Nicholas P. Lunn, Word-Order Variation in Biblical Hebrew Poetry: Differentiating Pragmatics and Poetics. 2006. Paternoster Biblical Monographs. Milton Keynes: Paternoster. 373 pp. + xiv, bibliography, appendices, indexes.

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. (shrink)

Unparalled in its poetry, richness, and religious and historical significance, the Hebrew Bible has been the site and center of countless commentaries, perhaps none as unique as Thinking Biblically. This remarkable collaboration sets the words of a distinguished biblical scholar, André LaCocque, and those of a leading philosopher, Paul Ricoeur, in dialogue around six crucial passages from the Old Testament: the story of Adam and Eve; the commandment "thou shalt not kill"; the valley of dry bones passage from (...) Ezekiel; Psalm 22; the Song of Songs; and the naming of God in Exodus 3:14. Commenting on these texts, LaCocque and Ricoeur provide a wealth of new insights into the meaning of the different genres of the Old Testament as these made their way into and were transformed by the New Testament. LaCocque's commentaries employ a historical-critical method that takes into account archaeological, philological, and historical research. LaCocque includes in his essays historical information about the dynamic tradition of reading scripture, opening his exegesis to developments and enrichments subsequent to the production of the original literary text. Ricoeur also takes into account the relation between the texts and the historical communities that read and interpreted them, but he broadens his scope to include philosophical speculation. His commentaries highlight the metaphorical structure of the passages and how they have served as catalysts for philosophical thinking from the Greeks to the modern age. This extraordinary literary and historical venture reads the Bible through two different but complementary lenses, revealing the familiar texts as vibrant, philosophically consequential, and unceasingly absorbing. (shrink)

Unparalled in its poetry, richness, and religious and historical significance, the Hebrew Bible has been the site and center of countless commentaries, perhaps none as unique as Thinking Biblically. This remarkable collaboration sets the words of a distinguished biblical scholar, André LaCocque, and those of a leading philosopher, Paul Ricoeur, in dialogue around six crucial passages from the Old Testament: the story of Adam and Eve; the commandment "thou shalt not kill"; the valley of dry bones passage from (...) Ezekiel; Psalm 22; the Song of Songs; and the naming of God in Exodus 3:14. Commenting on these texts, LaCocque and Ricoeur provide a wealth of new insights into the meaning of the different genres of the Old Testament as these made their way into and were transformed by the New Testament. LaCocque's commentaries employ a historical-critical method that takes into account archaeological, philological, and historical research. LaCocque includes in his essays historical information about the dynamic tradition of reading scripture, opening his exegesis to developments and enrichments subsequent to the production of the original literary text. Ricoeur also takes into account the relation between the texts and the historical communities that read and interpreted them, but he broadens his scope to include philosophical speculation. His commentaries highlight the metaphorical structure of the passages and how they have served as catalysts for philosophical thinking from the Greeks to the modern age. This extraordinary literary and historical venture reads the Bible through two different but complementary lenses, revealing the familiar texts as vibrant, philosophically consequential, and unceasingly absorbing. (shrink)

The existing research on Peshitta has mostly overlooked the translation techniques used in Peshitta Psalms. Prior studies have primarily focused on comparing Peshitta Psalms with the Masoretic Text (MT), the Septuagint and Targum, leaving a gap in the analysis of Peshitta Psalms within the context of Classical Syriac Poetry. This study will delve into how adeptly the Syriac translator employed poetic elements to construct strophic structures and poetic style within the Peshitta Psalm. This article presents an analysis of strophic structure, (...) word repetition, sound figures and versification in the Syriac translation of Psalm 29, comparing them with their Hebrew counterparts. In this study, the utilisation of the Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia (BHS) is employed for the MT, while the ‘Leiden edition’ is employed for the Peshitta. The findings from this analysis reveal that the Syriac rendition of Psalm 29 within the Peshitta incorporates numerous poetic elements. This suggests the translator’s familiarity with the strophic arrangement, word repetition, alliteration and various other poetic characteristics utilised by Hebrew scribes. The Peshitta translation of Psalm 29 closely resembles the MT Hebrew text, resulting in a balance of fidelity and aesthetic elegance. The Syriac rendition incorporates poetic elements like strophic arrangement, word repetition and alliteration but employs these features in a distinct manner. The Syriac text has a lower frequency of alliteration and word repetition but still possesses appealing poetic characteristics. The Syriac approach to verse composition closely resembles the Hebrew method, with some exceptions. Contribution: This study explores the Syriac translator’s use of poetic elements in Peshitta Psalms, revealing their familiarity with Hebrew techniques and the unique incorporation of elements. It provides insights into the evolution of Classical Syriac Poetry and contributes to our understanding of Biblical and Syriac poetry. (shrink)

