dialogues) and ignores the nature of performance or reception.13 But is it even necessary to compare poetry with poetry, prose with prose? Biblical scholars since Robert Lowth have assumed that the Bible must contain the major literary categories of “prose” and “poetry,” but have famously differed on what constitutes which. Does parallelism constitute poetry, or, as Michael O’Connor argued, do syntactical patterns?14 James Kugel argues that the distinction of poetry and prose is completely meaningless