Proverbial poetry: its settings and syntax

Proverbs 10:32 provides a rather standard example of verb

gapping.

There is a clear syntactic match between the lines of this

verse. The normal, two-unit noun phrase subject and

single, nominal object provide a very classic example of

proverbial patterns. The isomorphic character of the

subjects and objects also demonstrates the syntactic ties

between the lines. The verb in the first line is gapped

in the second resulting in the expected proverbial pattern

of shortening the second line (134/133). This verse

illustrates many of the tendencies which this study has

sought to highlight. The gapping techniques may be

formulated as A + B + C ---> A + [B (gapped)] + C where

any permutation of the units will be valid gapping as

well.

Having given a selective treatment of grammatical

constructions which tend toward a decrease in the number

of syntactic units in the line, a brief discussion of

expansion techniques provides a natural balance. As these

techniques are more intuitively obvious, examples will

merely be referred to--rather than giving the total

tagmemic formula for each, as was done in the section on

collapsing transformations.

The addition of a prepositional phrase in one line

of the bi-colon is rather common in Proverbs 10-15. It

may be the specification of a time element, as in Proverbs

10:30a, where it expands the first line to three units--

having no object because of the Niphal passive verb. The

addition of לְעוֹלָם (forever) obtains the 133/133

conspectus, rather than allowing the first line to have

the very rare two elements. The prepositional phrase may

specify the scope of the verb's operation, as in Proverbs

10:2b (cf. 11:7) where מִמָּוֶת (from death) expands the line

to three units. Notice in these cases that the

prepositional phrase finds no matching phrase in their

corresponding line. Thus, they have an additive rather

than a paralleling character. This type of expansion may

be formulated as A + B ---> A + B + PP, or as a

collapsing technique A + B + PP ---> A + B.

Similar to this is the addition of an adverb

modifying the verb which is present only in one line.

While in Proverbs 10:9a בֶטָה (securely) may have been a

result of phonetic processes, it also expands the first

colon, resulting in a 244/233 line pattern, which fits the

reduction of syntactic units in the second line (A + B +

Adv ---> A + B).

An emphatic pronoun may be added, usually in the

first line, thereby increasing the number of units without

varying the semantic units significantly (10:22a, 24a;

11:25b, 28a; A + B + PPron ---> A + B). The conjuncting

of nounal elements allows for an increase other than a N

---> NP process. The simple subject צַדִּיק (righteous) is

expanded in the second line, not by the reversal of the NP

collapsing techniques developed above, but by the

conjuncting of two semantically "synonymous" words in the

subject of the second line ( רָשָע וְחוֹעֶא, 11:31 [wicked and

sinner]. Notice also the gapping in this verse which

causes the count to be 133/122 (N ---> NP[N₁ conj N₁']).

It should be noted that any of the above

collapsing techniques may be reversed and utilized as

expansion techniques, thus providing numerous options for

syntactic variation.

In conclusion, what is being suggested here is

that grammatical transformational processes may account

for many of the surface and deep structure syntactic

variations between the lines. Sometimes these differences

do not significantly alter the deep structure (cf. 10:1);

but other times they add new elements (10:30). This

study has not sought to be exhaustive; rather it is

suggestive of how transformational grammar ideas may be

applied to Hebrew poetry. Transformational grammar may

provide help in reconciling bi-cola whose surface syntax

varies, but whose deep structures match. The compiling of

such techniques of variation should help the reader to

move away from the boredom of a repetitive parallelism

approach to a retrieval of the tremendous variety captured

in the creativity of the poetic moment. The following

formulae, then, are presented as a beginning of the

scientific formulation of such grammatical expressions of

creativity.

The following transformational formulae have been

generated from an examination of Proverbs 10 and 11

specifying some of this variety.
Nominal transformations:
NP ---> N

1) NP = Hd:N:It + Mod:N:Pos[Qual] --- N:X[Qual] (10:2)

NP = Hd:N:It + Mod:N:Qual --- N:X[Qual] (10:18)

where the Hd:N:It is a body part

NP = Hd:N:It + Mod:N:Qual --- N:X[Qual] (10:11)

where the Hd:N:It is a metaphorical element

NP = Hd:N:It + Mod:N:Qual --- N:X[Qual] (11:16)

where the Hd:N:It is an opaque noun (man, woman,

etc.)
Common structure: N₁ + N₂ ---> N₂'

where N₁ = Item and N₂ = Qual

N:

Item

Body part N: N:

Metaphorical + [Quality] ---> [Quality]

element

Generic

(transparent)

2) N:Item + N: Quality --- N:Item (10:20)

