Hi Waltz,

One has to get used to the rhetoric of ancient Semitic poetry before one's ear is trained to tell the difference between a translation that takes the rhetoric into account and one that doesn't. To me, the difference is salient and non-negligible. Practice with the Psalms in their original musical dress has helped me enormously in this discernment, and being self-taught as a songwriter doesn't hurt. But I keep forgetting that not everyone's ear is so trained (this is a rebuke of myself, not a criticism of you).

Another thing the Rabbit says is there are no such things as stupid questions -- only stupid actions resulting from failure to ask "stupid" questions! :) And if there's malice in your question (as admittedly there can be on this Fray and in the Real World), then I'm the Queen of Romania. (So there.)

Any good reference work on biblical Hebrew poetry will clue you in on the concept, Waltz. (You might appreciate one such source, Do It Yourself Hebrew and Greek: Everyone's Guide to the Language Tools. My review of it on Amazon.com -- as John Wheeler -- is considered among the most helpful.) Some translations of Psalms especially will bring out their parallelism by their verbal layout. Proverbs and Job likewise are extremely rich in its use. There are three kinds generally cited: 1) comparison; 2) contrast; and 3) synthesis. I do not fully understand the distinctions or how the original melodic rendition of Hebrew Scripture affects them, but here is what I understand so far.

In comparison, two similar (though not quite identical) ideas are put in parallel within a verse, most simply in two separate clauses:

Psalms 1:5 (RSV unless otherwise stated):
Therefore the wicked will not stand in the judgment,
Nor sinners in the congregation of the righteous.

In contrast, two contrasting or opposing ideas are set in parallel, again most simply in two separate clauses:

Psalms 1:6:
For the LORD knows the way of the righteous,
But the way of the wicked will perish.

Synthesis is said to be a catch-all for every other kind of parallelism. I infer that it is characteristic of certain long verses with a relatively complex cadential hierarchy (a cadence being merely a stopping point at the end of a verse, clause or phrase -- the basic element of syntax or phrase structure):

Psalms 1:3:
He is like a tree
Planted by streams of water,
That yields its fruit in its season,
And its leaf does not wither.
In all that he does, he prospers.

I'll deal with this example later.

Now there is something I discovered thanks to various lines of evidence regarding the "melopoesis" of the Psalms, which constitutes original research that needs to be published. One finds a similar cadential hierarchy (though applied differently) in the "prose" texts of Hebrew Scripture. At the risk of confusing you more (and thus prompting more questions that I may not have time to answer!), here is an analysis of the cadential hierarchy of Psalms 1:3, with my symbolic repesentation of what kind of melodic-verbal cadences are used:

Psalms 1:3 (literal Hebrew):
And he is | like a tree /
Planted | by streams of water //
That yields its fruit | in its season ///
And its leaf | does not wither ////
In all that he does | he prospers /////

| = minor cadence (splits a clause into two phrases)
/ = prepatory cadence (prepares one for what follows)
// = suspensive cadence ("leaves one hanging")
/// = parallel cadence (sets up a parallelism)
//// = half cadence (resolves the suspension halfway)
///// = full cadence (resolves the suspension fully)

Clause 2 extends the idea put forward by Clause 1, and then "suspends" the reader, awaiting resolution. The first half of a comparison is then set up; then, the second half (which also halfway resolves the suspension). Then, the verse is completed with a sort of synthesis.

It is not easy to spot this from the words alone; as far as I yet know, no one ever has. Without your becoming familiar with the Psalms as restituted by Suzanne Haik-Vantoura (Psalms 1, Hebrew versification, is a good example), I doubt I could explain more effectively. But now that I know about how biblical melopoesis works, I can spot the underlying technique even in the Babylonian poem, which almost certainly was sung to a melody that was kept secret among the initiates and not written down in the text that we have today. (We have at least one Babylonian text where the still-undeciphered melody was actually written down, with this header: "Secret. The initiated may show it to the initiated.")

wr ()()