The new magical imperial toolkit: percentages, prose and poetry ::
I've decided, now I am (at last) home from SBL (Washington, DC, USA), family (Exmouth, Devon, UK) and the Aotearoa New Zealand Association for Biblical Studies (Christchurch, South Island, NZ), I need a bit of a rest! But I also need to blog, because as I discovered in the middle of the year an empty blog breeds unsubscribers. So, over the next week or so I will gradually post the guts of my paper from ANZABS.Biblical Hebrew Poetry
Biblical Hebrew (BH) poetry is both beautiful and problematic.The beauty rings echoing in the ears even of those who read it in translation, yet the problems are not minor.
Firstly, the very existence of BH poetry is denied. Scholars have argued (quite cogently and somewhat convincingly) that there is simply no distinction between prose and poetry in the Bible. And, if there is no distinction, then there is no poetry, since the concepts "poetry" and "prose" are each helpfully defined as being "not the other"!
Secondly, and if we admit that BH poetry does in fact exist: Which texts are which? How do we know? This problem is specially poignant for a student of biblical prophecy, no two editors seem ever able to entirely agree on which parts of a prophetic book are which.
So, thirty years ago (a couple of weeks back on the occasion of the Imperial annual festival of biblical studies, SBL) David Noel Freedman made his presidential address. In those days high profile SBL presidents like (most prominently) Muillenberg, in 1968, had used this opportunity to launch new approaches to biblical studies.
In his paper "Pottery, Poetry and Prophecy" Freedman claimed:
We have devised recently a mechanical test to separate poetry from prose in the Bible, and preliminary tests show that it will work efficiently in most cases.How deliciously "modern" this quote now sounds, with its talk of a "mechanical test" - actually electronically mediated - and working "efficiently". With its stress on numbers and testing this is biblical studies fit for a world of managers!
In his paper Freedman leaves the nature of the test undefined, though earlier that year Radday and Shore had published results of counting the article (as a percentage of its potential carriers "nouns, adjectives, and numerals... (and) certain toponyms"). They showed that this percentage (of articles to potential articles) was significantly different between halves of books that scholarship often sees as divided (by genre or origin),3 and also between prose books and poetic books.
In 1983 Andersen and Forbes published counts for every chapter in the Bible of what were becoming known as "prose particles":
- the sign of definiteness (or "article") ה
- the direct object marker את
- and the relative אשׁר
By 1987 Freedman was quantifying this (in "Another Look at Biblical Hebrew Poetry"):
- less than 5% of these particles the text is poetry
- more than 15% and it is clearly prose
- text with scores in the 5-15% range are either mixed or perhaps elevated or prophetic speech.
Coming soon: Part 2 - the "boy" examines the imperial toolbox...
1. D.N. Freedman, "Pottery, Poetry and Prophecy", JBL 96 (1977), 5-26. [return]
2. Y.T. Radday & H. Shore, "The Definite Article: A Type and/or Author Specifying Discriminant in the Hebrew Bible", Association for Literary and Linguistic Computing Bulletin 4 (1976), pp.23 31. [return]
3. Except the book of Zechariah, which did not show a significant difference (see also below). [return]
4. D.N. Freedman, "Another Look at Biblical Hebrew Poetry", in E.R. Follis (ed.), Directions in Biblical Hebrew Poetry (JSOTS 40; Sheffield, 1987), p.16. [return] ¶ 12:39 PM
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Thank you for touching on a subject matter that interests me very much.
Freedman indeed claims too much for "prose particle" counts. But he asks a helpful question, which I will reformulate as follows.
It is impossible to deny that texts like Gen 49, Exod 15, and Deut 32 differ from the the prose contexts in which we find them in a variety of ways: prosodic, syntactic, lexical, morphological, and so on. Research that describes the differences clearly and accurately would be most welcome.
By 
JohnFH, at
December 14, 2006 8:05 AM
I agree with you John! I must get the second part posted, it's just that yesterday was all meetings and this morning is too... Perhaps this afternoon... Next I'll present my critique of Freedman, then at the end move on to my conclusions.
By 
Tim, at
December 14, 2006 8:59 AM
When we start running computer algorithms to test for genre I think we have made things way more complicated than they are. What ancient person would sit there counting particles to determine if something is poetry? Pardee and O'Connor have followed much of this methodology and I think have missed the point.
