New Directions in the Computational Analysis of Biblical Poetry (original) (raw)
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This article is intended to be an exegetically useful foundation for a theory of Biblical Hebrew (lyrical) poetry, with the center of gravity in the psalms. I take up the research on poetry of pioneer linguists and literary theorists Bühler-Jakobson and Lotman and its application to Biblical Hebrew poetry by, among others, Alter, Berlin, and Nel. I describe “repetition” (or recurrence) as the basic phenomenon. It subsumes not only parallelismus membrorum but also other forms of poetic and structural equivalence. This characteristic feature of biblical poetry establishes a multidimensional network of intra- and extratextual connections that produces a compaction and polysemy not found in the same density and complexity in other literary genres. Important insights are exemplified by three psalms that I have selected for their appropriateness (Pss 3, 13, and 130). The purpose is to elucidate the theory and make it useful for the exegesis of lyrical biblical texts.
1997-Analysing Biblical Hebrew Poetry
JSOT 74 (1997) 77-93, 1997
That analysing Biblical Hebrew Poetry (BHP) is not an easy task needs no proof. Many essays have been published in recent years but no accepted solution is in sight. 1 Among the numerous unresolved problems, we find the very nature of poetry itself. 2 It is my intention to propose what seems to me a simple, unpretentious, yet effective way of analysing BHP starting from the smallest units. The main characteristics of poetry versus prose are the following: 1) segmented versus linear communication; 2) parallelism of similar bits of information versus sequence of different bits of information; 3
In this paper I have covered the different approaches to studying the Verbal Hebrew System. I have given special attention to Discourse Analysis as a valid and fruitful, albeit new, discipline because, in correlation with other disciplines, it is capable of synchronically explaining the seemingly haphazard behavior of verbal forms according to their different functions within the framework of different types or modes of discourse. This method is able to identify and catalog the hierarchy of language features present within writ-ten texts and then to explain coherently the role these features play in individual texts. Because it focuses on the supra-sentential-level language structures, it takes into account the organizational, componential, and semantic expectations associated with the various textual genres. In dealing with BH poetry I have also tried to include observations and results from different disciplines, leading up to a pragmatic analysis of a select corpus based on the work of Notarius (2007; 2013). The results of her investigation in BH poetry turned up a high degree of linguistic variation. This should, once and for all, debunk the myth that the grammar of the poetic language as a single, homogeneous phenomenon. With the existing differences between prose and poetry, but also between different poetic texts, one should not wonder why grammarians of the past ran against such overwhelming odds, trying to apply the same rules to all texts, regardless of genre, discourse mode, or structure.
Ancient Hebrew and Ugaritic Poetry and Modern Linguistic Tools: An Interdisciplinary Study
Journal for The Study of Religions and Ideologies, 2010
This article introduces the reader to the issue of verbal sequence in the poetry of the Hebrew Bible, a topic that was studied in depth as a doctoral dissertation. After noticing the peculiarities of the poetic discourse, it surveys the solutions offered to this crux interpretum to date, but concludes that these solutions are insufficient. Several limitations of such a study are assumed from the outset. We confine ourselves to the Psalter for various reasons given below. Terminologically, we resist the temptation of modern terminology by making use of terms that are as neutral as possible. Methodologically, we employ Systemic Functional Grammar to describe the grammatical incidents wherein verbs are included. Lastly, the paper concludes with an overview of the potential contributions of such a study.
“Double Segmentation” in Biblical Hebrew Poetry and the Poetic Cantillation System*
ZDMG, 2018
The principle of double segmentation is at work in Biblical Hebrew poetry in spite of the structural parallelism: both syntactic and poetic segmentations are evident, giving place to dynamic discrepancies between these two levels. In order to illustrate this claim I turned to the poetic system of cantillation of Three books examined for the selected Psalms corpus. I claimed that the poetic system of cantillation manifests poetic prosody, sensitive to the poetic segmentation: (1) there are two patterns of versification for couplets and for triplets; (2) there are explicit prosodic rules that set a poetic line as a long conjunctive sequence marked by a monotonous pitch contour and an a-semantic boundary pause, namely as a prosodic unit on its own. However, the cantillation system of Three books is also responsive to the syntactic segmentation: (1) the patterns of doubles and triplets can be sporadically used for pragmatically marked constituents, glossing, pivot phrase, and in order to avoid heavy enjambments; (2) the system is not uniform processing too long poetic units, apparently due to their complex syntactic structure; (3) if the syntax strongly contradicts the versification, the cantillation system would rather follow the syntactic segmentation.
2010-An Integrated Verb System for Biblical Hebrew Prose and Poetry
My analysis of the verbal system in Biblical Hebrew (hereafter BH) is based on the text-linguistic approach of Harald Weinrich. 1 Another approach called "Discourse Analysis," especially common among English-speaking scholars, is considered similar to that of Weinrich but is actually totally different. 2 In my opinion, in order to be reliable, an approach needs to be based on a correct analysis of the basic types of sentence attested in a language. And this analysis must be done not in isolation but in the text, i.e., in the linguistic unit in which the sentence appears.
The Relation of Coordination to Verb Gapping in Biblical Poetry
This essay examines the relationship between two features of biblical poetry: (1) verb gapping between lines with matching structures (i.e. identical constituents); and (2) explicit coordination of parallel lines with waw. At first glance, the presence of an explicit conjunction between such cola may appear to be optional and completely within the realm of stylistics, even though it is statistically most frequent. However, a correlation of the precise structural features of elliptical structures with the presence (and absence) of coordination suggests instead that additional syntactic and cognitive factors are at work.
KUSATU 15 (2013) 77-94 During the years I changed my mind concerning the verbal forms in BH poetry, changing from the common idea that verbal forms in BH poetry do not play precise functions and are not the same as in prose. I think now, first, that different verbal forms play different functions in BH poetry as in prose and, second, that the functions of the verbal forms in poetry are basically the same as in prose.