The Idea of Biblical Poetry: Parallelism and Its History

by James L. Kugel

Is there poetry in the Bible? Does it have rhyme or meter? How did ancient Hebrew writers compose their works? James Kugel's provocative study provides surprising new answers to these age-old questions. Biblical "poetry" is not a concept native to the Bible itself, he proposes, and the idea that the Bible is divided into prose and verse is merely an approximation of the reality of biblical style. Arguing that the Bible presents a continuum of speech heightened in varying degrees by different means, Kugel sets out to describe Hebrew's high style on its own terms. He also offers a thorough history of the idea of biblical poetry, starting with Philo of Alexandria and Josephus in the first century C.E. and charting its development through the Church Fathers, medieval Jewish writers, the Christian Hebraists of the Renaissance, and on into modern times. The story of how each age understood the nature biblical poetry, Kugel concludes, is a key to understanding the Bible's place in the history of Western thought.

Genres: Poetry, History, Literary Criticism

339 pages, Paperback

First published June 26, 1981

Reviews

[Suzanne Hess · Rating 2 out of 5]

The insertion of Christianity into the text was unnecessary, and lost something with its addition. As far as securing his thesis he relied too heavily on one author. There was much research done in preparation for writing this text, but it missed the mark.

[Robert Coleman · Rating 3 out of 5]

Kugel wrote two books in one: 1) The primary feature of parallelism in Hebrew literature is seconding and 2) there is no such thing as Hebrew poetry. He should have left out the second goal and the book would have been MUCH better.

[CJ Bowen · Rating 4 out of 5]

I enjoyed this book much more than I was expecting to. While Alter's book on biblical poetry has some important criticism of Kugel, reading Kugel was far more enlightening to me.

Kugel has correctly discerned the essence of parallelism as a progression from A to B in a "what is more" fashion, instead of focusing on rhyme or meter. He then gives us a thorough historical roadmap of the journey to understand biblical poetics, including a lot of blind alleys, as well as real advances.

The payoff for me comes as this book relates to preaching poetic passages, and especially in making informed liturgical judgments about psalm-singing; i.e., in that I have greater sympathy for those who point out the shortcomings of metrical psalmody.

Oh, and a moment of near-Wodehousian glory:
"For O'Connor has strung his net far too tightly to snag only poetic mackeral while letting prosaic minnows swim free." 319

[Sue · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book about the nature of poetry in the Bible was technically way beyond me. Yet Kugel writes so clearly that I got something out of the book nevertheless. I have much clearer understanding of what "parallelism" is and what it is not, in the Bible, despite the fact that a lot of nuances in his study went right over my head.

[Nicholas Rozier · Rating 3 out of 5]

The first two chapters are worth the price of the book. The remainder is "scholar speak" and not nearly as edifying.

[Timothy Decker · Rating 5 out of 5]

First 100 pages were good... really good. But I lost interest in the history of interpretation which followed. But this work is seminal!