of the latter it is based upon a false dehmtion of the dmma • It is only in chs. 3-41 that the hook of Job s disposed as 1 dialogue. a"d this dispos.- UonU shares with the majority of . Plato s pl.Uo- sophical works, which no one thjnks it necessary on that account to caH dramas. N ay, the =^\<'^^^ ,^" ' bcinning to end follow the method of < ':''"S ^>- whe easin Jobthe whole actwn, from which the dian.a lakes its name, is givea in narrative lorm in
''''l."ur'ther,'L. Diestel (art. 'Dichtkunsf in Sclien-
^,,Vsmi.Lexicon, i. [1869] p. GO-J) femes that
anywhere in Semitic literature eai. he y.«. be
found any more than the drama. Ihi. ''•'^ t 'nn
been shown to be incorrect, as on Bab. -A>.sj i lan
soil .,u te an extensive epic literature, whose con-
tc Its' are mvlhological. has been found composed
in uoe ic form. But for Heb. poetry, so far as this
i" rep escm^^^^^ in the OT, Diestel's contention re-
mains true The OT enshrines a small number of
too ieal poems or fragments of ^^'^^^^ r%!f^
simcetoname the Song "\ ^^'^^t^^lm tT,
but this is lyric, not epic, poetry. 1 ss lUo-lu- are
nuite secondary productions, versihcalion of the
a cient pomdar ^listory for liturg-.ca purposes;
thev re li auies, not epics. The J ewish works ot
& of later times, the Books of I uth Jonah
FsthM Dn 1-Ot are wholly in prose. The strongest
evUcnce is uriished by the narrative proper m the
look of Job the so.calfed prologue anA >;l"logue '"
chs 1 2. 42. Although It IS praclicaUy ce tan
t at these were borrowed from the "'"'f "^ ''\"^
people ^ and are thus no secondary work but an
'ovi"! mi o e composed in the form current among
thl^ people for such subjects, these passages a e
Tit en^in prose, although th s '« """^"-^''^ '" >
, r if one will, has the breath of poetiy. thtj
"luire a°so w tl other narrative passages the char-
re-ard'these intermingled lines of verse as the
V;; remnants of an originally poetic compositiom
\Ve ma rather find here an indication tha poeti>
hld^Ath the Hebrews a wholly subjective, t.^-
V c t ii -e but that it was n<,t n use for objective
M,\c^'lcsc^l tion. We must reckon with this fact,
«' hout ii g able to oiler any.sull cient exp lana-
); ,, of it Perhaps, however, in this matter the
on nl Semitic te.'.dcncy is uPon the side ot he
Hebrews, the exceptional development upon that
oftheB.ihvloniansaiidAssynans.il
S ch e^consider to be the state of the case, am C A Bri-'s alone appears to come toadi eiei.t ^ondusro,^''But even when he represents Jo la.ii s fable(J-'J''-'»)-to take the most extensive iluaia- t?on-as writ en in metie (see his metrical division
S;j;;h^t^w^^^;id^;'r^.l-i^"^^e'h^^^
.0, the P--nt^tcr'a Co^uiienUo; on ^^J^^^^^^H^;: nandkomm. ii. 1 (18""': P;,"''^ Lcii.zii;, Teubner, Jahru-.
,eJo^^t;:^ofa^dr=.^tiee^.c«u,mu,^
inclml.nK even the Bk.oJob^l»>-I[ . ^^^ dn.nmtM-
;;-,;,!i^?:;;::,«c;;t'Sh^[tri.i!i^v^.^.e.o,;io,so„^.
; Cf. above, p. S"". ,
set. Hvulde.Comm p.vull.
~rr:'i:^ri^So:Uwe n..,t ..^ «.ma,„.
10
POETRY (HEBREW)
POETRY (HEBREW)
nanatives (P'b in Gn 1 and J's in 2'-4), as well as the two forms of the story of the Flood (Gn 6-8), are declared to be poetical passages, luetricaliy composed (Briggs, op. cit. p. 559 f.), this gives rise to a new, otherwise unheard of, state of things. Before any examination of these passages, the objection lies to hand that one cannot see why then Gn 9 and ll'-" are not to be regarded as poetical, and, most pertinently of all, ch. 5, the Sethite table which forms the transition to tlie story of the Flood. But when one looks more closely at the passages in question, it becomes plain that the wnole doctrine of the form of Heb. poetry, as explained above, must be radically transformed before these narratives can be forced into metrical forms. We find them dominated neither by stichical division nor by parallelism. Nothing 18 proved by the circumstance that here and tliere the tone of the language rises and takes a certain poetical llight, or that here and there a few lines are capable of scansion, or that the re- lation between certain clauses may claim the name of parallelism. In reality the primitive history of botli sources ( P and J ) is, so far as the form is con- cerned, not otherwise constructed than the follow- ing history of the patriarchs, etc., and is trans- mitted to us as history, not poetry, just as strictly as that is.* The conclusion, then, holds that the poetically composed epos as well as the drama is wanting in Hebrew literature.
Accordingly, only one of the leading varieties of poetry, the earliest and the simplest of them, was cultivated in Israel, namely the lyric. At the same time it must not be forgotten that a secondary variety of this, namely gnomic poetry, which we might call 'thought-lyric,' likewise attained to a rich development.
B. Tbe Employment of Poetrt.—¥ot the sake of brevity, we shall seek here to combine as far as possible a sketch of the history of OT
f)oetry with a schematic survey of the poems that lave come down to us. Only the folk-poetry of early times needs to be handled in any detail ; the other survivals of Heb. poetry will be found treated of in this Dictionary in separate articles.