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331 - The Idea of
Biblical Poetry: Parallelism and Its History
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The Idea of Biblical Poetry:
Parallelism and Its History
By James L. Kugel
New Haven, Yale University, 1981. 339 pp. $27.50.
The systematic investigation of biblical poetry has seen a revival in recent
years, as evidenced by the publication of several important works, all of
which move beyond analysis of individual poetic texts to try to define or
describe the phenomenon of Hebrew poetry, or some fundamental aspect of it.
Among the works which merit major attention is this volume, whose primary
aim is a fresh and more accurate definition of
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332 - The Idea of
Biblical Poetry: Parallelism and Its History
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parallelism, a goal sought in part by looking at how this phenomenon has
been handled in the history of interpretation.
With Lowth and all those who have followed his directions, the author sees
parallelism as basic to biblical poetry. His modifications of Lowth, however,
and his redefinitions are extensive. Indeed, despite the title, he has intentionally
ambivalent attitudes toward the very notion that there is any such thing as
biblical poetry as distinguished from biblical prose (see below). He begins
by recognizing that the basic feature of many biblical genres, especially
songs but also most sayings, proverbs, laws, laments, blessings, curses, etc.,
is "the recurrent use of a relatively short sentence-form that consists
of two brief clauses" which manifest a feeling of correspondence between
them (pp. 1-2). This is the parallelistic line.
The two parts of the line have many ways in which they can relate to each
other. Taking account of the great variety, Kugel nevertheless seeks to provide
a definitive characterization of this relationship -- and here is the basic
insight and contribution of his book. The second part of the line (B) is connected
to the first part (A) and has something in common with it. B comes after A,
often particularizing, defining, or expanding the meaning. The basic character
of the parallelistic line is that B serves a seconding function to A. He defines
the phenomenon as "A is so, and what's more, B is so." That
is what the hearer/reader catches from the parallelistic line. B is often
more emphatic simply by virtue of its position and seeks to complete A. It
is often, therefore, a complement or completion of A and not a true parallel
in the commonly understood sense. The completion or integration of
the two parts may well happen by way of differentiation rather than repetition:
To state the matter somewhat simplistically, biblical lines
are parallelistic not because B is meant to be a parallel of A,, but because
B typically supports A, carries it further, backs it up, completes
it, goes beyond it. This is a slight, but very important, nuance, for it will
explain why paralleling is so inconsistent, so untended: it was not
in itself the point. And this will explain how this basically emphatic sequence
could be further abstracted to the series of pauses ____/____// which, as
we have seen, was adapted to such unemphatic configurations as "since
A, therefore B," "if A, then B," "A happened, and B happened,"
and so forth-variations that are often disturbingly unparallelistic, but whose
filiation with emphatic "seconding" is clear (p. 52).
On this basis, he examines the distinction between poetry and prose in the
Bible and finds it not nearly as sharp as often assumed. If we can speak of
biblical "poetry," it must be understood not as a style distinguished
by meter and parallelism but as "a complex of heightening effects used
in combinations and intensities that vary widely from composition to composition
even within a single 'genre'" (p. 94). The extremes of heightened and
unheightened speech have been and can be designated "poetry" and
"prose," but the middle ground shows the limitation of such concepts
for descriptive purposes. He does not wish to throw out these concepts, but
to recognize that they "correspond to no precise distinction in the Bible"
and that they can lead us to mistaken
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334 - The Idea of
Biblical Poetry: Parallelism and Its History
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judgments about the nature and form of parts of the Bible, as well as the
phenomenon of parallelism (p. 302). The search for -- or discovery of -- poetic
substrata of prose texts is an obvious example of such misunderstandings.
The remainder of this stimulating book is largely devoted to an examination
of how rabbinic and Christian exegesis handled the phenomenon of parallelism,
that is, the rabbis insisting that every B colon is significantly different
from the A element, so that the fact of parallelism was hidden or forgotten
and Christian exegetes applying the canons of Greco-Roman metrical poetry
to songs and psalms and the tradition of Greek rhetoric to books like Isaiah
and Jeremiah. In the Middle Ages and later, however, Jewish exegesis as exemplified
by Azariah dei Rossi and Christian exegesis began to move toward a more reasonable
view of parallelism than what bad preceded or what would follow in Lowth and
his immediate predecessors and followers. (Kugel has a very careful and valuable
presentation of Lowth's views.) In two brief sections at the end, he gives
a strong attack on the notion that there is meter in biblical poetry and an
equally strong critique of O'Connor's recent work Hebrew Verse Structure.
This is a fresh approach to an age-old problem: defining the nature of biblical
poetry. And I believe Kugel has been more successful than some other recent
attempts. At one point he declares that biblical parallelism is of one sort
or a hundred sorts, but not three. While the textbook discussions still generally
follow the three-sort direction pointed by Lowth, most of the recent studies
have followed the second alternative (that is, defining parallelism in terms
of a highly complex system). Kugel's "one sort" definition is more literary
than linguistic (he is, however, fully conversant with linguistic approaches
to these issues). It also probably meets both the criteria for a critical
tool, that is, truth and usefulness, in that it seems to be appropriate to
the data and a more functional and helpful approach for the purpose of reading
and interpreting the texts. The more complex linguistic systems may have taxonomic
usefulness, but are less likely to be exegetically helpful.
In conclusion, I would offer three suggestions for further work growing out
of this book. First, the question of meter will probably not die as quickly
as Kugel hopes, but needs a fresh look in the light of his critique. (On this
issue, see the review of J. Barr in The Times Literary Supplement,
December 25, 1981.) Second, the paralleling of lines (that is, A/B//A1/B1//)
is frequent enough to elicit some accounting within the explanation proposed
here. And third, the continuing interest in parallelism, meter, and line length
should not inhibit our exploration of the tropes or figures of speech that
are a large part of the rhetorical heightening of poetic style and provide
much of the richness conveyed by biblical poetry.
Patrick D. Miller, Jr.
Union Theological Seminary
Richmond, Virginia