Journal of Hebrew Scriptures - Volume 9 (2009) - Review
Adele Berlin, The Dynamics of Biblical Parallelism (Revised
and expanded edition, Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2008). Pp. xxiv+200. Paper
$21.00. ISBN 987-0-8028-0397-9. The book is a volume of the Biblical Resource Series,
and is a revised edition of the first edition (1985). The new edition
contains an unpublished article by Russian linguist Lida Knorina, “The Range of Biblical Metaphors in Smikhut.” In the introduction (iv-xxii), the author gives a
brief review on the scholarship of biblical poetry, especially on the study
of parallelism. From both linguistic and non-linguistic perspectives, the
author summarizes her own thinking about parallelism, with the application of
Jakobson’s theory and criticism of Alter and Kugel’s work. The introduction
ends with a list of papers on parallelism published since 1985. The book
consists of six chapters. The first chapter (1-17), “Parallelism and Poetry,”
starts with a summary of the development of the definition of parallelism.
The author evaluates the original definition of parallelism given by Lowth,
and points out that the three types classified by Lowth cannot cover the
subject thoroughly. Parallelism as a linguistic phenomenon has a much broader
scope of relationship between the equivalent elements. The author proposes a
fresh approach to the study of parallelism, and she introduces the
development and the current situation of research on parallelism in both
biblical and linguistic studies. The author also evaluates the theories of
Jakobson, Kugel, Werth and Waugh, and shows that biblicists usually equate
poetry with parallelism on the basis of style and characteristics, although
they may be aware of the fact that correspondences also involve a deeper
grammatical level. The linguistic study of parallelism and poetry analyzes the
relationship between equivalences and gives a better explanation of the
phenomenon on the basis of the grammar and the deep structure of the parallel
lines. The author concludes the chapter by examining the significance of the
study of parallelism for understanding the meaning of poetry. The second chapter (18-30), “The Linguistic Study of
Biblical Parallelism,” discusses what has been involved in the analysis of
the linguistic features of parallelism in biblical poetry. The analysis of
syntax from the surface structure, major syntactic components, and the deep
structure shows that parallelism can be defined by syntactic matching. The
author evaluates the theories proposed by both linguists and biblicists, and
summarizes her own approach as well. Collins’ theory of “basic sentences”
shows the patterns of parallelism between lines. He maintains that
parallelism is a semantic phenomenon and therefore fails to analyze the
grammatical aspect of the syntactic constituents. On the basis of Collins’
work, Geller’s theory moves to the deeper grammatical level. His idea of the
“reconstructed sentence” underlines the grammatical structures of the
sentences. Greenstein’s work also takes the grammatical approach, and uses
grammar to define parallelism. His analysis shows that parallel sentences in
fact have the same deep structures. O’Connor’s work also uses grammar to
define parallelism. He makes grammar both the criterion for identifying parallelism
and the basis for describing biblical poetry. The author remarks that the
complexity of parallelism can be described from various perspectives, even
within the linguistic perspective. The correspondence or contrast within
equivalences is not limited to grammatical or syntactic facets, it also
involves lexical, semantic and phonological aspects, and the goal of the book
is to present an integrated, linguistically based description of biblical
parallelism. Chapter III (31-63), “The Grammatical Aspect,” explores
this fundamental aspect of biblical parallelism. The author introduces two
subdivisions of grammatical parallelism: morphological parallelism and
syntactic parallelism. The author gives many good examples to show that
morphologic pairs are not necessarily from the same word class but, on the
contrary, can be from different word classes presenting contrast in person,
number, gender, conjugation, tense, case and definiteness, etc. Morphological
parallelism only involves correspondence in the surface structure. Syntactic
parallelism involves syntactic equivalences presenting nominal/verbal,
positive/negative, subject/object transformations and contrasts in
grammatical mood. Syntactic parallelism shows that inconsistent grammar does
not necessarily present any problem in unity or structure but is sometimes
just the result of the poetic function of the parallelism. The chapter ends
with an emphasis on the importance of grammatical parallelism to enable
better reading of poetic texts. Chapter IV (64-102), “The Lexical and Semantic Aspects,”
starts with an evaluation of Lowth’s contribution regarding the semantic
aspect of parallelism. The author explains that the relationship between
equivalents also involves word-level and line-level correspondences; at the
word-level, parallelism activates the lexical aspect of the language and at
the line-level, the semantic aspect. The author mentions that fixed word
pairs exist in Ugaritic poetry and also in biblical poetry. This suggests
that fixed word pairs exist in the literary tradition of ancient Israel and Canaan. She also mentions the theory of oral composition and the existence of non-fixed
word pairs, trying to show the function of the equivalent formulae. She
further introduces two sets of rules for word association: the paradigmatic
rules and the syntagmatic rules. The paradigmatic rules govern word
associations similar to antonyms and synonyms. These word associations
present minimal contrast, particularization of minimal contrast, feature
deletion and addition, and category preservation. The syntagmatic rules are
more complicated to characterize. They govern word associations containing
selection feature realization or idiom completion. In any case, word
associations only involve lexical items. The author further gives other types
of syntagmatic pairings in Hebrew: conventionalized coordinates, binomination
and normal syntagmatic combinations. The author highlights that word pairs
between the parallel lines reflect the same linguistic phenomenon as do the other
equivalents. This leads to the conclusion that “it is not that the word pairs
create parallelism, it is that parallelism activates the word pairs” (79).
