VI. The Relation of the Old Arabian Poetry to the Hebrew Literature of the Old Testament

1914 ◽  
Vol 46 (02) ◽  
pp. 253-266
Author(s):  
C. J. Lyall

Three years ago, in his Schweich Lectures on “The Early Poetry of Israel in its Physical and Social Origins”, Dr. George Adam Smith gave us a detailed examination of all the remains of ancient Hebrew poetry contained in the Old Testament which he thought might reasonably be assigned to the period before the eighth centuryb.c., that notable century which saw the rise of the great Prophets—Amos, Hosea, Micah, Isaiah—who brought to the religion of Israel a new spirit, and set it upon the road of development which has been fraught with incalculable consequences to the history of mankind. Those who heard his lectures, or have read them in their since published form, will remember that in dealing with these ancient relics of literature Dr. Smith throughout examined them with an eye to the compositions of those cousins of Israel, the nomad tribes of Arabia. Comparing the two, at every step he found that the latter threw light on the former, and brought into strong relief the close kinship of these two great historic branches of the Semitic race. “Ancient Israel illustrated by Ancient Arabia” might, in fact, be taken as the alternative description of his lectures, the beauty and eloquence of which those who heard them are not likely soon to forget.

2018 ◽  
Vol 74 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Ndikho Mtshiselwa ◽  
Lerato Mokoena

The Old Testament projects not only a Deity that created the world and human beings but also one that is violent and male. The debate on the depiction of the God of Israel that is violent and male is far from being exhausted in Old Testament studies. Thus, the main question posed in this article is: If re-read as ‘Humans created God in their image’, would Genesis 1:27 account for the portrayal of a Deity that is male and violent? Feuerbach’s idea of anthropomorphic projectionism and Guthrie’s view of religion as anthropomorphism come to mind here. This article therefore examines, firstly, human conceptualisation of a divine being within the framework of the theory of anthropomorphic projectionism. Because many a theologian and philosopher would deny that God is a being at all, we further investigate whether the God of Israel was a theological and social construction during the history of ancient Israel. In the end, we conclude, based on the theory of anthropomorphic projectionism, that the idea that the God of Israel was a theological and social construct accounts for the depiction of a Deity that is male and violent in the Old Testament.


2003 ◽  
Vol 59 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Alphonso Groenewald

Psalm 69:37a refers to the "servants" in the composite "the offspring of his servants". This composite takes up a concept which already ap-peared as a self-indication of the supplicant of this Psalm, namely in its singular form "servant" (69:18a). The article aims to identify these "servants" (69:37a) who articulated themselves in the voice of the other "person" in Psalm 69. It is postulated that the connections which exist between the servants in Isaiah and the servants in the Psalter are far too distinct to simply regard them as a mere matter of coincidence. The article focuses on the book of Isaiah, as conclusions drawn from Isaiah can shed light on the identity of the "servants" in Psalm 69. Secondly, the focus shifts to the term "servants" in the Psalter, and specifically in book I and II. It shows that the term "servants" not only denotes the pious, but indicates a special group of people who played an active role in shaping the literary heritage of ancient Israel in post-exilic times.


1990 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 73-91 ◽  
Author(s):  
James W. Watts

AbstractPsalm 2 is an intersection in which a variety of issues in biblical theology meet. The psalm impacts upon our understanding of monotheism in ancient Israel, the religious nature of Judah's royal ideology, the origins of eschatology, and New Testament Christology. Theological reflection on Ps 2 should therefore not only consider the recent exegetical discussions of the text, but also the theological issues raised by the Old Testament context, the New Testament's use of the psalm, and the history of the psalm's interpretation. In what follows, a survey of all these aspects will lay the basis for a theological construal of this biblical text.


