2.1. Robert Lowth, De Sacra Poesi Hebraeorum (1710-1787)

In 1753, the Anglican Bishop Robert Lowth gave the modern study of biblical poetry its most important term: parallelism. Though people recognized the psalms as poems, they did not recognize the extensive poetry in the prophetic books. Lowth saw a similarity between the two and wanted to show that the prophets were poets. He identified the couplet as the basic unit and recognized a certain repetition of ideas between the two lines. As his prime example, he cited the two couplets opening Ps 114:1-2 (NRSV).

When Israel went out from Egypt
The house of Jacob from a people of strange language
Judah was his sacred heritage,
Israel his dominion.

The first word in each line refers to Israel.

1. 1. Israel
   2. house of Jacob
   3. Judah
   4. Israel 

“Egypt” appears in the second line as “a people of strange language.” The third and fourth lines give us “sacred heritage” and “dominion,” which are not exactly the same but related, as indicated by the word “his.”

Lowth coined a word for these relationships: “parallelism” More specifically, he identified them as “synonymous parallelism” because the lines are alike. In 1981, James Kugel pointed out the lines are not synonymous because they are not exactly the same. The differences may be subtle, but still, there are differences. While this may seem nit-picking, Kugel has an important point, as will become clear. Therefore, let us call this relationship “similar parallelism” because “similar” also implies differences.

Lowth identified other lines as “antithetical” because they contain opposites, such as Prov 12:5.

The thoughts of the righteous are just;
the advice of the wicked is treacherous.

Three-word pairs make up the lines:

thoughts & advice: similar
righteous & wicked: opposite
just & treacherous: opposite

Although thoughts and advice are similar, the righteous stand in contrast to the wicked, and just thoughts stand in contrast to treacherous advice.

Here too, Kugel objects that the meaning of the two lines is not “antithetical,” because they do not say the opposite. Instead, the lines say the same things, if in contrasting ways. We can call this “contrasting parallelism.”

Lowth recognized that some couplets had no similar or contrasting ideas. He called them “synthetic parallelism” because the lines had the same “length,” even though they lacked parallel ideas. Into this category, Lowth put here everything that did not fit neatly into the other two. Lowth’s three categories dominated biblical studies until Kugel. He, along with others, has built on Lowth’s insight and added some critical correctives.

2.2. James Kugel, The Idea of Biblical Poetry (1981)

In his book, The Idea of Biblical Poetry, James Kugel sets out to challenge the prevailing understanding of biblical poetry. Though he values Lowth’s insight of parallelism, he rejects the three categories and points out the many ways in which the second line completes the first line. He also adds the central insight of sequence.

Kugel calls the two lines “A” and “B.” He argues that the second line (B) is more important than the first line (A). Coming after line A, line B complements and completes it, and this “afterwardness” gives B “an emphatic character” (8). Therefore, he insists that we must pay careful attention to the differences in the second line, which moves the thought forward somehow. Kugel is adamant about this point. As indicated above, he rejects Lowth’s terminology that equates the two lines. He insists that the second line brings some difference, some newness, something more. Kugel emphasizes the sequential nature of Hebrew poetry, its forward movement, and he summarizes this in his saying (13):

“There is A, and what’s more there is B.”

Kugel is so insistent and so adamant that others have criticized his position. Admittedly, you can find instances where it is difficult to say what more the second line brings. Even so, Kugel’s bassic insight is sound. The second line is typically moving the poetry forward in various ways. The lines are not static as Lowth’s analysis would view it; the second line is not just repeating the first. As Kugel emphasizes, this poetry has a forward movement.

In Ps 114:1-2 above, both couplets say almost the same thing. However, as Alonso Schökel has pointed out, if you take the four lines together, the first two become the “when” clause and the last two are the main clause: When “A” happened, the result was “B” (48-49). As a unit, they demonstrate Kugel’s insight. “There is A, and what’s more there is B.”

The importance of Kugel’s insight cannot be understated.

2.3. Robert Alter, The Art of Biblical Poetry (1985)

In The Art of Biblical Poetry (1985), Robert Alter reiterates Kugel’s insight and insists on the “emphatic character” of the second line. He sees the movement from the first to the second line as “one of heightening or intensification…, of focusing, specification, concretization, even what could be called dramatization” (18-19). Typically, semantic parallelism moves from a “standard term” in the first line to a more precise or poetic term in the second line (13). This brings a specification and an intensification that is not decoration but lies at the very heart of the poetry. He sees this as part of the poet’s defamiliarization (10).

Alter and his books have played a vital role in helping both scholars and general readers recognize the role of the literary character in generating the meaning of the biblical text.

2.4. Wilfred G.E. Watson, Classical Hebrew Poetry: A Guide to Its Techniques (1985)

In 1929, French archaeologists discovered at Ugarit many tablets written between 1400 and 1100 BC in a language close to biblical Hebrew. The most famous tablets tell in poetry the stories of the deity Baal and other heroes. This poetry sparked a renewed interest in Semitic poetry, and Watson has made an exhaustive list of what he calls “techniques” with examples drawn from both Ugaritic and Hebrew. He focuses particularly on word pairs—sets of words that appear together throughout this poetry. The word pairs serve as the basic building blocks of biblical poetry, and we shall look more carefully at them in the following chapters.

