Traditional Techniques in Classical Hebrew Verse.

• Author: Revell, E.J.

This book supplements Watson's previous work, Classical Hebrew Poetry: A Guide to its Techniques (Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1984; henceforth CHP). The terms "verse" and "poetry" in the two titles refer to the same body of literature. The new volume is largely compiled from previously published articles, some antedating the publication of CHP, some more recent; three new articles are added. This volume centers on the same topics as CHP, concentrating on forms of parallelism (four chapters), with other chapters on chiasm, figurative language, and patterns and rhetorical devices. Additional topics are treated in smaller sections. In one of these, Watson surveys work produced in the field between his own two publications. The body of the work fills some gaps in CHP, most notably in the long discussion of "half-line" or "internal" parallelism in chapter three. Much of the content consists of minute analysis and illustration of the structures which can be found in Hebrew verse, with plentiful reference to similar structures in Ugaritic and Akkadian works. Some attention is given to the function of the structures described, but this is not an important feature of the book. The understanding of the structure of a work is basic to the understanding of it on any higher literary level. Watson's study of features of structure is firmly grounded in objective observation, usually observation of many examples. This concentration on form will lay a solid basis for subsequent studies of the aesthetic aspects of the work.

Watson is able to draw support for his views from theoretical works on literature and linguistics, and the volume makes good use of his wide range of reading on the ancient Near East. Indeed, Biblical literature is unequivocally viewed in the context of the "ancient Near East." "Mesopotamia and Qumran" are given as the extremes of the survey (p. 103), but, while the index of citations of Mesopotamian literature covers several pages, there is none from Qumran. The literature of Qumran is referred to in the brief section on "Trends in the Development of Classical Hebrew Poetry" (pp. 86-103), and occasionally elsewhere (e.g., p. 191). Perhaps because of this strong interest in the Classical Hebrew poetry in relation to its antecedents, one gets little sense of its place in the culture which produced it. Most of the features listed as characteristic of poetry (in CHP, 46-47) are also found in passages usually classified as prose, particularly in...