Proverbial poetry: its settings and syntax
particularly attacks this concept
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Israel, p. 67. Geller particularly attacks this concept, Parallelism in Early Biblical Poetry, pp. 376-77. 1T. H. Robinson, "Basic Principles of Hebrew Poetic Form," pp. 444-45; O'Connor, Hebrew Verse Structure, pp. 33-34; Kugel, The Idea of Biblical Poetry, pp. 75, 295; Collins, Line-Forms in Hebrew Poetry, p. 6. 2Robinson, "Basic Principles of Hebrew Poetic Form," pp. 444-45. parallelism is when, for every term in the first colon there is a matching term in the second. Incomplete is, obviously, when a term is missing (A B C//A' C'). Compensation is when the matching line lacks a term but an extra term which does not correspond per se is added in order to give the line the required balance.1 An example of incomplete parallelism without compensation may be seen in Proverbs 2:18: For her house leads down to death and her paths to the spirits of the dead. The A B C// A C is obviously missing a B term. An example with compensation may be seen in Proverbs 2:1: My son, if you accept my words and store up my commands within you. This verse manifests an A B C// B' C' D form where D compensates for the absence of a match for "my son." Thus Proverbs 2:1 may be labeled a synonymous parallelism with compensation. Since the time of Gray and Robinson, other types of parallelism have been appended to the standard lists. Perhaps the most frequent addition is emblematic parallelism. This form employs a metaphor/simile in one ____________________
Gray's organization around features which were employed to vary the lines and features of sameness was extremely helpful and demonstrated great insight, which others who have used his system have failed to attain. of the parallel lines.1 An example of this type may be seen in Proverbs 10:26, which actually contains a double simile in the first line: As vinegar to the teeth and smoke to the eyes, so is the sluggard to those who send him. A second type of parallelism usually appended is the staircase parallelism. While it is not prominant in Proverbs (cf. 31:4), it is used in the Psalms (cf. 29:1-2). It is highly repetitional--repeating part of the first line, but adding a new element, which gives it a staircase effect.2 One final procedure has been utilized in the expanding of semantic parallelism. Realizing the inaccuracy and ineptness of the categories listed above some have moved in the direction of a total reclassification--often looking at colonic relationships as well as specific semantic unit symmetries between the colon. These proposals have been somewhat helpful in ____________________ 1Anderson, Psalms, p. 41; Gottwald, "Poetry, Hebrew," p. 833; Hemmingsen, "An Introduction to Hebrew Poetic Structure and Stylistic Techniques," p. 26. Chisholm does a nice job with this type, which occurs frequently in Proverbs. He syntactically describes three forms ("Literary Genres and Structures in Proverbs," pp. 25-26). 2A. Fitzgerald, "Poetry of the Old Testament," New Catholic Encyclopedia, vol. 11 (1968), p. 464. Hemmingsen, "An Introduction to Hebrew Poetic Structure and Stylistic Techniques," p. 27. Greenstein calls this "climatic parallelism" ("Two Variations of Grammatical Parallelism in Canaanite Poetry and Their Psycholinguistic Background,"
Colon in Ugaritic and Biblical Verse," JSS 14 [1969]:177). describing propositional relationships. Kugel models the second line's (the second line=B; the first=A) subjunction as follows: (1) incomplete B completed by reference to A; (2) incomplete A completed by B; (3) actual repetition of a term in B; (4) "pair-words;" (5) sequentiality, subordination expressed or implied (e.g., qtl-yqtl); and (6) unusual word order (chiasm, etc.).1 This appears to be a syntactic-semantic hodgepodge and hardly functional as he suggests. Included with this reanalysis of semantic relationships between the cola should be Geller's excellent dissertation, which develops a loose semantic notation for scientifically tracing the relationships between the units. He tags each poetic unit with one of the following semantic descriptors: (1) synoynm; (2) list; (3) antonym; (4) merism; (5) epithet; (6) proper noun; (7) pronoun; (8) whole-part (WP or PW); (9) concrete-abstract; (10) numerical; (11) identity; and (12) metaphor. Geller's semantic grades (A-D) then rate how closely the semantic units cohere (A = close synonyms; B = more distant synonyms; C = almost no semantic parallelism though possibly in the same syntactic slot; and D = total repetition). While his non-standard notational system obfuscates his model (rendering it ____________________
modern semantics which holds great promise.1 Moreover, Geller's attempt to give an integrative approach--which includes a close reading of syntax, semantics, and metrical descriptions--is presently the most advanced system of Hebrew poetic analysis. A pattern has been developing in the study of parallelism. Lowth allowed for syntactic as well as semantic parallelism. Later there seems to have been a constriction (Gray-Robinson) which de-emphasized metrical considerations and immured parallelism in strict semantic parallels. Problems inherent in the approach have resulted in the mild proliferation of new types of parallelism being "discovered." It is to these problems this study will turn.
