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Reviews of Books

The structure of Biblical Hebrew verse continues to exercise upon scholars the fascination of a code waiting to be cracked. Of the many and varied solutions proposed over a long period of time, none has gained general acceptance. Most have concentrated on features semantic ("parallelism"), or phonetic (metre). In 1978 Terence Collins (Line-forms in Hebrew poetry) broke new ground by propounding a grammatical approach, based on the classification of verse-lines using principles derived from generative grammar. The grammatical structure, he argued, acts as the basic framework of the verse-line, although the study of semantic and phonetic features is also necessary for a full stylistic analysis. M. O'Connor appears to have been working independently along similar lines. Like Collins, he points to the inadequacy of the traditional approaches and proposes an analysis based on the rigorous classification of line-types. The two methods are not identical. In particular, they differ on the definition of the unit of verse, the line. Collins has a longer line, and his classification takes account of grammatical differences and similarities between its parts (cola or hemistichs). O'Connor's line is the colon, and the grammatical relationship between connected cola is incorporated into his system by means of a theory of stylistic devices he calls "tropes". This produces a more complex system; it also makes it difficult to compare the results of the two studies. Taken together, however, these two impressive books certainly establish a prima facie case for taking the new approach seriously. Anyone seeking an introduction to the grammatical approach would be well advised to begin with Collins. His presentation is simpler, shorter, and much clearer, and he has a better sense of the applications, and the limitations, of this method. (He also studies a much larger corpus of texts.) O'Connor favours the style of the hierophant, opaque, enigmatic, heavy with technicality and with symbolism which verges at times on the mystical. To read his book from beginning to end demands dedication and considerable patience and leisure. The reading of both books is impeded by the use of transliterated Hebrew. On the evidence of these two pioneering studies, the grammatical approach, like its predecessors, is incapable of furnishing precise rules which would provide a reliable basis for textual emendation or verse composition, but it can make a useful contribution to the appreciation of early Hebrew poetry, and it may have interesting and wide-ranging ramifications.