Central to understanding the prophecy and prayer of the Hebrew Bible are the unspoken assumptions... more Central to understanding the prophecy and prayer of the Hebrew Bible are the unspoken assumptions that shaped them―their genres. Modern scholars describe these works as “poetry,” but there was no corresponding ancient Hebrew term or concept. Scholars also typically assume it began as “oral literature,” a concept based more in evolutionist assumptions than evidence. Is biblical poetry a purely modern fiction, or is there a more fundamental reason why its definition escapes us?
Beyond Orality: Biblical Poetry on its Own Terms changes the debate by showing how biblical poetry has worked as a mirror, reflecting each era’s own self-image of verbal art. Yet Vayntrub also shows that this problem is rooted in a crucial pattern within the Bible itself: the texts we recognize as “poetry” are framed as powerful and ancient verbal performances, dramatic speeches from the past. The Bible’s creators presented what we call poetry in terms of their own image of the ancient and the oral, and understanding their native theories of Hebrew verbal art gives us a new basis to rethink our own.
Proceedings of Ninth Enoch Seminar: From torah to Torah: Variegated Notions of Torah from the First Temple Period to Late Antiquity, Camaldoli, Italy, June 2017, 2021
Central to understanding the prophecy and prayer of the Hebrew Bible are the unspoken assumptions... more Central to understanding the prophecy and prayer of the Hebrew Bible are the unspoken assumptions that shaped them―their genres. Modern scholars describe these works as “poetry,” but there was no corresponding ancient Hebrew term or concept. Scholars also typically assume it began as “oral literature,” a concept based more in evolutionist assumptions than evidence. Is biblical poetry a purely modern fiction, or is there a more fundamental reason why its definition escapes us?
Beyond Orality: Biblical Poetry on its Own Terms changes the debate by showing how biblical poetry has worked as a mirror, reflecting each era’s own self-image of verbal art. Yet Vayntrub also shows that this problem is rooted in a crucial pattern within the Bible itself: the texts we recognize as “poetry” are framed as powerful and ancient verbal performances, dramatic speeches from the past. The Bible’s creators presented what we call poetry in terms of their own image of the ancient and the oral, and understanding their native theories of Hebrew verbal art gives us a new basis to rethink our own.
Proceedings of Ninth Enoch Seminar: From torah to Torah: Variegated Notions of Torah from the First Temple Period to Late Antiquity, Camaldoli, Italy, June 2017, 2021
The book of Proverbs concludes with an alphabetic acrostic that describes and praises its feminin... more The book of Proverbs concludes with an alphabetic acrostic that describes and praises its feminine subject (Prov 31:10–31). The poem’s praise closes with a generalized critique of beauty, its deceptiveness and short-lived nature (v. 30). What function does this critique of beauty serve in light of the praise of the woman and her deeds? How do the poem and, specifically, this critique of beauty function in the broader organization of the book of Proverbs? This study argues that the poem rejects innate beauty in favor of acquired wisdom, a message that can be found elsewhere in Proverbs. The poem rejects beauty through an appeal to a rhetorical device—the “totalizing description”—which is used elsewhere to argue for a subject’s beauty or perfection. Through the structure of the alphabetic acrostic, the poem carefully embeds its message of willed action and acquired wisdom; using a description of the woman’s successive deeds, the poem shows how each deed leads to the enduring success o...
The following study examines the history of the translation of a Biblical Hebrew phrase in Greek,... more The following study examines the history of the translation of a Biblical Hebrew phrase in Greek, Aramaic, and Latin—a phrase which shaped the English idiom “to take up a parable, proverb, or song.” As early as Greek and Aramaic Bible translations, the phrase NŚʾ mɔšɔl was translated word-for-word in the target language, even though the verb used in the target language did not previously attest the specific sense of “speech performance.” This same translational strategy persists in modern translations of this idiom, preventing scholars from understanding the idiom as it was used by biblical authors. The study compares the Biblical Hebrew phrase to a similar Ugaritic phrase, showing how it should be understood to express the voicing of speech rather than the initiating of speech. The study concludes by offering an English translation which more closely reflects the metaphor for voice-activation employed by the Biblical Hebrew phrase.
This new series attempts to study ancient histories of knowledge and their entanglement with reli... more This new series attempts to study ancient histories of knowledge and their entanglement with religious, cultural and socio-political aspects, while paying attention to the historicity and cultural relativity of specific figurations of knowledge.
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Publications by Jacqueline Vayntrub
Beyond Orality: Biblical Poetry on its Own Terms changes the debate by showing how biblical poetry has worked as a mirror, reflecting each era’s own self-image of verbal art. Yet Vayntrub also shows that this problem is rooted in a crucial pattern within the Bible itself: the texts we recognize as “poetry” are framed as powerful and ancient verbal performances, dramatic speeches from the past. The Bible’s creators presented what we call poetry in terms of their own image of the ancient and the oral, and understanding their native theories of Hebrew verbal art gives us a new basis to rethink our own.
Beyond Orality: Biblical Poetry on its Own Terms changes the debate by showing how biblical poetry has worked as a mirror, reflecting each era’s own self-image of verbal art. Yet Vayntrub also shows that this problem is rooted in a crucial pattern within the Bible itself: the texts we recognize as “poetry” are framed as powerful and ancient verbal performances, dramatic speeches from the past. The Bible’s creators presented what we call poetry in terms of their own image of the ancient and the oral, and understanding their native theories of Hebrew verbal art gives us a new basis to rethink our own.