ENGLIT 0597 Lecture Notes - Lecture 8: Alternatim, James Kugel, Five Megillot
Document Summary
Paul kraus (1930s) argued most of the bible is poetry (consists of universal rules) James kugel (1980s) argued that prose segments of the hebrew bible have light parallelism while there is also strong, fancy language (no poetry) First scholar to recognize the dominant form of the hebrew bible is parallelism. Repetition of the first half of a line by the second half of the line. Verset or hemistich or colon a line half or line third. Repetition of: nouns & verbs, syntax (word order), meanings/concepts. The first half of a verse will make a statement, and the second half will essentially say the same thing in different words. Includes some kind of: development, intensification, clarification, refinement, elaboration, specification, or additional information. Idea in second verset is opposite of the idea in the first verset. First verset expresses an idea, second verset adds another idea to it, and third verset adds another.