2017 ◽  
Vol 13 (16) ◽  
Author(s):  
Urmas Nõmmik

Teesid: Põhiliselt 8.–3. sajandil e.m.a tekkinud vanaheebrea luules on põhiühikuks bikoolon ehk kahest koolonist koosnev värss (esineb ka trikooloneid, mis on aga mõnikord bikooloni sekundaarsed laiendused). Enamik värsse kasutab mõtteriimi, mida saab seletada aspektiivse mõtlemisega. Ülejäänud värsid on täiendavat laadi. Värssidest moodustatakse alastroofe, stroofe ja terveid poeeme, mida aitavad kujundada abielemendid, nagu ulatuslikud kõlamängud, võtmesõnad, anakruus, ellips, kiasm, inklusioon jms. Lähemalt vaadeldakse nii sünkroonselt kui diakroonselt Jesaja raamatu ühte tervikpoeemi (24,6–13). SUMMARYThis poetological paper aims to introduce the reader to ancient Hebrew poetry in Estonian. In preparation for reading Old Testament poetry, one should first be acquainted with the principles and most popular poetic figures of ancient Hebrew literature composed mainly from the eighth to third centuries BCE. This paper uses a hierarchical method of instruction, beginning with basic elements, such as half-lines or lines of verse (denoted here as cola and bicola respectively, and not excluding tricola), and then moving to larger units, such as a sub-strophes, strophes (stanzas), and lastly an entire poem.A bicolon can be considered the basic unit of ancient Hebrew poetry, and it is genuinely parallelistic. Parallelism is introduced to readers via an aspective way of thinking (cf. Emma Brunner-Traut). The author analyses two verse types, widely known as synonymous and antithetic verses as synonymous verses, since in some verses, using a pair of antonyms does not give sufficient reason to say that the verse is itself antithetic. The phenomenon of tricola is regarded in diachronic terms: many occurrences of tricola in the Hebrew Bible result from the addition of a secondary colon to the original bicolon sometime during the later centuries (so already Sigmund Mowinckel). Genuine tricola exist as well but are found mostly within certain genres, such as hymns. Verses that do not categorise as synonymous parallelism can be classified as extrapolative verses that are either synthetic (with the second colon reasoning the first or adding a completely new perspective) or instances of enjambment.Additional elements, such as sound figures, assist in the composition of smaller or larger poetical units, including alliteration and assonance, occasional end-rhyme or anacrusis marking the beginning of a poetical unit, ellipsis, chiasmus, inclusio, etc. The reader should especially take note of keywords that characterise a verse, a strophe, or a poem.Using all of the above-listed poetic elements and figures, the author analyses the poem Isaiah 24:6–13, which belongs to the Apocalypse of Isaiah in chapters 24–27 and can be parsed into two literary layers written by different scribal hands (bicola in vv. 6–7, 9–10, 12–13 and tricola in vv. 8 and 11). In its present form, the poem consists of four strophes (6, 7–9, 10–12, 13), but evidence suggests that it originally consisted only of two strophes, which were then divided into two sub-strophes of two bicola (6–7+9 and 10+12–13). This paper illustrates the extensive sound play, the complex network of keywords, and the patterns of anacrusis found within the poem. The synonymous verse type dominates, even in tricola, but within the poetic framework, extrapolative bicola prevail.


2010 ◽  
Vol 31 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Christo J.S. Lombaard

Usually, the primary texts on the patriarchs of the Old Testament are considered to be those in Genesis, not only as to the extent of the material offered, but also regarding the dating accorded the patriarchs in relation to the texts concerned. References to the Old Testament patriarchs in the prophetic texts are often considered to be on the margins. In this article, this �exile� is reversed, at least as far as the dating of the patriarchs in relation to textual references to them are concerned. Repatriating the importance of the earliest prophetic mention of the patriarchs makes possible new insights into where the patriarchs could most plausibly fit into the religious history of ancient Israel.


2019 ◽  
Vol 75 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Philip Davies

This article represents a short reflective essay in honour of the Old Testament scholar Eben Scheffler. It focuses on the writing of the history of ancient Israel texts; examines different approaches to address the history of texts: minimalist and maximalist; and illustrates a minimalist approach in reference to the figure of the Israelite king Jeroboam II.


Author(s):  
KEITH W. WHITELAM

John Rogerson's review of works on the history of ancient Israel from Humphrey Prideaux to Martin Noth is a fine illustration of Ecclesiastes' observation (1.9): ‘What has been is what will be, and what has been done is what will be done; and there is nothing new under the sun’. The current debates on the history of Israel are often presented as part of some paradigm shift or, at the very least, a new and savage phase in the study of Israelite history. The publication of recent works such as A Biblical History of Israel by Provan et al. and Kenneth Kitchen's On the Reliability of the Old Testament take us back to the starting point of Rogerson's paper and the work of Prideaux before the development of biblical studies as a critical discipline in the nineteenth century. Norman Cantor's observations on the invention of the Middle Ages by twentieth-century scholarship are just as applicable to biblical scholarship and its pursuit of ancient Israel.


Author(s):  
J. W. ROGERSON

This chapter presents a brief outline of the history of ancient Israel, starting with Humphrey Prideaux's The Old and New Testament connected, in the History of the Jews, and neighbouring nations; from the declensions of the Kingdoms of Israel and Judah to the time of Christ. The book's purpose, as the word ‘Connection’ indicates, was to set Old Testament history in the context of the history of the ancient Near East. Other similar works include Johann Gottfried Herder's Ideen zur Philosophie der Geschichte der Menschheit of 1784–1791, an interesting feature of which was a ‘secular’ account of the reason for the downfall of Judah in the sixth century; Wilhelm Martin Leberecht de Wette's Beiträge; Heinrich Ewald's History of Israel, which argued that the Pentateuch and Joshua had reached their final form by way of at least six redactional processes; and Julius Wellhausen's Israelitische und Jüdische Geschichte of 1894 and Israelitisch-jüdische Religion of 1905; Albrecht Alt's Der Gott der Väter; and the writings of Martin Noth.


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