544 OLD TESTAMENT 



(1) The forms of the verse. In describing these we are justified 

 in using the word "measure," and in regarding parallelism as a 

 secondary characteristic. Parallelism is essentially a subjective 

 phenomenon, finding occasional analogy in all other literatures and 

 thoroughgoing resemblances in several, and is therefore to be dealt 

 with, in the first instance, from the point of view of corporate or 

 folk-psychology. The metre is the surest means of distinguishing 

 poetry from prose, in the structural if not always in the aesthetic, 

 sense of the terms; and regularity of verse-structure may be ap- 

 pealed to in textual emendation with more confidence than many 

 leading critics manifest or allow. As to the measures themselves, 

 thanks to recent investigations (I name only those of Budde and 

 Grimme and the epoch-making constructive work of Sievers) , distinct 

 and substantial progress has been made in the acquisition of a working 

 system. With regard to the vexed question of strophical divisions, 

 I can only say that the truth seems to lie between the extremes re- 

 presented by the opposing views of Duhm and Budde. A strophical 

 structure is actually marked in some cases, and obvious in many 

 others; but as we have to deal with blank verse and not the more 

 regularly disposed rhyming lines, inconsistencies in the groupings 

 of the verses in the same composition are not surprising anywhere. 

 A special interest is lent to the study of Hebrew poetry by the fact 

 that in its iambic and anapestic measures it bears a generic resemb- 

 lance to some of the more common and popular forms of modern 

 versification. 



(2) As to species and styles of composition I would remark the 

 poetic form of most of the prophetic discourses, which accords so 

 well with the general idealistic character of the Hebrew literature 

 already referred to. Among ancient peoples the earliest seers were 

 usually singers or poets; but it was characteristic of the Hebrew 

 seers that even when their messages became political and national 

 they should still be given forth in verse. Noteworthy also is the 

 attempt to give a sort of dramatic setting to religious and moral 

 reflection, as in the Book of Job, and to idyllic love-songs, as in the 

 Canticles. Such essays were, from our point of view, uncertain and 

 unsuccessful, but coming from a people so subjective in all literary 

 art, and with no knowledge or conception of a real drama, they must 

 be judged by a standard of their own and without reference to 

 anything non-Semitic. They are really allegorical rather than 

 dramatic, and the interest centres not in their obscure and rudiment- 

 ary plot, but in the force and beauty of single passages. From this 

 point of view their place in the world's literature is better under- 

 stood. As a compensation for the absence of a real drama, the lyric 

 and didactic poetry of the Old Testament is in its kind quite un- 

 excelled. Moreover, the whole literature is in a sense dramatic, in 



