Biblical Hebrew Forum

["Harold R. Holmyard III" <hholmyard AT ont.com>]

Dear Stoney,

Daniel is not poetry, for the most part. Note how the BHS lays it out 
in most places as prose, not poetry. And even if there is a great 
deal of poetic style, as with Isaiah, that does not prevent the 
writing from being taken seriously as making factual statements.

                                Yours,
                                Harold Holmyard

> Prof. Medina -
>
> What's "problematic" about ascribing inspiration to poetry, or poetry to
> Scripture? And the question of fraud (pious or im-) in poetry was
> resolved centuries ago:
>
> The poet never maketh any circles about your imagination, to conjure you
> to believe for true what he writeth. He citeth not authorities of other
> histories, but even for his entry calleth the sweet Muses to inspire
> into him a good invention; in troth, not laboring to tell you what is or
> is not, but what should or should not be. And therefore though he
> recount things not true, yet because he telleth them not for true he
> lieth not; without we will say that Nathan lied in his speech, before
> alleged, to David; which, as a wicked man durst scarce say, so think I
> none so simple would say that Aesop lied in the tales of his beasts; for
> who thinketh that Aesop wrote it for actually true, were well worthy to
> have his name chronicled among the beasts he writeth of. What child is
> there that, coming to a play, and seeing Thebes written in great letters
> upon an old door, doth believe that it is Thebes? If then a man can
> arrive at that child`s-age, to know that the poet`s persons and doings
> are but pictures what should be, and not stories what have been, they
> will never give the lie to things not affirmatively but allegorically
> and figuratively written. And therefore, as in history looking for
> truth, they may go away full-fraught with falsehood, so in poesy looking
> but for fiction, they shall use the narration but as an imaginative
> ground - plot of a profitable invention. But hereto is replied that the
> poets give names to men they write of, which argueth a conceit of an
> actual truth, and so, not being true, proveth a falsehood. And doth the
> lawyer lie then, when, under the names of John of the Stile, and John of
> the Nokes, he putteth his case? But that is easily answered: their
> naming of men is but to make their picture the more lively, and not to
> build any history. Painting men, they cannot leave men nameless. We see
> we cannot play at chess but that we must give names to our chess-men;
> and yet, me thinks, he were a very partial champion of truth that would
> say we lied for giving a piece of wood the reverend title of a bishop.
> The poet nameth Cyrus and Aeneas no other way than to show what men of
> their fames, fortunes, and estates should do.
>         - Sir Philip Sidney
>
> Stoney Breyer
> Writer/Touchwood, Inc.
>
>
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> b-hebrew mailing list
> b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org
> http://lists.ibiblio.org/mailman/listinfo/b-hebrew