Proverbial poetry: its settings and syntax

texts as they were copied over the centuries in

Mesopotamia (vid. Suruppak) and in Egypt ('Onchsheshonqy).

Thus, when one picks up the text of Proverbs, he should

be acutely sensitive to the context from which and in which the

wisdom literature functioned (the scribes/scribal schools, the

king/court and the Israelite homes). The major themes reflected

in the proverbial sentences will speak from and to these settings

in life and if one is going to understand the text, he must be

aware who is speaking and to whom it was written.

The Structural Setting of Wisdom
Having briefly surveyed the Sitz im Leben of wisdom,

the forms which these settings produced is a natural

follow-up. Meaning was seen not simply as a function of

lexical structures; rather, literary structures often

determine the message of the proverb more than the

specific words employed. The comparison of the common

message of the following three proverbs illustrates

the point:

He who is bitten by a snake fears even a rope.

A scalded cat fears even cold water.

Whoever is burned on hot squash blows on cold

yogurt.
Obviously the place to start is ”not• with a word study on

the word "bitten." The fifth chapter was developed in

four stages: (1) deep structure proverbial thought forms

were suggested; (2) the types of forms were cataloged;

(3) broad wisdom genres were discussed and illustrated;

and (4) proverbial forms were analyzed. At least four

functions of proverbs were suggested (philosophical,

entertainment, legal, and instructional) which were

accompanied by examples of Scott's seven deep structure

patterns (identity, non-identity, similarity, futile,

classification, value, consequences). Crenshaw's list of

biblical wisdom forms was discussed (proverb, riddle,

fable/allegory, hymn/prayer, dialogue, confession, lists,

and didactic narrative). Onomastica, which gave long

lists of items, were found extensively in Egyptian wisdom

literature and may be referenced to Solomon in 1 Kings

4:33, where it talks of his knowledge of birds, trees, and

other natural phenomena. Riddles were employed by the

wise men as well as by the folk. The riddle is composed

primarily of a clue element and a block which must be

overcome. Many proverbs may reflect original riddles,

which may have been transformed into proverbs (Prov. 10:13;

16:24, cf. 23:29©30). The fable and allegory were not

heavily used in Proverbs (Prov. 5:15), although the idea of

comparison of one realm to another is used extensively.

Hymns (Prov. 1:20-33; 8:22ff.) and imagined speeches (Prov.

5:12-14) are rather common in both ancient Near Eastern

wisdom literature and the Bible.

Two proverbial forms were examined--the Mahnwort

(admonition) and the Aussage (saying). The admonition was

treated in some detail, while the saying is the focus of

the syntactical analysis which follows. The admonition

(Prov. 3:3-4) is often composed of the following elements:

+ call to attention + condition + admonition + motivation

+ summary instruction. The admonition part may be

composed of imperatives (Prov. 4:23), jussives (Prov 1:23),

vetitives (negative of jussive/imperative; Prov. 3:11-12)

or prohibitions (negative of the imperfect; Prov. 20:19).

Sometimes the admonition was expressed in a single

positive command or a positive and negative or many other

combinations, including imperatival clusters (Prov. 3:5-6).

Motive clauses accompany the admonitions, thus driving the

request home with a reason. Motive clauses have been

treated extensively in the literature and are usually

cataloged sytactically (result clause [Prov. 24:19-20];

interogative [Prov. 5:15-18] et al.) or by semantic

structure (reasonable [Prov. 23:9]; dissuasive [Prov.

23:13-14], explanatory [Prov. 23:4-5] or promissory [Prov.

4:10]). Numerical sayings (Prov. 30:18-19) often treat

topics of nature, society, ethics or theology, are

usually built on a point of commonality, and sometimes

have a feeling of mystery or wonder as they develop the

numerical sequence. This form is found in both the wisdom

literature and the prophets and some have seen this

rhetorical device as present in the alleged wisdom

narrative in Genesis 1. More lexically defined are the

better-than sayings (Prov. 28:6, which has the structure

n + P > p + N), comparative sayings (Prov. 30:33), YHWH

sayings (Prov 16:7), abomination sayings (Prov. 11:1),

macarisms or blessed sayings (Prov. 20)7), "there is . . .

but . . ." sayings (Prov. 13:7), and paradoxical sayings

(Prov. 26:4-5). The acrostic is also a scheme utilized by

the sages, as is the use of rhetorical questions (Prov.

6:27-28). When one observes the repeated use of the these

forms, it is clear that the scribes were concerned not

only with the message of the proverb, but also with how

that message was formulated. If they were indeed as

concerned with literary constraints as with content, it

seems plausible that, if one is going to understand the

message of the art form, one must understand the means by

which it communicates and the constraints under which it

operates.

