Innovation in Post-Biblical Hebrew Poetry analyzes the style of the hymnic poetry of the Dead Sea Scrolls. Building upon the structuralist foundations of poetic analysis derived by Roman Jakobson, and the system of rhetorical tropes designed by Belgian scholars known as ?Group ?,? Jobe examines hymnic poetry from the Rules of the Community, the Thanksgiving Hymns, and the Songs of the Sabbat Sacrifice. Special attention is paid to features of parallelism and to how it varies from biblical models. Innovation in Post-Biblical Hebrew Poetry analyzes the style of the hymnic poetry of the Dead Sea Scrolls. Building upon the structuralist foundations of poetic analysis derived by Roman Jakobson, and the system of rhetorical tropes designed by Belgian scholars known as ?Group ?,? Jobe examines hymnic poetry from the Rules of the Community, the Thanksgiving Hymns, and the Songs of the Sabbat Sacrifice. Special attention is paid to features of parallelism and to how it varies from biblical models.

Although scholars point to similarities between Sirach and the book of Proverbs and sometimes characterize Ben Sira's relationship to biblical poetry as one of imitation (often unsuccessful imitation), this study considers the innovative and unique aspects of Sirach poetry, especially its use of parallelism, and demonstrates that Ben Sira does not rely exclusively on Proverbs or any other biblical book as a model. "Innovations in Hebrew Poetry" provides detailed readings and philological analysis for the nine poems in the Masada scroll, and general observations on many other Sirach and biblical poems complement the analysis. Paperback edition is available from the Society of Biblical Literature (www.sbl-site.org)

This study tackles the neglected subject of word order in biblical Hebrew poetry. The fact that the order of clause constituents frequently differs from that found in prose has often been noted, but no systematic attempt has been offered by way of explanation. Here two separate factors are taken into consideration, that of purely poetic variation (defamiliarisation), and that of pragmatic markedness. The former is common to the poetic genre. In the latter case there is a discernible significance in the positioning of the words that has implications with respect to the matters of topic and focus. Using Lambrecht's theory of information structure and building on the insights of previous studies in biblical Hebrew narrative the present volume shows that marked topic and focus structures in Old Testament poetry are identical to those found in prose and are distinguishable from defamiliarised word order by means of the environment in which the latter is found. Here the common phenomenon of parallelism is seen to be an important factor in providing a secondary line in which defamiliarisation may freely occur. This work offers a new approach to the poetry of the Old Testament that will be an aid towards more accurate translation, exegesis, and discourse analysis of poetic texts.

This volume is concerned with a historical development of the syntax of Hebrew in the post-biblical periods, more specifically from the twelfth to the fifteenth centuries as used in non-artistic prose in Southern France and Spain, a period in which the language underwent some fundamental changes and developments. With his superb knowledge of all phases of Hebrew the author portrays and analyses these developments in relation to Biblical and Mishnaic Hebrew. This is a highly original and important contribution to a diachronic description of Hebrew syntax, and undoubtedly a necessary reading for any serious Hebraist and Semitist.

Before, during and after the preparation of Classical Hebrew Poetry: A Guide to its Techniques, Wilfred Watson published several articles on Hebrew poetry in a wide range of periodicals. The present volume collects together the most significant of these writings, including a chapter from a book on chiasmus, as well as a few unpublished items. After an opening survey of current work on Hebrew verse the articles cover the following topics: parallelism (including half-line parallelism, previously almost unnoticed), antithesis, word pairs, chiasmus, figurative language and introductions to speech in verse. The last section deals with structural devices and a folktale motif in narrative verse, hyperbole, apostrophe and alliteration. Previously unpublished items are on the contribution of ethnopoetics, from the study of Native American literature to Hebrew narrative verse (a new topic in biblical studies), parallelism in the Song of Songs and a metaphor in Jeremiah. This anthology is intended as a companion volume to Classical Hebrew Poetry. It includes additions and corrections to that book and there are also several indices.

Almost 75 percent of the Old Testament is made up of poetic passages, yet for many readers (lay Christians, even seminary students and pastors), biblical poetic passages remain the greatest challenge. Being unfamiliar with poetry in general and biblical poetry in particular, their reading and preaching are limited to selected poetic passages. This in turn limits their understanding of God's word. To help readers overcome these problems, the first four chapters of this book aim to get them familiarized with the literary techniques of biblical poets. To demonstrate how the techniques work to bring across the biblical theological message, the last three chapters offer poetic analyses of three passages of different kinds. In the process, we hope to draw attention to the beauty of the Hebrew poetic art and to the creative skill of biblical poets' versification. The ultimate aim, however, is to help readers discover the rich message of the Bible.