Biblical Hebrew Forum

["B. M. Rocine" <brocine AT twcny.rr.com>]

Interesting thought, Clay.  Let me get back to you in a couple days.  I
recently noticed a passage where Alter determined a boundary between poetry
and prose that I wondered about myself.  I think it was at the end of the
re-uniting of Jacob and Esau.  I'd like to take another look at it, and run
it by you, but I left my Alter Genesis at camp.  Alas, I won't have it for a
few days.

I know that Alter has some definite ideas about the brand of parallelism we
see in BH poetry, which I think he labels incremental repetition (see his
_The Art of Biblical Poetry_).  I suspect if a particular text doesn't
measure up to his ideas, he will judge it to be prose.  If, on the other
hand, he sees that incremental repetition, I don't suppose he would hesitate
to point it out by labelling and/or formatting a passage as poetry.

Shalom,  Bryan

you wrote:
> On 8/14/03 5:25 AM, "B. M. Rocine" <brocine AT twcny.rr.com> wrote:
>
> > I think one of the most powerful arguments that Alter offers for
translating
> > the Hebrew somewhat literally or "woodenly" is his observation that the
> > narrative of the Bible is achieved with such a limited Hebrew lexicon.
The
> > creators of the Biblical narrative worked within the constraint of a
> > literary convention that esteemed economy in diction.  It seems
sometimes
> > that the variety of stories are expressed by the same words and
structures
> > re-used.  ...
>
> Bryan,
>
> "... narrative of the Bible is achieved with such a limited Hebrew
lexicon."
>
> Alter's argument seems to hang a lot of weight on the distinction between
> narrative and poetry. I am beginning to wonder if this distinction is
really
> important to his thesis.
>
> Frank H. Polak** identifies lexical and syntactical features that
> distinguish poetic material from prose. Based on his criteria the Gen. 1
> creation account fails to fit into either category. Using Polak's criteria
a
> refrain such as:  wyr) )lhym ky +wb is poetic.
>
> But in Gen: 1:4  wyr) )lhyM )t h)wr ky +wb
>
> we run into a definite article and the use of )wr which according to Alter
> (p. xxxvi) marks a narrative text. The use of )wr and m)wr being an
example
> of "... narrative of the Bible ... achieved with such a limited Hebrew
> lexicon."
>
> So in my rather confused state of mind, I suspect that the
narrative/poetry
> distinction which seems to be employed as kind of a Saussurain binary
> opposition in these discussions is really a burden that could be cast
aside.
> Alter's observations about limited lexical stock and repitition could be
> made just as well without getting embroiled in sticky problem of defining
> the boundaries between Biblical Hebrew narrative and poetry.
>
> Thanks for your concise and clear summary of Alter's approach.
>
>
> greetings,
> Clay Bartholomew
>
> **page 6, Poetic style and parallelism in the creation account (Genesis
> 1.1-2.3) / Frank H. Polak   In Creation in Jewish and Christian tradition
/
> edited by Henning Graf Reventlow and Yair Hoffman. London : Sheffield
> Academic Press, c2002.
>