2.5. Adele Berlin, The Dynamics of Biblical Parallelism (1985, 2008)

Adele Berlin grounds her work in modern linguistics, especially that of Roman Jakobson, who saw parallelism at the center of poetic language. Berlin argues that Hebrew parallelism appears at four different levels: sound, grammar, word, and idea. While each deserves its own analysis, the different levels work together to structure the poem. The sound can support the grammar, which serves as the frame for the words and meaning. For Berlin, the dominance of parallelism constitutes the poem itself (7-17).

Berlin strongly defends the distinction between Hebrew prose and poetry. She aims her insistence particularly at James Kugel who argues that Hebrew prose and poetry are not separate categories but “a continuum of organization” (85). He prefers to speak of a high (literary) and low (ordinary) rhetorical style (302). Criticizing Kugel’s position, she defends “the predominance of parallelism, combined with terseness” as the hallmark of “the poetic expression of the Bible” (5).

Berlin also gives close attention to word pairs as the basic building blocks of parallel ideas.

2.6. F.W. Dobbs-Allsopp, On Biblical Poetry (2015)

F.W. Dobbs-Allsopp argues strongly that biblical poetry has its ground in orality, and he explores this in four chapters on the line, free rhythm, lyric, and orality.

People have typically regarded the single line as only a half of a verse, but Dobbs-Allsopp argues that “isolated lines” exist, as, for example,“YHWH will reign forever and ever” (Exod 15:18; 84). Still, lines of Hebrew poetry generally appear in twos or threes with their own signs of completeness. Sentence logic, line length, and parallelism mark out individual lines that call for a pause, and the last accented word in Hebrew lengthens to indicate a pause and the beginning of a new line (51, 57).

Along with others today, Dobbs-Allsopp states categorically: “Biblical poetry is not metrical” (98). Biblical poetry is free verse. In this context, he also explores Walt Whitman’s debt to the King James psalms, which various scholars have noted. As he says:

Anyone who comes to Whitman from a fresh encounter with biblical poetry, whether in (English) translation or in the original Hebrew, cannot help but sense the broad prosodic and rhythmic kinship that joins the one to the other. (96)

Whitman shows us that we can read biblical poetry in English as real poetry.

Dobbs-Allsopp’s main emphasis falls on biblical poetry as lyric—non-narrative poetry that can move in unexpected ways. He grounds lyric poetry in oral composition and sees there a freedom that can build an expression by juxtaposing ideas and strong emotions in contrast to a narrative’s orderly unfolding of events. Rather, the lyric gathers seemingly unrelated pieces into a suggestive mix and invites the reader to engage the poem imaginatively.

In his fourth chapter, Dobbs-Allsopp argues that line, free rhythm, and lyric have their roots in orality and take their power from its vitality. While lyric poetry surely has its roots in orality, I am not convinced that written culture precludes the vitality that Dobb-Allsopp identifies with oral culture. Still, I agree with him that the juxtaposition of the unexpected and the spontaneous is not the result of clumsy redactors or inept poets but rather reflects a spontaneity and freedom that marks great poetry.

Whatever the role of orality may be, Dobb-Allsopp’s emphasis on lyric remains important, and we shall return to this when we take up genre.

The literature on biblical poetry is vast, and we could consider other scholars. For the moment, these five provide a foundation for what will come. Along the way, there will be opportunities to add others.

2.7. Exercises for Chapter 2

Vocabulary

• couplet: two lines of poetry; sometimes called a cola or stich. §2.1
• line: a line of poetry followed by a pause; sometimes called by the Greek terms colon, stich, or hemistich. §2.1

Questions

1. Robert Lowth uses the first stanza of Psalm 114 as his example for parallelism. The psalm celebrates Israel’s passing through the Red Sea on their exodus from Egypt (Exodus 14-15) and their passing through the River Jordan into the Promised land (Joshua 3). How does the rest of the psalm (114:3-8) reflect Lowth’s insight of parallelism?

2. James Kugel sums up his insight in the sentence: “There is A, and what’s more there is B.” What do the second lines in 114:3-8 point us toward? What do they want to emphasize?

Psalm 114

¹ When Israel went out from Egypt,
the house of Jacob from a people of strange language,
² Judah became God’s sanctuary,
Israel his dominion.

³ The sea looked and fled;
Jordan turned back.
⁴ The mountains skipped like rams,
the hills like lambs.

⁵ Why is it, O sea, that you flee?
O Jordan, that you turn back?
⁶ O mountains, that you skip like rams?
O hills, like lambs?

⁷ Tremble, O earth, at the presence of the LORD,
at the presence of the God of Jacob,
⁸ who turns the rock into a pool of water,
the flint into a spring of water.