The author continues to show the relationship between the lexical and the
semantic aspects. Words with lexical association do not necessarily involve
semantic equivalences. The function of lexical parallelism can be summarized
in the statement: “lexical associations promote the perception of parallelism
when grammatical or semantic equivalences are absent, and reinforce it when
they are present” (83). The patterning for lexical, semantic and grammatical
elements can be generalized as AABB, ABAB, and ABBA. The patterns may be
different but they all enhance the effect of parallelism. The last topic treated
in this chapter is the semantic aspect, that is, the relationship between the
meanings of the parallel lines. The author shows that the relationships
categorized by Lowth (synonymous, antithetic, or synthetic) have limitations,
and she further introduces Van Dijk’s theory, which justifies syntagmatic
equivalence. The author discusses the relevance of Van Dijk’s thesis
concerning the semantic aspect of parallelism and concludes that the semantic
functions of parallelism are disambiguation and ambiguity, and the metaphoric
function. She also explains how these semantic functions affect
interpretation. Chapter V (103-126), “The Phonologic Aspect: Sound
Pairs,” introduces the definition of sound pair and its function. The author
shows that parallelism also activates the phonological aspect of the
language, and in biblical poetry phonological correspondence can be found in
the repetition and contrast of the same or similar consonants in lines within
close proximity. Normally the sound pair also involves lexical and semantic
correspondences, though in some cases it only has sound correspondence,
enhancing the effect of contrast or the perception of correspondence between
the lines. The author also gives the patterning of the sound pairs occurring
in biblical poetry, demonstrating that AABB, ABAB, ABBA patterns together
with multiple sound pairs are all involved in sound correspondence. The
author further underscores the significance of sound pairs in linguistic
equivalence and the place of phonological correspondence in biblical
parallelism. The chapter ends with an appendix of sound pairs in A
Midsummer Night’s Dream, trying to show that sound pairing is not limited
to biblical poetry or Hebrew language. Chapter VI (127-141), “Parallelism and the Text,”
starts with a summary of the varieties of parallelism. The author shows that,
in most cases, parallelism is a combination of the four aspects treated in
the previous chapters. By giving eleven illustrations from the Psalter the
author concludes that parallelism is of enormous linguistic complexity rather
than being a simple linguistic formula. The author further points out that,
although parallelism can be found almost everywhere in biblical poetry, it is
not perceptible to everyone. Four principles are given to make parallelism
easier to recognize: proximity of the linguistic equivalences, the similarity
of their surface structures, the number of linguistic equivalences involved,
and the expectation of equivalence. The author also emphasizes that the
effects of parallelism are various depending on the forms. These striking
effects show that parallelism is the “constructive device” of poetry, and the
poetic function of the parallelism is the “most effective way to give
heightened awareness of the message to its receivers” (140). The end of the
chapter is a summary of what has been shown in these six chapters. The author
concludes that biblical parallelism combines various aspects of the language
to reinforce a powerful communication in biblical poetry. In a book in which complex linguistic phenomenon is
treated with complicated terms and concepts, the author’s lucid presentation
with plenty of good illustrations is a great asset. In her linguistically
based description of biblical parallelism, the author uses an inductive
method to present the various aspects of language that parallelism activates.
She also explains why the linguistic study of parallelism will help
biblicists to understand biblical poetry. In the introduction the author
mentions that the subject of her discourse is parallelism rather than poetry,
and indeed her presentation focuses on the function and effect of parallelism
in making biblical poetry more poetic. However, her treatment on the
definition of parallelism seems to be insufficient. From the definitions she
has shown, she points out the limitations of the classic definition given by Lowth. She also critiques Kugel’s definition and points out that his
definition reduces parallelism to semantic correspondence. Her own approach
is to define parallelism as a linguistic phenomenon, and she also points out
that the essence of parallelism is the correspondence between equivalences,
and “it is these linguistic equivalences…[that] constitute the phenomenon
called parallelism”(3). She describes parallelism by its broad linguistic
attributes and its functions but she does not explain the cause of the
phenomenon. In her discussion about parallelism and poetry in linguistic
study, she treats parallelism as one of the functions of language itself, and
she agrees with Waugh that parallelism exists in both prose and poetry, the
only difference being that, “in prose, parallelisms do not constitute the
constructive device of the text as they do in poetry” (10). Her own opinion
is that, “poetry uses parallelism as its constitutive or constructive device,
while non-poetry, though it contains parallelism, does not structure its
message on a systematic use of parallelism” (16). In either case,
parallelism is considered both a characteristic of poetic language and a device.
The cause of the phenomenon is far beyond my territory of research, but it
seems to me that in order to classify or define this linguistic phenomenon
more clearly, we would have to explore several issues. First, what governs
the psycholinguistic process of word association? Second, as an artifice of
composition, does it reflect the function of Hebrew language or an oral
mindset instead? Does poetic design or compositional technique necessitate
rhetoric? Third, if stylistic structure is part of the rhetoric of the
language, at least some aspects that parallelism activates should belong to
this category. Another point I would like to mention is the author’s
argument about the effect of parallelism. The author mentions that the
dominance of poetic function is the common feature of the poetic texts, and
all of these texts use this constructive device to heighten their messages. It
seems that repetition of any stylistic structures or phrases as equivalences
within close proximity is a method used to catch the attention of the reader
or to highlight the message. In this way, parallelism is just like any other
device of composition or rhetoric of language, regardless of the genre of the
text or of the language. I agree that the effect of parallelism depends on
the forms of the parallelism but it is my feeling that the author’s argument
on this topic does not manifest the unique feature of the effect of biblical
parallelism. In spite of these latent weak points, the book
contributes through its thorough analysis of the numerous aspects that are
activated by biblical parallelism and its fresh approach to the study of
parallelism from both biblical and linguistic perspectives. The book is
recommended to students of biblical poetry at all levels. Mary Wang, University of Leiden |