Thus it would not be the content or meaning of a written Torah that Jeremiah would attack; rather it would be the Deuteronomic “claim to final and exclusive authority by means of writing” . Jeremiah’s problem is political rather than theological. He knows that writing is more powerful than prophecy and that he will not be able to withstand it—and he knows that the Deuteronomists know no less. As Blenkinsopp says, “Deuteronomy produced a situation in which prophecy could not continue (...) to exist without undergoing profound transformations” —that is, without ceasing to be “free prophecy,” or prophecy unbound by any text, including its own. “It might be considered misleading or flippant to say that for [Deuteronomy], as for rabbinic orthodoxy, the only good prophet is a dead prophet. But in point of fact the Deuteronomic scribes, despite their evident debt to and respect for the prophets, contributed decisively to the eclipse of the kind of historically oriented prophecy represented by Jeremiah and the emergence in due course of quite different forms of scribal prophecy” .It is at this point that we reach a sort of outer limit of biblical criticism—a threshold that scholars, with their foundations in literary criticism, their analytical attitude toward texts, and their theological concerns, are not inclined to cross. In any case, it is no accident that the political meaning of the conflict of prophecy and canon has received its most serious attention not from a biblical scholar but from a radical historian, Ellis Rivkin. In The Shaping of Jewish History, a brilliant and tendentious book, Rivkin proposes to treat the question of canon-formation and the promulgation of canonical texts of the Scriptures, not according to literary criteria but according to power criteria. For Rivkin, the production of the Hebrew Scriptures “was not primarily the work of scribes, scholars, or editors who sought out neglected traditions about wilderness experience, but of a class struggling to gain power.”23 23. Ellis Rivkin, The Shaping of Jewish History: A Radical New Interpretation , p. 30; further references to this work will be included in the text. Gerald R. Bruns is professor of English at the University of Iowa. He is the author of Modern Poetry and the Idea of Language and Inventions: Writing, Textuality, and Understanding in Literary History . The present essay is from a work in progress, Hermeneutics, Ancient and Modern. (shrink)

Los estudios sobre «Biblia y género» no han prestado atención al paralelismo de género en la poesía hebrea bíblica, la cual juega con las referencias femeninas y masculinas entre los hemistiquios de un verso, como por ejemplo en «Salga el esposo (m) del tálamo (m) // la esposa (f) de la alcoba (f)» (Joel 2,16). Este juego de referencias paralelas es un reflejo de la representación simbólica de lo real característica de los textos bíblicos. Los poetas han visto y representado (...) siempre la naturaleza como esencia personificada, ya sea en forma masculina o en forma femenina. El paralelismo de género adquiere dimensiones más vastas y complejas cuando se verifica al nivel de estrofas o de poemas, como sucede en el Cantar y, de modo especial, en la discripción paralela de los cuerpos de la Amada y del Amado. Las preguntas paralelas acuñadas para identificar a una figura masculina o femenina de un mundo superior o misterioso, «¿Quién es esa que…?» o «¿Quién es ese que…?», convierten a la Amada del Cantar en prototipo de la nueva mujer, paralelo del prototipo de nuevo hombre que presenta el libro de Job, ambas figuras opuestas a la Eva y al Adán del relato del Paraíso en el libro del Génesis. (shrink)

