The Bible and the Dead Sea Scrolls: The ... - josephprestonkirk

442 THE BIBLE, THE PSALMS OF SOLOMON, AND QUMRAN
seem to present a rather literal (i.e., “violent”) understanding of Isa
11:4cd, it is certainly possible that Pss. Sol. 17, especially given the
emphasis on the Messiah’s role as judge, testifies to an early stage in this
process of reinterpretation.
POETIC STYLE
In a 1986 survey of scholarly work on early Jewish hymns, odes, and
prayer, J. H. Charlesworth observed that “relatively little, if any, research
has been directed to the questions of genre, form criticism, the relation of
a composition’s poetic style (parallelismus membrorum, rhythm, meter) to the
Davidic Psalter, the similarities among the numerous hymns, odes, and
prayers” and their use and function. 31 To be sure, scholarly interest in the
Pss. Sol. has focused on other issues.
The most important rhetorical feature of ancient Near Eastern poetry
is parallelism. A. Berlin defines parallelism as “the repetition of the same
of related semantic content and/or grammatical structure in consecutive
lines or verses.” 32 Although scholars do not always agree on the various
types of parallelism and how they function, they generally acknowledge
that two of the more basic forms of parallelism are synonymous (where
the content of the lines is essentially the same) and antithetical (where the
content of the lines results in some kind of opposition). 33 The question
arises as to the extent to which Old Testament poetic forms continue to
be used in Jewish poetry in the Second Temple period. We will focus our
comments on the occurrence of these two types of parallelism in the Pss.
Sol., the Scrolls, and the NT.
An excellent OT example of the use of synonymous and antithetical
parallelism is Psalm 20:
1 The Lord answer you in the day of trouble!
The name of the God of Jacob protect you!
2 May he send you help from the sanctuary,
and give you support from Zion!
31. James H. Charlesworth, “Jewish Hymns, Odes, and Prayers,” in Early Judaism
and Its Modern Interpreters (ed. R. A. Kraft and G. W. E. Nickelsburg; vols. 2 of The
Bible and Its Modern Interpreters; Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1986), 422. The approach of
Svend Holm-Nielsen, “Religiose Poesie des Spatjudentums,” ANRW 19.1:152–86, for
example, was primarily thematic.
32. Adele Berlin, “Parallelism,” ABD 5:155.
33. For the current state of research on parallelism, see Berlin, ibid., 153–62.