Biblical Hebrew Forum

[decaen AT origin.chass.utoronto.ca (Vincent DeCaen)]

hi, folks,

rereading d vance's (2001) book = his dissertation. i'm trying to 
understand the conceptual blocks...  so i thought i'd ask a few questions 
about a poetic verse and see what you make of the questions.... so, take 
genesis 3:16 for example.... is this even poetry?

(1) leningrad edition has special lineation to mark god's curses as 
poetic. according to vance, since the two "lines" are not "regular", 
there's no metre.  but ..., in 3:16 and elsewhere, there is a global 
pattern of beats totally a multiple of six. do global patterns count?

(a) so how do you feel about me moving "banim" to the next "line"? then we 
get a regular "hexameter"

(b) isn't the problem generally about editors who lay out the "lines"? 
isn't that a major conceptual block?

(c) further, wouldn't metre as regular lines be a circular definition? 
don't you have to define "line"?

(2) what relation should i observe between vocalization + accentuation? 

(a) can i read yimshol-bak as two beats and we'el-ishek as only one? isn't 
that another part of the conceptual block? 

(b) can we-hu be counted differently than bak??  how we can we talk about 
regularity when we don't know what/how we 're counting?

(3) how many syllables is we-hu? or be-`esev?  can the count be the 
"same"?

independent of 3:16,
(4) if there is no poetry, why does the MT itself have a special accent 
system for "poetic" books?  could we learn something by studying that 
accent system?

V -- 
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Dr Vincent DeCaen
Adjunct Professor
Near & Middle Eastern Civilizations
University of Toronto

Hebrew Syntax Encoding Initiative (HSEI)
http://www.chass.utoronto.ca/~decaen/hsei/
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"and were Croesus and his footman to change places, you know, you poor 
rogue, who would have the benefit of your allegiance"
--Thackeray, Vanity Fair