentences contain two to eight words and are usually linked in sequences through parataxis (using "… and… and… but… and then"). All three opinions lead to the conclusion that biblical poetry, like prose, is to a large extent sui generis, and that any distinction between poetry and prose, if it exists at all, is not of