semantic parallelism in order to locate precisely where the problems lie and perhaps give direction as to some possible solutions. Perhaps the greatest problem that has been caused ____________________ 1Geller, Parallelism in Early Biblical Poetry, pp. 33-42. Kaddari also had done work earlier in this direction (M. Z. Kaddari, "A Semantic Approach to Biblical Parallelism," JJS 24 [1973]:167-75). Cf. Theodore of Mopsuestia, in Kugel, The Idea of Biblical Poetry, pp. 40-41.
by the present approach to semantic parallelism is what may be pejoratively labeled as "semantic reductionism." von Rad illustrates this problem when he uses Job 28:28 to show "that there is no interest in exact definition of terms." He reiterates that the parallel lines mean "approximately" the same thing in Proverbs 4:24.1 Bryce also hints at "semantic reductionism" when he observes that Hebrew parallelism: "tended toward an equation of sayings and a blurring of the particularity of a situation necessary for understanding and interpreting omens."2 Note the illicit equation of literary trope and thought structure. Gordis, at one point, defines parallelism as "the repetition of the same idea in different words, which is the very foundation of biblical poetry."3 Pederson stereotypes the Hebrew poet as expressing "his thought twice in a different manner. . . . He repeats and repeats."4 Kugel well objects, "The medial
____________________ 1von Rad, Wisdom in Israel, pp. 28, 146. It is interesting to note how the pendulum has swung since the medieval practice of omnisignificance, which totally distinguished the meaning of each bi-colon (cf. Kugel, The Idea of Biblical Poetry, pp. 103-5. 2Bryce, "Omen-Wisdom in Ancient Israel," p. 31. 3Gordis, Poets, Prophets, and Sages: Essays in Biblical Interpretation, p. 61. Cf. also William Mouser's rather muddled statement that a proverb displays "synonymous parallelism when the two ideas brought together are saying the same thing in different words" (Walking in Wisdom, p. 28).
pause all too often has been understood to represent a kind of 'equals' sign."1 Craigie points out the problem of a "this equals that" type of approach to poetics, which has been employed philologically to solve problems with difficult words by simply equating them to their paralleled synonyms. He correctly identifies this as a "false inference from parallelism."2 Several have recently objected to semantic reductionism. O'Connor and Kaddari question the meaning of "synonym," which itself is subject to misleading polysemy.3 The tools for a close semantic reading are now ____________________ (London: Oxford University Press, 1926), p. 123. For other illustrations of this perspective, vid. W. McClellan, "The Elements of Old Testament Poetry," CBQ 3 (1941):207; or W. Smalley, "Translating the Poetry of the Old Testament," p. 202. Boling gives a list of synonyms and goes no further semantically ("'Synonymous' Parallelism in the Psalms," JSS 3 [1960]:221-55).