3) NP₁[N₁ + N₁'] + N₂ --->N₁' + N₂' (10:27)
4) NP= Hd:N:It + Mod:N:Pos ---> Hd:N:It + Mod:PS:Pos (10:15)
Verb Transformations:
1) S + V ---> V(Suffixed)

2) S + V ---> [0(S)] + Existence predication + Psc

3) S + V(trans) + O ---> S + V(Intrans)

4) S + V(active) + O ---> S + V(passive)

5) SVO ---> SPsc

10:1 S + V + O ---> S + Psc[N_V + N_O]

6) A + B ---> C

7) A + B + C ---> A + (B gapped) + C [any permutation]

Expansion Techniques:
1) A + B ---> A' + B' + PP (10:30)

2) A + B ---> A'+ B' + Adv (10:9)

3) A + B ---> A' + B' + PPron (10:22)

4) N ---> NP[N₁conjN₁'] (11:31)

Thus the sages were master craftsmen of the poetic art

form, not boring their students by gross repetition and

sameness, but exploiting the infinite potential of

language to reflect the harmoniously diverse beauty which

the creator Himself had fabulously displayed in the verbal

crafting of His uni-verse.

SUMMARY AND CONCLUSION

OVERVIEW
The results of this study are more methodological

than concrete answers to specific problems. The

dissertation has attempted to reflect a theory of language

and poetic literature which, by the objectification of

data, provides a basis for the contextual and literary

appreciation of the proverbial sentences as poetry.

Traditional exegetical attempts at understanding Hebrew

poetics almost always degenerate into simplistic

observations of the types of semantic parallelism. It

myopically ignores the infinite fecundity of the poetic

expressions through the use of reductionistic techniques

which obscure rather than elucidate the poetic meaning of

the text. The questions that are asked are in terms of

the message of the poetry rather than the manner in which

it communicates as poetry. The traditional method looks

at poetry as a collection of parallel word-meanings which

are lexically encysted rather than as a literary, artistic

expression which creatively activates all levels and forms

of meaning--whether rhetorical, phonetic, syntactic, or

semantic--into an aesthetically infatuating message which

scintillates not only the rationalistic mind that is

merely concerned about the propositions of divine truth,

but also, the emotions, in a manner not totally different

from the dynamic found in Beethoven's ninth symphony.

While this study examined only one aspect of Hebrew poetry

(syntactical parallelism), it is hoped that the

realization of the meticulous care and creative genius of

the sages, as they syntactically crafted their thoughts

into artistic poetic expression, will stimulate

linguistically satisfying studies of Hebrew poetry which

concentrate on the other aspects of linguistic expression

(phonetics, semantics, and stylistics). As the lone

analysis of each individual musical note of Handel's

Messiah is a ludicrous means of appreciating the message

of his music, so, too, the analysis of individual lexical

units (words) alone is a farcical way of understanding

poetry. How poetry is to be understood is perhaps the

most significant question raised by this dissertation.

The answer was sought in two directions: (1) the

pragmatic context of the proverbial poetry (the literary,

canonical, philosophical, historical, institutional

settings); and (2) the syntactic analysis of the text

itself.

The Comparative Literary Setting
The study began by providing an overview of the

literary setting of the proverbial poetry. It was shown

that proverbial expression was and is an international

phenomenon (1 Kgs 4:30f. [MT 5:10f.]; Obad 8; Ezek 28:2).

Wisdom texts were cited from as early as third millennium

Ebla and Sumer down to Ptolemaic Egypt. Even samples from

modern Swahili, Yemenite and English demonstrate that a

common proverb does not necessarily mean a common literary

origin. While the ethos of the Sumerian proverbs was

somewhat distant to the concerns in first millennium

Israelite proverbs, the use of antithetical parallelism

and the promulgation of many of these Sumerian proverbs

into Akkadian and even into Ugaritic evinced the uncanny

ability of proverbs to cross cultural and time barriers

mutatis mutandis. Thus, though one may not demand that a

common proverb proves a common origin, one also may not

unilaterally reject a common source as a possiblity for

the historical origin of a proverb. The Akkadian Counsels

of Wisdom and other early texts were used to show the

folly of McKane's suggestion that wisdom evolved from

empirical secular sayings to embellished sacred sentences

reflecting the Yahwehizing tendenz of later scribes. The

sebayit (instructions) in Egypt with their Mahnspruch

(admonitions) and Aussage (sayings) have provided close

parallels, in terms of both structure and ethos, to the

biblical proverbs. Amenemope provides examples of

proverbs which are close parallels to those found in

Proverbs. While literary dependence in either direction

may not be ruled out, a common culture and literary milieu

may be behind many of the similarities. Such parallels

demonstrate the inspired sages' participation in the

literary structures and ethos found through two millennia

in Sumer, Mesopotamia, Egypt as well as in premonarchical

and monarchical Palestine.

