“Of course, if Dudley runs into a Hebrew afterlife, the poetry’s really going to drive him nuts, as Hebrew poetry is based on repetition, repetition, and more repetition…”
Wrong. (I say that with a smile, but it’s still wrong. )
It’s often said that biblical Hebrew poetry is based on parallelism, but that is an incredible oversimplication. Part of the problem in discerning that is that something that was always a vital part of it, the melodic rendition, was lost in practice when the Second Temple fell. But that was preserved in the Masoretic Text (despite the Masoretes, to a large degree) and rediscovered in 1976.
I invite you to check out the real structure of biblical Hebrew sacred poetry (which was always sung) on my dedicated blog article:
Hey puddlglum: You wrote:
“Of course, if Dudley runs into a Hebrew afterlife, the poetry’s really going to drive him nuts, as Hebrew poetry is based on repetition, repetition, and more repetition…”
Wrong. (I say that with a smile, but it’s still wrong. )
It’s often said that biblical Hebrew poetry is based on parallelism, but that is an incredible oversimplication. Part of the problem in discerning that is that something that was always a vital part of it, the melodic rendition, was lost in practice when the Second Temple fell. But that was preserved in the Masoretic Text (despite the Masoretes, to a large degree) and rediscovered in 1976.
I invite you to check out the real structure of biblical Hebrew sacred poetry (which was always sung) on my dedicated blog article:
The Syntax of Prosodia and Psalmodia