in Ugaritic and Hebrew Poetry," Semitics 5 (1977):48, 56. That is, of course, not to reject the collocational value of parallel word pairs; rather it cautions against strict equations and directs to the exact specification of the relationships between such words. Indeed parallelism has been a boon for various hapax legomena and this should not be denigrated. 3O'Connor, Hebrew Verse Structure, pp. 50-51, 96; and Kaddari, "A Semantic Approach to Biblical Parallelism," p. 168. Collins also objects to a mere statement that two units are parallel without examining the relationship between them (Line-Forms In Hebrew Poetry, pp. 8, 93). Geller, who perhaps has done the most in resolving this problem, also objects to the reducing of semantic analysis to the statement that terms are antithetical or synonymous (Parallelism in Early Biblical Poetry, p. 31). being developed in linguistic circles. Obviously the study of linguistic semantics is a difficult one, not only as a result of the complexities of language itself, but also because of the various schools and technical jargon which surround such studies. These technical studies hold great promise for the fine analysis of Hebrew poetics.1 Another area about which Kugel has been vociferous is the use of parallelism as a diagnostic feature for locating Hebrew poetry. He and others have pointed to the trope of parallelism in prosaic sections and have noted that some ____________________ 1This writer has found the works in the following brief semantic bibliography to be of benefit. Eugene Nida, Exploring Semantic Structures (Munchen: Wilhelm Fink Verlag, 1975) and his Componential Analysis of Meaning: An Introduction to Semantic Structures (The Hague: Mouton, 1975); Geoffrey Leech, Semantics (Hardmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1974); Katharine Barnwell, Introduction to Semantics
1980); John Beekman, The Semantic Structure of Written Communication (Dallas: Summer Institute of Linguistics, 1981) and his A Semantic Structure Analysis of Second Thessalonians (Dallas: Summer Institute of Linguistics, 1982); Robert Longacre, An Anatomy of Speech Notions (Lisse: The Peter de Ridder Press, 1976); Moises Silva,
1983); J. P. Louw, Semantics of New Testament Greek (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1982); Wallace Chafe,
of Chicago Press, 1970); and Arthur Gibson, Biblical Semantic Logic: A Preliminary Analysis (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1981). More difficult and comprehensive are the works of John Lyons, Semantics I and Semantics 2 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1977); and Jerrold Katz, Semantic Theory (New York: Harper and Row, 1972). A voluminous bibliography may be compiled easily from the MLA International Bibliography of Books and Articles on the Modern Languages and Literature. poetic sections are not parallelistic per se.1 Indeed, Collins' "line" form Type 1 (The bi-colon contains only one Basic Sentence); easily provides numerous examples against such an equation.2 Another major problem, which has resulted from the way semantic parallelism has dominated via a myopically simplistic fascination with a mere slotting of a bi-colon into synonymous, antithetic, or synthetic type, is the neglect of intra-lineal and distant parallelism.3 Others have objected to the inattention given to syntactic and phonetic parallelism because of a preoccupation with a semantic A = A' type of analysis.4 One final troublesome area is the using of parallelism to emend the text. Some are a bit too hasty, when semantic units do not match up, to help the "feeble" ____________________
70; Berlin, "Grammatical Aspects of Biblical Parallelism," p. 18; and Cooper, "Biblical Poetics: A Linguistic Approach," p. 76. Against, for example, Robinson, "Basic Principles of Hebrew Poetic Form," p. 444.
58-88.
3Pardee, "Ugaritic and Hebrew Poetry: Parallelism," p. 17. 4Collins, "Line-Forms in Hebrew Poetry," JSS 23 (1978):228, 230. See Gene Schramm, "Poetic Patterning in Biblical Hebrew," in Michigan Oriental Studies in Honor of
of Near Eastern Studies, The University of Michigan, 1976), p. 171, where he develops phonetic patterning. text by emending and thereby provide a "better" match.1 The purpose here was not simply to point out the problems with semantic parallelism, but to shift it from an essential feature constituting Hebrew prosody, to an artistic trope frequently employed by the poets as they released their creative genius in literary form. An attempt has also been made to broaden the base of parallelism to include syntactical and phonological patterning. Finally, this section has functioned to point out the weaknesses of a simplistic boxing and equating type of semantics which has been practiced under the guise of "semantic parallelism." This study has suggested the need for someone to master present structural, generative and formal types of semantics from a linguistic perspective and then to take these recently-created tools to the poetic texts of scripture. A semantic analysis should include the study of the diverse semantic relationships found in the word pair phenomenon and the relationships between matching semantic units within the parallelisms. Such a close reading should also attempt, perhaps using the techniques of proposition calculus or predicate logic, to map and compare, on a propositional or sentential level. Such a program has great possibility, ____________________
not of exhausting the meaning of the poems, but of deictically providing a more accurate and aesthetically satisfying reading of the text. Other Semantic Elements The Dyad of Words The dyad of words is commonly called a "fixed word pair" and has been viewed as a necessary addendum to the concept of semantic parallelism.1 Ginsburg, as the one who developed this pattern defines word pairs as: "certain fixed pairs of synonyms that recur repeatedly, and as a rule in the same order."2 It is obvious from an example from Luther's comments on the Diet of Worms that such a phenomenon is not limited to Hebrew but is a characteristic of all languages, whether parallelism is dominant or not. Luther comments, in a dyad of words: "But God's will, the best of all, be done in heaven and
restricting of the phenomenon to synonyms is also misplaced (vid. father/mother in Prov 10:1). While ____________________ 1Berlin, "Grammatical Aspects of Biblical Parallelism," p. 18. Who says, "The most important component of biblical parallelism seems to be parallel word pairs."
