The Shape of Hebrew Poetry. Exploring the Discourse Function of Linguistic Parallelism in the Egyptian Hallel (Studia Semitica Neerlandica. Volume 70)

In The Shape of Hebrew Poetry, Matthew Ayars explores foregrounding and structural cohesion as the dual discourse function of linguistic parallelism in biblical Hebrew poetry through a robust application of Russian Formalist Roman Jakobson's conceptulisation of linguistic parallelism to the Egpytian Hallel (Psalm 113–118). Other hebraists and biblical Hebrew poetry specialists have long noted the importance of Jakobson's theory of parallelism for poetic texts of the Hebrew Bible, however, Ayars is the first to offer an application of Jakobsonian-based analysis to a poetic corpus of the Hebrew Bible.

Matthew I. Ayars, Ph.D. (2016), University of Chester, is President and Professor of Biblical Studies at Emmaus Biblical Seminary of Haiti. He is also the Vice President of Theological Education at the One Mission Society.