It should be apparent that one of the major

thrusts of this study is how the proverbs should be

understood as poetry. One may ask why God had his

spokesmen use poetry instead of normal prose narrative or

why did He not in a straightforward manner just state in

propositional form the truths He desired His people to

know? In short, does the Bible come to us in

propositional form or via the medium of poetry and if

through poetry, why and how?

Approaches to Hebrew Poetry
Chapter six surveys various approaches to Hebrew

poetics and concludes with the proposal of a method for

monitoring Hebrew poetry features combining the studies of

O'Connor and Collins. Poe was correct when he described

poetry as "the rhythmical creation of beauty." The

pregnant statement of R. Jakobson--that poetry is "the

principle of equivalence from the axis of selection [a

paradigmatic axis] into the axis of combination [a

syntagmatic axis]"--encourages one to experience those

rhythms activated from all the hierarchies of linguistic

expression. Recent studies on the brain have

physiologically accounted for the kalogenetic synaesthesia

of poetry because of its ability to unlock the right

hemisphere of the brain via its alluring rhythmical

patterns. Poetry has a heightened sense of the how,

whereas normal communication focuses mostly on the what.

Poetry draws its patterns of equivalence from at least

three hierarchies of language: phonetics (meter,

alliteration, assonance, consonance, rhyme), syntax

(morphology [shifts or repetition of gender, person,

number, tense, etc.] and grammatical relationships and

structures [nouns, noun phrases, verbs, prepositional

phrases, clauses, etc.], as well as syntactic ordering

shifts [SVO/OVS, etc.]), and semantics (word pairs,

merismus, catch words, parallel and repeated words, etc.).

Phonological analysis is often overlooked as

unimportant by many who consider the oral reading of a

text merely a pedantic exercise. The first aspect of

phonology that was discussed was the question of meter in

Hebrew poetry. Five reasons were given supporting the

presence of meter (it is a poetic universal, the

regularity of line shape, it was sung to music, formulaic

patterns, and the historical witness [Philo, Josephus,

Origen, Eusebius, Jerome et al.]). Various counting

methods were surveyed from the standard Ley-Budde-Sievers

stressed syllable count, to the alternating stress count,

the major word-stress count, and the strict syllable count

of Cross and Freedman. It was noted that the average line

of human poetry is 10 syllables, with Hebrew usually being

between 5-9. Non-metrical approaches were examined

(Young, Kugel, O'Connor) and a position of metrical

agnosticism opted for.

Other phonological features were examined and

exampled, such as alliteration (Prov. 11:7-12), assonance

(perhaps Prov. 10:9), and various types of paronomasia

which are quite frequent in Proverbs (pun [Prov. 3:3, 8;

10:25; 11:7 and perhaps 10:6b, 11b]; farrago [Prov. 10:2];

associative puns, often with diction twists [Prov. 10:21];

and assonantic word plays [Prov. 10:5, 11:13, 18]).

Onomatopoeia was the final phonological poetic scheme

scrutinized with its synthesis of sound and sense (Prov.

10:18).

Semantic equivalences have been the major

concentration of Hebrew poetics since the "rediscovery" of

semantic parallelism by Lowth and the later modifications

and popularization under Gray and Robinson. This approach

usually perceives Hebrew poetry as repetitive or as a

stereometric way of thinking, by which the thought in the

first line is repeated in the second line in different but

semantically paralleled words. The standard commentaries

on the Psalms or poetic books often contain simplistic

examples illustrating synonymous (Prov. 16:28), antithetic

(Prov 10:12), synthetic (Prov. 10:22), emblematic (Prov.

10:26) and other types of parallelism. Variations are

then usually stated in terms of gapping (Prov. 2:18) and

compensation techniques (Prov. 2:1). Various types of

chiasms, and inclusios and word pairing phenomena were

discussed. There is a usual classifying of major semantic

units in each line often in the form ABC/A'B'C' where A is

said to semantically match the A' term. This gives the

impression of a "this is that" (A=A') type of semantic

analysis. The problems with this approach are apparent to

anyone with even a rudimentary knowledge of semantics. It

tends to blur word distinctions and gives one the

impression that the meaning of parallel words is the same

(semantic reductionism). The notions of synonym and

antonym are left virtually undefined and precise semantic

relationships unspecified. The method in general has led

to a very sloppy and superficial reading of poetry, as all

the other levels of parallelism which the poetic form

activates have been ignored. This study will emphasize

the syntactic aspects of the parallel lines, demonstrating

the fecundity of poetic syntax which points to the need

for a linguistically satisfying semantic and phonological

methodology to complement the syntactic method developed

in this study.

