The Dynamics of Biblical Parallelism - Hardcover

Berlin, Adele

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0253318505 ISBN 13: 9780253318503

Publisher: Indiana University Press, 1985

Synopsis

For years scholars of biblical poetry have defined parallelism as the simple correspondence of one verse, phrase, or word with another. In this book, Adele Berlin approaches biblical parallelism as a linguistic phenomenon, as a complex interplay among all aspects of language. Her goal is to get at the basics of what biblical parallelism is and how it works. Berlin's examination of the grammatical, lexical, semantic, phonetic, structural, and psychological aspects of parallelism yields an elegantly simple model that reveals the complex workings of this phenomenon. Her book will be a valuable guide for both scholars and students of biblical poetry.

About this title

About the Author

Adele Berlin is Robert H. Smith Professor of BiblicalStudies at the University of Maryland. The author of threebiblical commentaries and Biblical Poetry throughMedieval Jewish Eyes, she is also coeditor of TheJewish Study Bible (Oxford), which received a NationalJewish Book Award in 2004.

Review

David Noel Freedman
(from the foreword)
"Adele Berlin writes felicitously, and she is a reliable Old Testament scholar. In this newly reprinted edition of The Dynamics of Biblical Parallelism, Berlin probes the linguistic phenomenon of parallelism. . . I am confident that the reader will readily agree with Berlin herself that the study of parallelism is, above all else, fun."

Jan Fokkelman
— Leiden University
"The twentieth century has seen important breakthroughs in many fields of the humanities. Roman Jakobson offered us creative and fascinating explorations at the interface of linguistics and poetics. Building on his work, Adele Berlin showed us how pervasive and many-sided the phenomenon of parallelism is in biblical poetry. It was a delight to follow her extensive array of well-chosen examples. We are lucky now to have Berlin's lucid language back in this revised edition."

Michael V. Fox
— University of Wisconsin-Madison
"I have used Adele Berlin's Dynamics of Biblical Parallelism in both my teaching and my research for twenty years, and I still find it fresh and enlightening. Berlin examines parallelism through a linguistic lens, showing it to be a system of forces that combine to give biblical poetry its special powers of communication. Her book is lucid, closely argued, and based on linguistic erudition and literary sensitivity."

Edition details

• Publisher: Indiana University Press
• Publication date: 1985
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0253318505
• ISBN 13: 9780253318503
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 179