El autor pone de manifiesto los paralelismos, hasta hoy apenas señalados, entre el "sofista" platónico y "metaf". IV de Aristóteles, que atañen tanto a contenidos doctrinales, como el método de argumentar y a la función de ciertos argumentos utilizados en la crítica a los presocráticos. Hay incluso un paralelismo lingüístico. Su subraya, con ello, la importancia sistemática de la doctrina antigua de los "trascendentalia", su prioridad relativamente a la diferencia entre los conceptos ontológicos (la teoría platónica de las ideas y (...) la aristotélica de la substancia) y la coincidencia de pensamiento de Aristóteles con el Platón tardío acerca de los conceptos transgenéricos, si bien como fundamento de teorías ontológicamente diferentes. (shrink)

Books reviewed in this article:John Barton, The Biblical WorldWalter Brueggemann, Theology of the Old Testament: Testimony, Dispute, AdvocacyBernhard W. Anderson, Contours of Old Testament TheologyJames Barr, The Concept of Biblical Theology: An Old Testament PerspectiveCarl E. Braaten and Robert W. Jenson, Reclaiming the Bible for the ChurchNancy L. deClaissè‐Walford, Reading from th eBeginning: The Shaping of the Hebrew PsalterBirger Gerhardsson, The Reliability of the Gospel TraditionBen Witherington III, New Testament History: A Narrative AccountNeil Richardson, God in the (...) New TestamentJohn S. Kloppenborg Verbin, Excavating Q: The History and Setting of the Sayings GospelFrancis J. Moloney, The Gospel of JohnMartin Hengel and Anna Maria Schwemer, Paul Between Damascus and Antioch. The Unknown YearsF. Gerald Downing, Cynics, Paul and the Pauline Churches: Cynics and Christian Origins IIAnthony C. Thiselton, The First Epistle to the CorinthiansKieran J. O'Mahony, Pauline Persuasion: A Sounding in 2 Corinthians 8‐9C. K. Barrett, A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Acts of the Apostles, Volume I: Acts XV–XXVIIApril D. DeConick, Voices of the Mystics: Early Christian Discourse in the Gospels of John and Thomas and Other Ancient Christian LiteratureManlio Simonetti, Ippolito. Contro NoetoCatherine Brown Tkacz, The Key to the Brescia Casket: Typology and the Early Christian ImaginationSerge Lancel, St AugustinePatricia Cox Miller, The Poetry of Thought in Late Antiquity: Essays in Imagination and ReligionThomas Head, Medieval Hagiography: An AnthologyAllan Greer, The Jesuit Relations: Natives and Missionaries in Seventeenth‐Century North AmericaStephen R. Holmes, God of Glory and God of Grace: An Account of the Theology of Jonathan EdwardsStephen Prickett, Narrative, Religion and Science. Fundamentalism versus Irony, 1700–1999Linda Woodhead, Reinventing Christianity: Nineteenth‐Century ContextsFlorent Gaboriau, The Conversion of Edith SteinJeffrey S. Siker, Scripture and Ethics. Twentieth‐Century PortraitsRicherd B. Hays, The Moral Vision of the New Testament. Community, Cross, New CreationJohn Kavanaugh, Who Counts as Persons: Human Identity and the Ethics of KillingJohn Keown, Euthanasia, Ethics and Public Policy: An Argument against LegalisationStephen J. Pope and Charles Hefling, Sic et Non: Encountering ‘Dominus Iesus’J'annine Jobling and Ian Markham, Theological Liberalism, Creative and CriticalHans Küng, Women in ChristianityLynne Broadbent and Alan Brown, Issues in Religious EducationJeremy Waldron, God, Locke, and Equality: Christian Foundations in Locke's Political ThoughtGiles Fraser, Redeeming NietzscheAlexander Garcia Düttman, The Memory of Thought: An Essay on Heidegger and AdornoRobert J. Dostal, The Cambridge Companion to GadamerMichael Fuller, Making Sense of MacIntyre. (shrink)

Name der Zeitschrift: Zeitschrift für Religionswissenschaft Jahrgang: 26 Heft: 1 Seiten: 202-205.