There has been a recent plethora of needed

dissertations and articles on the topic of syntactic

parallelism (Berlin, Collins [Manchester], Cooper [Yale],

Geller [Harvard]. Greenstein and O'Connor [Michigan]).

Grammatical paralleled terms are different parts of

speech or morphologically varied). Syntactical

parallelism is the syntactic parallel between the lines

(SVO/SVO = a match, SVO/OVS = a match with the order

varied). O'Connor's brilliant work, Hebrew Verse

Structure, is the best work available attacking the

fundamental problem of what are the constraints which

determine a poetic line. He concludes that the line is

syntactically constrained and uses a system of units

(single syntactical units, most often single words),

constituents (syntactic groups [noun phrases,

prepositional phrases, etc.]), and clause counts to monitor line

length. The following matrix as accounts for all lines of Hebrew

poetry:
Clause predicators 0 1 2 3

Constituents 1 2 3 4

Units 2 3 4 5
O'Connor examined a corpus of 1200 lines of Hebrew poetry. His

results may now be compared to the results of the 368 lines

examined from Proverbs 10-15.

Collins monitored the lines in a generative

manner. He noted that there were four basic sentence

types (A = SV; B = SVM; C = SVO; D = SVOM). He observed

four line types (bi-colon) which contained the four basic

sentence types (I = bi-colon contains only one basic

sentence [e.g., SV/O]; II = bi-colon contains two basic

sentences of the same type [ e.g., SVO/SVO, SV/SV]; III =

bi-colon contains two basic sentences of the same type but

with constituents missing [e.g., SVO/S©O, SV/-V]; IV =

bi-colon contains two different basic sentences [e.g.,

SVO/SV, SV/SVOM>). He then notes whether the subject is

present (i, ii, iii, iv) and gives numbers to the various

combination possibilities (SVO = 1; SOV = 2; VSO = 3;

etc.). The resultant model--used for modeling the

syntactic features was applied to the 184 verses of

Proverbs 10-15 and revealed certain clearly marked

differences from Collins' 1900 lines of prophetic corpus

and O'Connor's 1200 lines of normative Hebrew poetry.

These differences were collected in the final chapter of

this study. The benefit of Collins' and O'Connor's works

for this study is that they provide a benchmark to which

the proverbial corpus may be compared. It was O'Connor

who originally stimulated this writer's thinking on the

potentialities of poetic syntax, as well as personally

providing an example of how poetry should be read.

A Linguistic Approach
Present discussions of Hebrew poetics have yielded

two complementary methods of monitoring bi-colonic

syntactic relationships (Collins, O'Connor). The seventh

chapter examined various approaches to syntax, in search

of an adequate model which was philosophically/

linguistically satisfying, which could be utilized in

monitoring sub-lineal syntax, and which would also

facilitate bi-colonic comparison of these sub-lineal

units. After a brief discussion of the nature of the

relationship between linguistic symbol and that which the

symbol signifies, it was concluded that there is no

one-to-one correspondence between symbol and sense. This

should be taken into account when selecting a linguistic

model. The traditional method of diagramming sentences

was examined, pointing out strengths and weaknesses.

Recent attempts to move to a clause level and paragraph

analysis (coordination/subordination; W. Kaiser) seem to

this writer to be two steps forward and one step backward over

the traditional approach.

Structural linguistics (de Saussure) was examined

and its four-fold distinctions explained (langue/parole;

diachronic/synchronic; syntagmatic/paradigmatic,

hierarchical relationships). Structural grammars are the

most precising, empirically-based, constituent grammars in

existence and tagmemics lies in this tradition (de

Saussure, Bloomfield, K. Pike). With the coming of the

Chomskian rationalistic revolution, the lack of deep

structure considerations in the empirical structural model

caused its abandonment by many. Structuralism focuses

solely on text considerations and does not well account

for pragmatic/situational or intentional shifts, which are

crucial in determining meaning. This study has sought to

correct that error by including an overview of the various

historical and situational settings of wisdom. The

approach taken in the corpus is largely structural, but

also makes purposeful adjustments to correct the

deficiencies. In biblical studies, there has been a

recent, popularized form of structuralism which has opted

into the philosophical bases of linguistic structuralism

(de Saussure), but has not proven itself very meticulous

or thorough in its analysis of the text. It often jumps

in at the discourse level, rather than working up through

the morpheme, word, phrase, clause, sentence, and

paragraph, to the discourse (as is characteristic of

linguistic structuralists).

