Biblical Hebrew and Discourse Linguistics (review)

Hebrew Studies 37 (1996) 136 Reviews expense of unjustly compromising the multiple layers and traditions of a particular Old Testament text. I find the preservation of the multi-level readings the only way to retrieve the depth and richness of each biblical text and hence the reconstruction of a particular character. Furthennore. as a scholar sharing the critical perspectives of minority and feminist readings of the Old Testament. I was particularly disappointed to fmd that the entry for Miriam (p. 242). for instance. was missing her very significant role as a prophetess in Exod 15:20 and automatically assumed that she was the "unnamed" sister who approached Pharaoh's daughter in Exod 2:4, 7. Archie C. C. Lee The Chinese University ofHong Kong Shatin. New Territories BIBLICAL HEBREW AND DISCOURSE LINGUISTICS. Robert D. Bergen, ed. Pp. 560. Winona Lake: Eisenbrauns, 1994. Paper, $40.00. When linguistics and study of the Bible join. people interested in either of these disciplines benefit: the linguist is satisfied to have been handed a precisely defmed corpus to which he can apply his methodology; the serious student of the Bible is always grateful for further elucidation of the text. If this beneficial partnership needs new proof, such can be found in the book before us. It consists of edited articles based on papers presented at a seminar on the subject stated in the title. The authors, numbering almost two dozen, are either academic specialists in biblical philology or else persons actively engaged in Bible translation projects; many of them combine those two activities. There is too much interesting and valuable material in this book to present a fair summary of all the contributions; naming only some of the authors may create the wrong impression-that others are not worth mentioning. Therefore, it seems preferable just to point out the scope of the book in general by mentioning a fair number of topics dealt with and thereby pointing to some new insights into the linguistic structure of biblical texts the prospective reader will gain. Discourse analysis. or text linguistics, turns its attention to the larger speech units. In contradistinction to traditional grammar, which is based upon the morphology of the lexeme and the structure of the isolated sen- Hebrew Studies 37 (1996) 137 Reviews tence, the new approach examines the function of word-forms and phrases within the wider range of the paragraph, the episode, and the specific universe of discourse. The first part of the book deals with grammatical, syntactical, and accent studies. Here the time-honored descriptions of the Hebrew verbal system, of the use of qii.tal-forms versus wayyiqlo1-forms, undergoes impressive modifications since larger text-units are meticulously examined in order to reach conclusions (pp. 23ff.; 50ff., 117ff.); patterns of interclausal relationships are classified (pp. 99ff.). Such broader perspectives have been applied to an analysis of the function of the Tiberian accents (pp. 115ff.); it should be stressed, however, that these accents do not necessarily reflect the author's communicative intents but rather a later interpretation of the hierarchy of discourse levels. An interesting suggestion is put forward, namely that in some cases a question of source analysis could be decided by having recourse to text linguistics (pp. 138ff.; cf. pp. 238ff.). In the second part, studies of narrative texts are offered. Here one may learn how grammatical forms and syntactical structures indicate progress or pause in the plot and provide foreground or background information on it (pp. 175ff.). The various syntactic means for the introduction of direct discourse are examined (pp. 119ff.). In other articles. statistics illuminate the correlation between rare morphosyntactic structures and the significant meaning as intended by the author (pp. 300ff.). Computer-aided analysis evaluates certain linguistic features (pp. 320ff.). The non-narrative genres are the subject of the third part. Here. genre and form criticism are discussed, especially in relation to the Psalms (pp. 374ff.), and applied in conjunction with linguistic criticism. The forms and functions of rhetorical questions in the poetry of Job (pp. 36lff.) and the problem of translating the Hebrew proverbs while maintaining the lingualpoetic devices employed there are described (pp. 434ff.). A detailed structural analysis of a portion of the Song...