The Conceptual Setting of Wisdom
The second chapter addresses the theological/

philosophical framework of the wisdom literature. The

past neglect of wisdom literature by Old Testament

theologians is presently being turned around, as wisdom is

being viewed as a type of last horizon of biblical

theology. Tendencies have been to infuse a Mitte found

elsewhere in the canon onto wisdom with some rather

superficial and procrustean explanations as to how wisdom

is to be fitted into the theology of the rest of the

canon. The motifs of creation theology and the principles

of cosmic order (ma'at) have been helpful indigenous

starting points for understanding wisdom's world view.

Wisdom portrays God as creator and the individual (rather

than the community) as responsible for harmonizing his

behavior with the principles God has infused into the

creation itself. Wisdom was described as individually

cosmodynamic whereas the cult is more communally oriented

and cosmostatic. Thus, wisdom reflects a coordination

between the principles of creation and life's experiences.

The Creator guarantees that the universe is comprehensible

and that the moral and social orders reflect His

trademark, which is etched into the creation itself. The

individual is found in community. The community is

understood more in terms of a common creation than a

common redemption (or covenant).

Several have suggested that ma'at or the created

order is the major motif of wisdom. This order was

ordained and upheld by God and the king. The wise man

observed the various orders--whether societal, familial,

personal, or institutional--and brought his behavior into

line with the expectations and constraints of those

demesnes. The wise man considered carefully the

individual with whom he was dealing--God, the king, the

rich, the wise, or the poor and foolish--and adjusted his

behavior accordingly (Prov 23:1). The principles of moral

order are often reflected in the contrast between the

righteous and the wicked, which is a ubiquitous theme in

the wisdom literature.

References to salvation history are strangely

absent in Proverbs. Not one motive clause is made on the

basis of divine redemptive acts. Wisdom views history

synchronically rather than diachronically. It does not

formulate its statements in terms of the past

extraordinary acts of God. Wisdom focuses more on the

common, ever present paradigms of nature and society and

how an individual is to act in light of those universally

observable patterns. While some have used these endemic

features to suggest that a secular presupposition is at

the base of wisdom expressions, such suggestions were

rejected both on the basis of ancient Near Eastern

parallels and on the theistic content of the oldest

canonical wisdom sections (Prov 10:3). Arguments were

presented which exposed the errors of McKane's three-fold

evolutionary scheme, by which he suggests that the

proverbs were originally secular but that later scribes

added Yahwehistic elements and motivations to make the

sayings more theologically palatable. The secular

character of Proverbs may stem from its empirical (Prov

6:6), pragmatic (Prov 17:8), and rational (Prov 30:18f.)

approaches to reality, although it is clear that such

reflections are grounded in the fear of Yahweh as its

fundamental pou sto.

The Canonical Setting of Wisdom
The third chapter dealt briefly with the canonical

setting of wisdom. Wisdom, originally viewed as somewhat

anomalous in the Old Testament, now is being discovered

everywhere. Several criteria have been suggested as

indicative of the presence of wisdom: (1) vocabulary

(words such as: k^esil, 'arum, nabon, bina, hokmah, et

al.); (2) endemic motifs of wisdom (universalistic

outlook, practical rather than abstract, empirically

oriented, indifference to the cult, et al.); (3) forms

(numerical sayings, acrostics, admonitions, et al.); and

(4) explicit mentioning of wise men. These criteria were

then applied to various texts which recently have been

alleged to reflect wisdom influence, such as Genesis 1-3,

the Joseph narrative, certain statements common to the law

and Proverbs, the succession narrative, wisdom Psalms, and

various prophets which seem to reflect the outlook of

wisdom (esp. Isa, Mic, Amos, Hab, et al). Finally, this

chapter briefly treated the esa/dabar conflict between the

sages and the prophets. Crenshaw correctly concluded that

the level of authority is no different between the "Thus

saith the LORD" of the prophets or the "Listen, my sons,

to a father's instruction" of the sages. Prophetic

indictments against the sages (Jer 8:8; 18:18) do not

reflect an institutional tension any more than prophetic

denunciations of the misuses of the false prophets reflect

a disapproval of the prophetic institution. The

allegation that wisdom is prolific throughout the Old

Testament is better explained as being the result of a

common perception and heritage shared by all men. Hence,

when vocabulary and ideas characteristic to wisdom are

found elsewhere they reflect not a common institutional

origin, but a common perception of the shared universe.

