Parallelism and redemption

I'm currently reading a most beautiful book: Adele Berlin's The Dynamics of Biblical Parallelism. One of the things that strikes me is that the particular way of understanding theological exegesis that I've often attempted to formulate in posts on this blog—i.e. that the living divine substance of the text reveals himself to us afresh within the form of the old, and that perceiving this requires a constant dialectic between, e.g. OT and NT, dogmatics and history, particular text and canonical whole—seems to be consistent with the mode in which large chunks of the OT itself has been composed. In other words, my (Childs', Barth's) theory is consistent with the compositional style of the Hebrew Bible (on the relation between literary mode and theology see the Minear's comments on typology in Revelation).

The literary mode is parallelism. Parallelism is held to be the defining feature of Biblical poetry, and one of the things Berlin does in her book is to extend this concept beyond the realm of parallel lines within poetry to contiguous lines in prose and to larger chunks of text, such as strophes and even whole psalms (she doesn't go that far, but others do). The function of parallelism is ultimately to communicate a message, and it does this by creating contrast within equivalence. Equivalence is established on various levels—e.g. grammatical, phonological, and semantic—, thus binding the pairs together, and yet within this bounded unit contrasts are set up. The contrasts that are set up have a double function: both to disambiguate and to ambiguate the previous part of the parallelism (i.e. they create redundancy and ambiguity, one of the major dichotomies in linguistic discourse). The significant point is that both functions occur simultaneously and that they occur for the sake of doing justice to the subject matter. Here's a quote from Berlin:

A parallel line does both; it insures the delivery of the information in the first line and, even in the context of the first line, it encourages a second view of things, an alternate interpretation. Redundancy and ambiguity (disambiguation and polysemy) are locked in eternal struggle in parallelism. To choose one is to lose the other, and thereby lose the major dialectic tension of parallelism. There is no better way to sum this up than to quote

Ps 62:

אחת דבר אלהים // שתים שמעתי

One thing God has spoken // Two things I have heard.

This verse not only lends itself to discussions of hermeneutics—that one statement has many interpertations—but it also reflects the essence of parallelism. Parallelism is constituted by redundancy and polysemy, disambiguation and ambiguity, contrast within equivalence. Parallelism focuses the message on itself but its vision is binocular. Like human vision it superimposes two slightly different views of the same object and from their convergence it produces a sense of depth (p. 99).

I would say that parallelism, whether in a poetic couplets like the above or within the juxtaposition of entire chapters like Gen 1 and 2, functions like a “stereoscope.” The true referent is neither line a or line b, but rather some other abstraction beyond both, an abstraction that can only be perceived via “the dialectic tension of both.” In terms of Ps 24, what is the referent of the singular feminine object pronoun in v. 2a and b? Tevel or Eretz? Or another reality that both point to imperfectly.

Paul Minear once pointed out that there is a connection between literary technique and theology (see my post Eschatology and historical methodology). Can we see that here? A major attribute of the Biblical God is that he is both creator and redeemer, he redeems his creation, he takes what he already once found good - the old - and brings it to its goal - the new (as I wrote in my post Beauty and the Piss Christ).

In a similar way, I wonder if one could call parallelism “redemptive," in that partialities are made to point beyond themselves to something "more true." Redemption is the instantiation of the Kingdom of God, the eschatological New Creation. Whatever that is, it is both continuous and discontinous with this side of creation (see Paul's argument about resurrection). Though I certainly don't think that poetic parallelism was created for the purpose of witnessing to this reality (it's just a mundane literary tool that can be put to all kinds of banal uses), the dialectic between old and new that is the stuff of Biblical theology lends itself nicely to such a paratacic literary technique.

Perhaps if Biblical scholars trained their vision to be able to see what emerges from between the seams of the Bible, their exegesis would bring us and the world closer to the reality that evoked the whole of Scripture in the first place.

The "hidden message" of Ps 24?

In his doctroal thesis on Ps 24 (Psalm 24 als Text zwischen den Texten, Peter Lang, 2004; written under N. Lohfink), Jerzy Seremak has a rather esoteric theory about the hidden message (verborgene Botschaft) of Ps 24. It goes like this:

1. The majority of poetic lines in the Psalm involve ellipsis, in which a key word from one colon is elided in the second. For example, in verse 2 we have: "for he has founded it upon the seas // and established it upon the rivers." For he is elided in the second colon.
2. This "pattern of ellipsis" can be found in vv. 1, 2, 4b, 5, and 6.
3. The words which are elided are the following, in order:

• 24:1 לַיהוה
• 24:2: כִּי־הוּא
• 24:4b: אשׁר (note the deletion of vowels)
• 24:5: יִשָּׂא
• זֶה דּוֹר 24:6

His next step is to read these isolated words backwards, so that a new sentence is formed:

זה דור ישׂא אשׁר כי הוא ליהוה

Seremak then translates this phrase as follows:

This generation will receive happiness, because it belongs to Yhwh.

This is the hidden message of Ps 24.

I have a number of problems with this:

1. I've never come across the concept of hidden messages in the Psalms.
2. I've never heard that one can isolate elided nouns and make new sentences out of them.
3. Why does Seremak think it OK to change the vocalisation of one word, changing the relative pronoun to the noun אֶשֶׁר (happiness)?
4. It ignores vv. 7-10, which surely must contribute to the secret message of the whole.
5. It assumes that the word "generation" in the psalm is in the absolute state, thus separable from "his seekers."
6. אֶ֫שֶׁר is always in the plural in the context of an exclamation (e.g. Ps 1:1) and does not collocate with "receive" (though it can appear with the relative pronoun, cf. Ps 65:5).
7. The so-called hidden message seems to be rather lame given 1) the richness of the Psalm and 2) the effort one has to make in order to extract it.