2Fischer, Ras Shamra Parallels, 1:77. 3Philip Schaff, History of the Christian Church, vol. 7 (Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1910), p. 331. O'Connor observes that verbal dyading is rarer, he found one third of the lines of his corpus contained the dyading feature.1 From a scrutiny of this phenomenon, certain semantic patterns have emerged: (1) abstract-concrete pairing; (2) part-whole pairing; and (3) merismus patterns.2 Avishur has found three ways that these are syntactically arranged in Hebrew: (1) syndetic parataxis (Lam 3:4 "my flesh and my skin grow old" cf. Job 10:11); (2) parallelism (Job 7:5, where the same two words are found in parallelism); (3) bound structure (Lev 13:43, where the same pair appears in bound form).3 It should be clear from its syntactic usages that this phenomenon is not limited to poetic sections. Indeed, O'Connor is correct when he argues against the existence of a poetic ____________________ 1O'Connor, Hebrew Verse Structure, pp. 107-108. Bibliographies tracing the proliferation of dyadic word usages may be found in Kugel, The Idea of Biblical Poetry, pp. 28-29 and Cooper, "Biblical Poetics: A Linguistic Approach," pp. 44-45. A very complete list of word pairs may be found in M. Dahood and T. Penar, "Ugaritic-Hebrew Parallel Pairs," Ras Shamra Parallels 1 pp. 71-382 where 624 dyads were found, to which Dahood later added 66 more, in Ras Shamra Parallels, 2:3-5. Stanley Gevirtz, Patterns
Chicago Press, 1963), passim. 2Dahood, "Poetry, Hebrew," IBDSup, p. 669; Berlin, "Grammatical Aspects of Biblical Parallelism," p. 31; A. M. Honeyman, "Merismus in Biblical Hebrew," JBL 71 (1952):11-18. 3Y. Avishur, "Pairs of Synonymous Words in the Construct State (and in Appositional Hendiadys) in Biblical Hebrew," Semitics 2 (1971, 1972):17-18. Cf. Cooper, "Biblical Poetics: A Linguistic Approach," p. 10. dictionary composed of such fixed pairs which the poet allegedly evoked as he orally composed his poem.1 Craigie also rejects the idea that there was a "Canaanite poetic thesaurus."2 One should also consider Alster's isolation of word pairs in Sumerian, and his statement that "any poetry, insofar as it employs parallelism, will make use of similar word pairs."3 O'Connor goes further to show that such pairing is a linguistically universal phenomenon and that "the creation of the dyads used in Hebrew verse is not nearly so much the result of special poetic annexation of parts of the language as it is poetic penetration into all the resources of speech."4 He demonstrates the same dyading phenomenon in English examples: here and there, now and then; man and woman, now or never, cowboys and Indians, friend or foe, bow and arrow, and land and sea. He observes that these dyads are ordered by semantic ("me first" principle; "star before ____________________ 1O'Connor, Hebrew Verse Structure, p. 102; P. C. Craigie, "A Note on 'Fixed Pairs' in Ugaritic and Early Hebrew Poetry," JTS 22 (1971):141-42; and "The Poetry of Ugarit and Israel," Tyndale Bulletin 22 (1971):6. 2P. C. Craigie, "The Problem of Parallel Word Pairs in Ugaritic and Hebrew Poetry," Semitics 5 (1977):53. 3Alster, (Studies in Sumerian Proverbs, p. 31) gives examples of bread/beer; day/night; love/hate; etc. He warns against using such pairs as a sole basis to reconstruct the text ("A Note on 'Fixed Pairs' in Ugaritic and Early Hebrew Poetry," p. 142.)
extra" [Charlton Heston and a cast of thousands] and the principle of chronology [wash and wear]) as well as phonological patterns. The phonological principles include: (1) the shorter first (vim and vigor); (2) vowel in the second word is longer (trick or treat); (3) second word has more initial consonants (sink or swim); (4) the second word has fewer final consonants (sink or swim); (5) second word has the more obstruent initial consonant (most obstruent are stops [p,t,b,k etc.]; spirants, nasals, liquids [l,r] then glides [y, w]) e.g., wear and tear); (6) second word has a vowel with lower second formant features (progression goes from high front vowel (i) to low vowels (a) to high back vowels (u); e.g., this or that, ping-pong); and (7) the second word has less Yüklə 6,58 Mb. Dostları ilə paylaş:
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