The Chomskian revolution moved linguistic

discussions away from the empiricism of structuralism to

the more rationalistic approach of transformational

grammar. Chomsky has tried carefully to specify

relationships between surface and deep grammar, thereby

moving syntactic linguistics one step closer to semantic

intentional considerations. His grammar is generative in

that he isolates a few rather simple laws which are able

to generate all possible sentence structures. It is

transformational in that it allows one to specify

syntactically relationships between sentence like "The

tree hit Rebekah" and "Rebekah was hit by the tree"

(passive transformation). While Chomsky is not without

critics (Robinson, Hudson), his fundamental insights are

vital and prove very beneficial as syntactic

transformations are frequently used in the paralleled

lines of Hebrew poetry. Often there is a shift in the

surface grammar of two parallel lines, although the deep

grammar is almost identical (Prov. 10:1, SVO/SPsc).

Tagmemics also has both generative and transformational

capacities, so it has not been antiquated by Chomsky's

discoveries.

The notion of deep grammar has given rise to more

funcitonal grammars, such as Fillmore's case grammar.

Case grammar specifies the role of a grammatical slot in

the sentence. The four surface subjects of the following

sentences each play a different role in the deep grammar

of the sentence.

Dick received a headache from reading the dusty tablet.

Weston received a halibut from the incoming net.

Don is refreshingly humorous.

Ted thanks them for reading his dry dissertation.
The subject in the first case (Dick) is the experiencer,

while in the second case (Weston) it is the goal or

recipient, in the third (Don) the subject is the

item/person of discussion, and in the fourth (Ted) the

subject is the actor. Case grammar provides a tool

for monitoring deep structure relationships and is included in

the third box of the tagmeme. Other grammars were

discussed (relational grammar, stratificational grammar,

pragmalinguistics) and their various contributions

accounted for within the model employed in this study.

The tagmemic approach of Kenneth Pike has proven

itself in the analysis of over 600 languages. It is also

flexible enough to accommodate most of the contributions

made by the various types of grammars. The tagmeme is

hierarchical in that it is designed to operate on all

levels of language--from the morpheme, word, phrase,

clause, sentence, and paragraph, to discourse levels. It

is empirically satisfying in that it specifies

relationships exactly and also accounts for the more

rationalistic functional approaches of case grammar. Its

cohesion box allows the monitoring of sister relationships (vid.

relational grammars) as well. The tagmeme

encourages an exact syntactic comparison of parallel

lines--from the word level, to the phrase, the clause and

even the line level. What exactly is a tagmeme? A six

box tagmeme was generated for the purpose of

this study.

Slot : Class

---------------------------

Role : Cohesion

---------------------------

Parsing : Heb. Word

It specifies grammatical relationships five ways. The

first box specifies grammatical slot (subject, verb,

object, Head, Modifier, etc). The second box names

the ”class of grammatical unit used to fill the slot (nouns,

verbs, prepositions, noun phrases, clauses, etc.). The

third box gives the deep structure role that the unit--

whether word, phrase, or clause--plays in the

communication process (experiencer, goal, actor, item, quality,

causer, etc.). The fourth box notes grammatical dependencies

(cohesions; sister and daughter relationships) perhaps between a

noun and a pronoun (Natanya shook her [3fs] head). The fifth box

was added on the word level to monitor morphological features, so

it gives the traditional parsing (msa = masculine, singular,

absolute, etc.). The sixth box was added on the word

level as convenience and just contains the Hebrew word

being treated, so that the reader does not lose track of

where he is in the maze of abbreviations. Thus the

tagmeme is a meticulous specification of grammatical form

and function. Examples of the illustrating this approach

may be found in the corpus of Proverbs 10-15 given above.

One may wonder if this study has moved away from

the aesthetic appreciation of poetic meaning for an

impenetrable labyrinth of gobbledygookish abbreviations

which syntactically atomize the text and leave the reader

with a feeling of frustration rather than the kalogenetic

synaesthia of poetry. The tagmeme, however, helps to

monitor how equivalences from the syntactic hierarchy are

actually used by the poet. It specifies exactly how he

paralleled his lines. Thus, its empirical exactness

allows one to move a step closer not only to thinking

the poet's thoughts after him, but as he thought them.

Having defined each line tagmemically, comparisons

between the lines were observed to see if the techniques

of syntactic parallelism could be isolated. Two

categories were designed to collect this data:

(1) isomorphic relationships (when the two lines manifest

exactly the same tagmeme); and (2) homomorphic

relationships (when the corresponding tagmemes are

similar but contain a point of variation). The monitoring of

isomorphic and homomorphic features generated

precise

grammatical transformations which the sages used in

constructing their messages. Thus the constraints under

which he operated as he wrote his poetry can now be

meticulously specified on the syntactic level. It is

obvious that such analysis should also be carried out on

the semantic and phonetic levels for a more satisfying

understanding of the poetic form (cf. Geller). This

writer is committed to the notion that a philosophically

proper understanding of language leads to an adequate

methodology, which should in turn lead to significant