I do not see the entire bible as poetic, certainly.

I see Psalms as poetry because it brings forth for me the same emotional and spiritual experience I feel in Wordsworth's Intimations, for example.

And yet you say:

The poet is at heart a musician. The musician, a poet.

Which is precisely why the whole Hebrew Bible is poetic (or rather melopoetic): it was created, taught and transmitted by poet-musicians expressing matters of the spirit (intellect, axioms, attitudes), soul (emotions) and body (desires). For all the skill of the King James translators, this is something they could not convey. At best they could convey the dignity, not the poetry, of vast portions of Hebrew Scripture. Few since their time have come close to their accomplishment -- and remember, they were limited to the words alone. Of course, the more a text contained the content in the words alone, the better they could do in conveying the content into English -- which is why the Psalms are probably their crowning achievement.

It is said all the same that the Psalms are the heart of the Hebrew-Christian Bible (it is even so in the original canonical order of what Christians call the Old and New Testaments: 49 books rather than 66). Paul told his congregants to sing "psalms and hymns and spiritual songs" -- Greek Septuagint terms referring to the Psalter -- for this reason; and since the Christian Church had little or no access to the Temple melodies (so far as I know), they had to use the synagogue tunes or else invent their own. But even under those limitations, nowhere else are the attitudes, emotions and desires that flowed between Israel and its God made so manifest, so palpable -- even in the words alone. Well might they be compared to the poems of Wordsworth or other poets of his ilk. One author I read suggested that King David would win the Nobel Prize if he were around today, although the liberalism of the Committee might prevent that. Many have said he would be as highly regarded as a songwriter, although again our culture has become too decadent to appreciate his ability to "do more with less" than just about anyone (even, say, Enya).

I do not call the whole of Hebrew Scripture poetic (or more exactly, melopoetic) on the basis of subjective experience. I call it so on the basis of objective literary, musical and historical fact. (When we deal with the New Testament, we are dealing with one or another kind of rhetoric: another level of dealing with sacred texts. These were recited aloud, not sung aloud.) But each part has its own purpose. David's Elegy for Saul and Jonathan (2 Samuel 1:17-22) should show up on YouTube one day (it's excerpted in the NPR interview I have posted), and it is as "bardic" as any sung text ever written. The Psalms have another purpose, or rather purposes, as does (say) the Song of Songs. But even the statutes of the Law, in Israel as in Greece, could be sung aloud (Psalms 119:54), and that is melopoesis too. Such chant is just not meant merely to "inspire" one emotionally or otherwise, but to help teach one how to live.

Graciously,
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