The Dynamics of Biblical Parallelism

Introduction

Adele Berlin, The Dynamics of Biblical Parallelism: Revised + Expanded (Grand Rapids: Michigan: Eerdmans, 2008).

"Understanding of biblical poetry is enhanced by the study of its structure. In this book Adele Berlin analyzes parallelism, a major feature of Hebrew poetry, from a linguistic perspective... showing it to be a system of forces that combine to give biblical poetry its special powers of communication." "For anyone interested in the linguistic analysis of biblical poetry, this new edition of The Dynamics of Biblical Parallelism, twenty-two years after its first run, promises to contribute to the current renascence in the study of Hebrew poetry studies, just as it did during the renascence in the 1970s."

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Summary

The central concepts of the book are:

• Parallelism involving equivalences and/or contrasts
• Aspects: Aspects are the different areas of linguistics that can be activated by a parallelism. The four linguistic aspects covered are (1) the grammatical aspect (including both morphology and syntax), (2) the lexical aspect, (3) the semantic aspect, and (4) the phonological aspect.
• Levels: Levels "specify how much of the textual structure is involved-in most cases either the word or the line or the clause". (p. 27)

According to Berlin,

"Parallelism, then, consists of a network of equivalences and/or contrasts involving many aspects and levels of language. Moreover, by means of these linguistic equivalences and contrasts, parallelism calls attention to itself and to the message which it bears. Parallelism embodies the poetic function, and the poetic function heightens the focus on the message." (p. 141)

Outline

1. Parallelism and Poetry

• Parallelism and Poetry in Biblical Studies
• Parallelism and Poetry in Linguistic Studies

2. The Linguistic Study of Biblical Parallelism

3. The Grammatical Aspect

• Morphological Parallelism
• Syntactic Parallelism

4. The Lexical and Semantic Aspects

• The Lexical Aspect: Word Pairs
• The Relation between the Lexical and the Semantic Aspects
• Lexical, Grammatical, and Semantic Patterning
• The Semantic Aspect

5. The Phonological Aspect: Sound Pairs

• What is a Sound Pair
• Sound Pairs and Word Pairs
• Sound Pairs Which are Not Word Pairs
• The Effect of Sound Pairs on Parallelism
• The Patterning of Sound Pairs
• Appendix: Sound Pairs in A Midsummer Night's Dream

6. Parallelism and the Text

• The Variety of Parallelisms
• Perceptibility and Interestingness
• The Effect of Parallelism