Can anyone else see any reasons to accept or reject this proposal?

The function of the root נשא in Ps 24?

According to proponents of literary interpretations of the Psalms, one should be sensitive to the repetition of keywords, keeping an eye out for the way in which their repetition may contribute to the overall meaning of the Psalm.

One such proponent is Beat Weber. I should point out before I continue that his commentary (it's more of a practical work book), Werkbuch Psalmen I, is one of my favourite Psalms commentaries of all time. It is possibly the only commentary I have which sends me away feeling like I have stuck my nose in every nook and cranny the Psalm has to offer. I really get to know the psalm in an intimate way. This is the advantage of literary approaches: they literally trawl a text for every linguistic artifact that can be dug up, interpreted, and fed into our understanding of the poem (Fokkelmann is another example, see his defence of the approach here). This is also a weakness of the approach, however. At least in the sense that we can't always take everything that is suggested too seriously. Sometimes significance is seen where in fact we only have chance. The text can be overinterpreted.

One possible example is the significance of the root נשא, which occurs in relatively high concentration in Psalm 24 (vv. 4b, 5a, 7a, b, 9a, b). Does this root constitute a keyword, a consciously placed literary device designed to broker new meaning in places we wouldn't have first expected it?

Beat Weber thinks so. In fact, he ranks it alongside he question-answer schema found in the Psalm (vv. 3, 8, 10) as primary evidence for the fact that the psalmist has “carefully conjoined” what many scholars think are two separate blocks within the Psalm: Ps 24:3-6 and 7-10 ("sections 2 and 3" in my scheme).

What follows is my critique of his theory. I should reiterate that I love Weber's commentary! Please don't think this represents an rejection of his book or his method at all. And please do point out where I am missing the point. I love being corrected.

Here goes. In short, he sees the נשא of v. 4 as signifying the ethical behaviour of the pilgrim and the נשא of v. 5 as signifying the the blessing that accrues upon such behaviour. Weber understands these two verbs as together signifying the entrance of the pilgrim into the temple. The נשא of the second stanza refer to the entrance of God himself into the sanctuary. The effect of the repetition of the root is to conjoin these two different entrances, in some manner. What this means for Weber, however, is determined by his broader interpretation of the relation between the parts of the Psalm, and not the semantics of נשא per se. In other words, the repetition of the root simply further "hooks" together what he thinks is paralleled anyway. In short, he believes that both entrances, divine and human, mirror each other in that the entrance of God and the entrance of the pilgrim fulfil the holy requirements of the sanctuary. The function of נשא, then, is to “interlock” (verzahnen) these two entrances further. To quote:

The 'ascension' and 'standing' of the pilgrim (before YHWH) (v. 3) must be in inner accordance with the (antecedent) 'coming/entrance' of YHWH (v. 7c; 9c). [*]

In my opinion, this interpretation of the significance of נשא seems forced and Weber's interpretation of the broader relation between the stanzas themselves appears untenable.

First, the significance of נשא:

1. It is hard to imagine that נשא in v. 4b can adequately represent the ethical requirements of the pilgrim. It is only one for four stated requirements, inconspicuously hidden in the middle of a tricolon.

2. Seen from a different angle, the יִשָּׂא of v. 5a could (on the traditional reading of the syntax of these verses, cf. Waltke-O'Connor, §31.6.2) certainly refer to the future consequence of the actions and states represented in v. 4. It relates however, to the whole verse, and not just to 4b.

3. Can שְׂאוּ/וְֽהִנָּשְׂאוּ represent Yhwh's entrance to the sanctuary? It could do, perhaps, but even if it did, it does not parallel the use of נשא in vv. 4-5, as there they predicate the one entering the sanctuary, whereas here they predicate the sanctuary itself. This is particularly troublesome if the supposed function of the repetition of this root is to highlight the parallel conditions that both entrants must fulfil.

4. The verb seems to have such different meanings in each occurrence. In the first occurrence (v. 4) it is part of an idiom about either using God's name in vain (cf. Exod 20:7) or worshipping false idols; in the second (v. 5a) it refers to the reception of blessing, in the final usages (vv. 7 and 9) it refers to the lifting of the heads of gates.

In short, it would seem that any direct connections between the uses of this root in Ps 24 are non-existent. Even at the auditory level there is no connection: the different moods (subjunctive/indicative, imperative), stems (qal, Nifal), conjugations (3rd person singular; 2nd person plural), and voice (active, passive) all sound very different.

Secondly: the broader relations between the stanzas (i.e. the perceived parallel in qualities required of both pilgrim and the Lord, the former following on the heels of the latter). Apart from the (IMHO) untenable view that God enters the temple before the pilgrim, there seems to be little that connects the requirements for their entrance. On the contrary, the two are strongly contrasted with each other. Whereas the pilgrim must fulfil ritual and ethical requirements as found in the Torah, God mustn't do anything, he's the King. When pushed, he lists his military attributes, which are hardly ethical requirements found in Torah. In addition to this, these attributes are not required by anyone, they're just stated as self-evident signs of authority and power. In the end, it would seem that it is not the attributes that gets him in but his special title: the Lord of Hosts (v. 10b). Again, even the nature of the dialogue is very different: the former consists of serene (or is it yearning?) question and answer, the latter consists of self-confident demand and resistant response.

So, we are still left with the question: can we attribute significance to the repetition of נשא, one that accords with a basic semantic sense purposely placed in each instance?

[*] Mit dem (vorgängigen) “Kommen/Einziehen JHWHs (7c.9c.) muss das “Hinaufziehen” und “(vor ihm) Stehen” der Pilger (3) in innerer Übereinstimmung stehen.