An analysis of four current theories of Hebrew verse structure /

This dissertation tests and evaluates four current theories of the verse structure of biblical Hebrew poetry. These theories are: the counting of minimal units, such as poetic feet, stresses or syllables, practiced in various forms since antiquity, and recently employed by D. N. Freedman, F. M. Cross and others, the analysis of poetic line-forms proposed by Terence Collins, the syntactic structural analysis proposed by M. O'Connor, and the semantic analysis practiced by Willow van der Meer, Johannes de Moor and a group of scholars associated with the Kampen School of Theology. All of these theories purport to identify and explain the fundamentals of biblical Hebrew verse structure. Each of these theories is presented comprehensively. These presentations include a review of literature relevant to the field of Hebrew verse structure studies in general, and to these four current theories of verse structure in particular.These four theories are applied to four poetic passages from the Hebrew Bible: Judges 5:2--31, Isaiah 5:1--7, Lamentations 1 and Psalm 126. These applications show how each of these theories describes the verse structure of each of the poems. Following this, the theories and their applications to these passages are compared to determine which, if any, of these theories are effective in distinguishing poetry from prose, distinguishing one poem from another, predicting the form of a poem, and prescribing rules for the composition of poetry. The strengths and weaknesses of each theory are identified. In addition, the reasons for the failure of these theories to provide an adequate description of the verse structure of biblical Hebrew poetry are indicated