HEBREW
180
HEBREW
LlTERATtTRE. — Prose literature of the historical
type constitutes a large portion of the Old Testa-
ment. The history of the Jewish people with a sketch
of their ancestors going back to the beginnings of the
human race is related from a twofold point of view,
commonly known as the priestly and the prophetic.
To the former belong such books as Chronicles, Es-
dras, and Nehemias (II Esd.), and important sections
of the Pentateuch. Its main characteristics are the
annalistic style with precise dates, statistics, gene-
alogies, official documents, etc., and it enters with
minute detail into the religious prescriptions and
ceremonies of the Law. It has the dryness of a scries
of legal documents, and is devoid of imagination or
living descriptions of events. To the prophetic type
of Hebrew prose belong large portions of the Penta-
teuch as well as of the succeeding books: Josue,
Judges, Samuel (I and II Kings), and Kings (III and
IV Kings). Its narratives are grapliic and full of
life, and they are characterized by imagination and
a refined aesthetic taste. The Deuteronomic writers,
and to some extent the Hebrew historiographers in
general, employ the narration of historic facts chiefly
as a vehicle for the conveying of prophetic and re-
ligious lessons. In like spirit, and on account of their
didactic value, legends and ancient Semitic traditions,
and even accounts chiefly imaginary, find a place in
the historical books. Other prose writings of the
Old Testament, though cast in historical form, con-
tain a large element of fiction introduced for a di-
dactic purpose similar to the one underlying such
narratives as that of the prodigal son in the New
Testament. Among these writings, the chief object
of which is to inculcate religious and patriotic lessons,
may be mentioned Tobias, Judith, Esther, and Jonas.
The Old Testament embodies a considerable amount
of poetry, most of which is religious in character.
But various indications go to show that the Hebrew
literature must have contained many other poetical
works which unfortimately have not come down to
us. Alention is occasionally made of some of these in
the Sacred Writings, e. g. the Book of Yashar [II Sam.
(Kings), i, IS] and the Book of the Wars of Yahweh
(Num., xxi, 14). Besides fragments called "canti-
cles" scattered here and there throughout the histori-
cal books [e. g. that of Jacob, Gen., xlix, 2-27; that of
Moses, Deut., xxxii, 1-13, also xxxiii, 2-29; that of
Deborah, Judges, v, 2-31; that of Anna, I Sam.
(Kings), ii, 1-10, etc.], the poetical writings of the
Old Testament embrace the Psalms, the Book of Job,
except the prologue and the epilogue, the Canticle of
Canticles, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, Ecclesiasticus, the
Lamentations of Jeremias, and considerable portions
of the prophetic books. The Psalms belong chiefly
to the lyric genre, Job is a religious and philosophical
drama, while Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, and Ecclesias-
ticus are collections of what is called didactic or
gnomic poetry.
Apart from its sacred character, the poetry of the Old Testament possesses the highest literary merit, and there is abundant evidence of the great influence it exercised on the religious and national life of the Hebrews. .Vmong its literary characteristics may be mentioned in the first place "its naturalness and sim- plicity. It knows Uttle of fLxed, artificial forms, but has a natural sublimity of its own due to the loftiness of the ideas. It deals with things concrete and is essentially subjective. It re-echoes the poet's own thoughts and feelings, and sets forth the varied phases of his own experiences. To these quahties is due in great measure the influence exercised by Hebrew poetry on the Jemsh people, as well as its wonderful adaptability to the needs and tastes of all classes of readers. It rarely involves anything like a logical process of reasoning, but is intuitive and sententious, expressing with authority religious and ethical truths in brief, terse, pregnant utterances having little con-
nexion one with another save through the unity of
the general theme, .\nother characteristic of He-
brew poetry is its realism. "The sacred writers enter
into deep and intimate fellowship with external
nature, the world of animal, vegetable and material
forces; and by regarding them as in immediate con-
ne.xion with God and man, deal only with the noblest
themes" CUf. Briggs, "Gen. Introd.", p. 3G0). All
nature is aglow w-ith the glory of God, and at the
same time it is represented as sharing in the destinies
of man.
As regards literary form, Hebrew poetry takes little or no account of rhyme, and in this it diS'ers essen- tially from the poetry of the sister language Arabic. It makes frequent and efi'ective use of alliteration, assonance, and play upon words, but its main and essential characteristic is what is known as parallelism. This peculiarity, though remarked by earlier writers, was first .set forth in a scientific treatise by the Angli- can Bishop Lowth (De Sacra Poesi Hebr., 1753). Parallelism, traces of which are found likewise in the AssjTian and Babylonian hymns, consists essentially in the reiteration, in one form or another, in succeed- ing lines of the idea expressed in a previous one. The more common form of this reiteration is a simple repetition of the idea in more or less synonymous terms. Thus: —
(1) In thy strength, O Lord, the king shall joy; And in thy salvation he shall rejoice — (Ps. xx, 2).
(2) Let thy hand be found by all thy enemies:
Let thy right hand find out all them that hate thee —(ibid., 9).
Sometimes, especially in tlie gnomic poetry, the re- iteration of the idea is put in the form of an antithesis, constituting what Bishop Lowth termed antithetic parallelism. Thus: —
(1) A wise son maketh the father glad:
But a foolish son is the sorrow of his mother — (Prov., X, 1).
(2) The slothful hand hath wrought poverty: But the hand of the Industrious getteth riches
—(ibid., 4).
Still another form of paralh-lism is the sj'nthetic or cumulative, of which the following lines may serve as an example: —
Praise the Lord from the eartli, Ye dragons, and all ye deeps: Fire, hail, snow, ice, Stormy winds, which fulfil his word
— (Ps. cxlviii, 7-8).
Sometimes the thought expressed in the first verse is a figure of the truth enunciated in the .second, in which case the parallelism is called emblematic. Thus:
When the wood faileth, the fire shall go out:
And w^hen the talebearer is taken away, conten- tions shall cease.
As coals are to burning coals, and wood to fire,
So an angry man stirreth up strife
—(Prov., xxvi, 20-21).
For examples of other and rarer forms of paralleli.sm, such as the progressive or staircase form, in which a final word or clause of one line is made the starting- point of the succeeding one and so on; introverted parallelism, in which the first line corresponds with the fourth, and the second with the third, the reader is referred to special treatises (e. g. Briggs, "General Introduction", ch. xiv: "Characteristics of Biblical Poetry").
For the apocryphal works pertaining to the later Heljrew literature, see Apocrypha, and for the Neo- Hebrew of the Mishna and the Gemara, see Talmxjd.