The Septuagint (LXX) generally approached the antiphrastic, euphemistic use of ברך [bless] with a literal translation of ברך with εὐλογέω. This choice produced a Hebraism, as the Greek verb is not generally used antiphrastically. The translators may have expected the Greek audience to track with the figurative usage. Job contains four of the six uses of this euphemism, and LXX Job is evenly split between the use of εὐλογέω and the use of more creative renderings. These creative renderings in Job (...) 1:5 and 2:9 reflect the exegesis of the translator.Contribution: The contribution of this research article is its focus on the phenomenon of euphemism in Biblical Hebrew and the implications of non-literal renderings in the Septuagint for a theologically-significant Hebrew euphemism. The article fits within the scope of the journal as a contribution to this special collection on the Septuagint. (shrink)

This study examined the renderings of the Biblical Hebrew idiom ‘lift the face’ in the Septuagint of Job in comparison with the renderings of the Biblical Hebrew idiom elsewhere in the Septuagint and in other ancient versions including the Peshitta and the Targums. The aim of this study was to determine how the translators of the Septuagint typically handled the implicit meaning of figurative language and to examine whether the translator of the Septuagint of Job followed (...) similar strategies, because Job is known to be one of the books where the Septuagint is more literary than literal. It was hypothesised that the opaque meaning of the Biblical Hebrew idiom would provide an opportunity for the translator of the Septuagint of Job to intervene and manipulate the text for literary or theological reasons. The analysis applied methodology from Translation Studies and linguistics to describe the translation strategies used by some ancient translators to address the communication challenge presented by semantically opaque figures of speech like idioms. The major finding of the study is that although literal translation is the predominant approach to translating this Biblical Hebrew idiom in all the ancient versions examined, the Septuagint of Job used more idiomatic and natural expressions to communicate the meaning of the idiom. The translator of the Septuagint of Job took the use of the idiomatic expression ‘lift the face’ as an opportunity to reframe the theological emphasis of a passage. (shrink)

Although the Book of Ruth is in many respects a classic example of biblical Hebrew narrative, with its stripped-down style and the opaqueness of its character's inner lives and motivations, there are two examples of formal poetry in the book (1:16–17 and 1:20–21). Biblical poetry works with a very different set of literary conventions than narrative, and by taking note of those conventions, we can see the distinctive contributions made by these poems to the book as a (...) whole. (shrink)

Historical Linguistics & Biblical Hebrew: Steps toward an Integrated Approach. By Robert Rezetko and Ian Young. Ancient Near East Monographs, vol. 9. Atlanta: SBL Press, 2014. Pp. xx + 699. $89.95.

The 19th century saw the rise of Biblical Criticism in German universities, culminating in Wellhausen s radical revision of the history of biblical times and religion. For German-Jewish intellectuals, the academic discipline promised emancipation from traditional Christian readings of Scripture but at the same time suffered from what was perceived as anti-Jewish bias, this time in scholarly robes. Reclaiming the Hebrew Bible describes the German-Jewish strategies to cope with Biblical Criticism varying from an enthusiastic welcome, through (...) modified adoption, to resolute rejection.". (shrink)

Word Order in the Biblical Hebrew Final Clause. By Adina Moshavi. Linguistic Studies in Ancient West Semitic, vol. 4. Winona Lake, Ind.: Eisenbrauns, 2010. Pp. xvii + 204. $42.50.

The Verb in Archaic Biblical Poetry: A Discursive, Typological, and Historical Investigation of the Tense System. By Tania Notarius. Studies in Semitic Languages and Linguistics, vol. 68. Leiden: Brill, 2013. Pp. xxiii + 351. $162.

Constituent Postponement in Biblical Hebrew Verse. By John Scott Redd. Abhandlungen für die Kunde des Morgenlandes, vol. 90. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz Verlag, 2014. Pp. xii + 155. €68.

We discuss the evolution of the distributive double noun (quivis) in biblical Hebrew. This construction developed from an asyndeton in Classical Biblical Hebrew (e.g., איש איש) into a syndeton in Late Biblical Hebrew (e.g., איש ואיש), a process that makes it an important diachronic marker in classifying and analyzing these two varieties of the language.

_Akkadian Loanwords in Biblical Hebrew_ is an in-depth examination of Hebrew words that are of Akkadian origin or transmitted via Akkadian into the Hebrew lexicon.