This does not negate, however, the possibility of the

influence of wisdom elsewhere in the canon, since Moses,

many of the psalmists, and the prophets would have been

trained in the schools which would have been prominent

sources of such features.
The Historical Settings of Wisdom
Chapter four introduces the multiplex matrices

from which wisdom literature arose. Modern folklore

studies have demonstrated the hermeneutical value of both

the historical origin (milieu d'origine) and cultural

settings in which the proverb was used (milieu usager).

No one-to-one correspondence was proposed between form and

setting; rather, three broad cultural phenomena

(scribes/scribal schools, king/court, and family) were

involved in the genesis and promulgation of wisdom forms.

The scribes and scribal schools correspond well

with the didactic character of much of the wisdom

literature. The importance of viewing the scribes as the

grease which lubricated the gears of ancient civilization

was developed. So important was the scribe in Egypt that

even the Pharaoh had himself portrayed as a scribe.

Egyptian scribes were sometimes deified. They were not

mere copyists, but prominent government officials. The

vizier, for example, was second only to Pharaoh himself.

A whole genre in Egypt was given to the topic of praising

the scribal art and satirizing the other trades. The same

phenomena which caused the rise of the scribes in Egypt

were also at work in Mesopotamia (difficulty of the

writing script, governmental needs, and temple economy).

Some scribes in Mesopotamia had duties as magicians in

addition to their administrative posts. This connection

of wise men and magicians is frequently reflected in the

Old Testament (Gen 41:8). While the alphabet in Israel

allowed for the democratization of learning, foreign

contacts and a growing governmental bureaucracy

necessitated scribal skills. In the post-exilic period,

the scribes were engaged not only as copyists and

transmitters of tradition but also as its interpreters.

The fact that only the rich and politically powerful could

obtain an education is seen by many in the class-ethic

allegedly present in the book of Proverbs. Numerous

proverbs are addressed to young men apparently on their

way up the political ladder; hence, some proffer an urban

aristocracy as the original recipients of proverbial

instruction (Prov 17:26; 19:10). Themes fitting royal

courtiers would also support this contention (relation to

superiors [Prov 23:1], judicial proverbs [Prov 11:1],

currying the king's favor [Prov 14:35; 16:13], importance

of counsellors [Prov 11:18], and faithful messenger [Prov

10:26]). The universal presence of scribes in the ancient

world called for the existence of scribal schools where

scribes could be properly trained in court etiquette and

protocol. Schools were found as early as the tenth

dynasty in Egypt and 2500 B.C. in Mesopotamia. In both

cultures the teacher was addressed by the familial term

"father." In Mesopotamia, he had a disciplinarian

assistant called the "big brother" (no Orwellian overtones

intended). The existence of schools in Israel is

suggested from analogy and from various school texts which

indicate the early presence of such an institution even in

pre-Israelite Canaan. Several proverbs are also cited in

support of this theory (e.g., Prov 10:13), although the

first explicit mention of a school is found much later in

Ben Sirach (51:23). Thus, the scribes and scribal schools

provide one factor in the matrix of the origin and use of

proverbs.

Another source of wisdom literature was the king.

Proverbs repeatedly makes this connection (Prov 1:1; 10:1;

25:1) as does the historical material (1 Kgs 4:32). In

Egypt the king was closely identified with sia (wisdom),

which he received from the gods. The Pharaoh was often

said to have written instructions soliciting support for

the king. In Mesopotamia, though the king was not

identified as a god (as he was in Egypt), he was viewed as

being endued by the gods with the gift of wisdom.

Israelite literature also reflects the identification of

wisdom with the foreign kings (Ezek 28:1-2) and many

proverbs call its hearers to reflect on their relationship

to the demesne of the king (Prov 16, 25). Even the

Messiah king is said to have the gift of wisdom (Isa 9:6;

11:2) as, of course, was Solomon through the divine vision

at Gibeon (1 Kgs 3).

The final matrix from which wisdom arose was the

family. While it was demonstrated that the terms "father"

and "son" are often technical terms for official positions

(teacher, student), yet the parental pathos and historical

introductions both in Egypt ('Onchsheshonqy) and

Mesopotamia (Suruppak) explicitly connect the instructions

to a familial setting. Recent folklore studies also

provide examples of proverbial expressions within a

familial setting. Israel also used the terms "father"

(Gen 45:8), "son" ("sons of the prophets") and even mother

(2 Sam 20:19; cf. Judg 5:7) as technical terms, but the

familial setting of instruction must not be denied (Deut

6:6-7; Prov 6:20-23; Tob 4:5-21). This chapter finished

with a discussion of the evolution from a single line folk

saying to a double lined literary proverb. Such a

unilateral literary evolution was shown to be unsupported,

although text expansions and contractions were noted in