On Biblical Hebrew Poetry: New Critique and Response Articles in JOT (Wendland, Grosser 2024)

Two new open-access articles are now available in SIL’s Journal of Translation:

Can Parallelism in Biblical Hebrew Poetry be “Unparalleled”?

Wendland, Ernst R. 2024. “Can Parallelism in Biblical Hebrew Poetry Be ‘Unparalleled’?” Journal of Translation 20 (2): 63–79. https://doi.org/10.54395/JOT-EWP4R.

Abstract

This study of “parallelism” in biblical Hebrew poetry has been stimulated by the recent monograph on biblical poetry by Grosser (2023). After an initial overview of the book, I summarize some of the main challenges that I encountered when trying to process the essential aspects of Grosser’s novel Gestalt-based approach. Next, from my literary-structural perspective I consider a larger selection of poetic passages as examples to illustrate the salient differences in our analytical procedures and results. This comparative survey will hopefully stimulate others to take up further cognitive and stylistic explorations of this important topic which, though very well-known and documented by past and present expositions, is not without its lingering ambiguities and points of controversy, which at times significantly affect technical terminology as well as Bible interpretation and translation.

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On the Nature of Poetry, Parallelism, and Methods: A Response to Ernst Wendland

Grosser, Emmylou J. 2024. “On the Nature of Poetry, Parallelism, and Methods: A Response to Ernst Wendland.” Journal of Translation 20 (2): 81–97. https://doi.org/10.54395/JOT-E6UNP.  

Abstract

This article is a response to Ernst Wendland’s article—also in this issue of Journal of Translation—which interacts with my cognitive approach to biblical Hebrew poetry, especially my recent monograph, Unparalleled Poetry (2023). In this article, I set my work within the broader context of biblical poetry studies and explain how it draws from literary and cognitive research to provide a robust framework for the concept of the poetic line—a contribution to not only biblical studies, but also broader poetry studies. The poetic line gets to the heart of the nature of poetry: the line is central to not just poetic structure (up to the level of the whole poem), but also poetry’s potential for rhythm and effects and construction of meaning. My view of the centrality of the line affects how I address various issues related to parallelism. I close by discussing the role and limits of method in regard to both poetic lineation and reading of poems.

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