The Dynamics of Biblical Parallelism

Adele Berlin

Revised and Expanded Edition

With the addition of

“The Range of Biblical Metaphors in Smikhut”

by Lida Knorina

William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company

Grand Rapids, Michigan / Cambridge, U.K.

Dove Booksellers

Dearborn, Michigan

First edition © 1985 Adele Berlin

Published 1985 by Indiana University Press, Bloomington

Revised and Expanded Edition © 2008 Adele Berlin

All rights reserved

Revised edition published jointly 2008 by

Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co.

2140 Oak Industrial Drive N.E., Grand Rapids, Michigan 49505 /

P.O. Box 163, Cambridge CB3 9PU U.K.

www.eerdmans.com

and by

Dove Booksellers

13904 Michigan Avenue, Dearborn, Michigan 48126

www.dovebook.com

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Berlin, Adele.

The dynamics of biblical parallelism.

English and Hebrew.

Bibliography: p.

Includes index.

1. Hebrew language—Parallelism. 2. Bible. O.T.-Language, Style.

I. Title.

PJ4740.B47 1985 809′.93522 84-48250

ISBN 978-0-8028-0397-9

For

Moshe Greenberg

and

Barry L. Eichler

עשה לך רב וקנה לך חבר

And also in memory of

Tikva Frymer-Kensky

and

Michael O’Connor

Contents

Foreword, by David Noel Freedman

Preface to the Revised and Expanded Edition

Preface to the First Edition

Introduction

Abbreviations

I Parallelism and Poetry

Parallelism and Poetry in Biblical Studies

Parallelism and Poetry in Linguistic Studies

II The Linguistic Study of Biblical Parallelism

III The Grammatical Aspect

Morphologic Parallelism

A. Morphologic Pairs from Different Word Classes

B. Morphologic Pairs from the Same Word Class

Syntactic Parallelism

A. Nominal-Verbal

B. Positive-Negative

C. Subject-Object

D. Contrast in Grammatical Mood

IV The Lexical And Semantic Aspects

The Lexical Aspect: Word Pairs

A. The Paradigmatic Rules

B. The Syntagmatic Rules

C. Syntagmatic Pairing in Hebrew

The Relation between the Lexical and the Semantic Aspects

Lexical, Grammatical, and Semantic Patterning

A. Lexical Patterning

B. Grammatical Patterning

C. Semantic Patterning

The Semantic Aspect

A. Disambiguation and Ambiguity

B. Parallelism as Metaphor

V The Phonologic Aspect: Sound Pairs

What Is a Sound Pair?

Sound Pairs as Word Pairs

Sound Pairs Which Are Not Word Pairs

The Effect of Sound Pairs on Parallelism

The Patterning of Sound Pairs

A. aabb

B. abab

C. abba

D. Multiple Sound Pairs

E. Other Occurrences of Sound Pairs

Appendix: Sound Pairs in A Midsummer Night’s Dream

VI Parallelism And The Text

The Variety of Parallelisms

Perceptibility and Interestingness

A. Proximity

B. Similarity of Surface Structure

C. Number of Linguistic Equivalences

D. Expectation of Parallelism

The Effect of Parallelism

Glossary

Bibliography

The Range of Biblical Metaphors in Smikhut

by Lida Knorina

Index of Biblical Passages

General Index