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In a message dated 01/20/2000 4:27:33 AM Eastern Standard Time, [log in to unmask] writes: > Using the psalms every day in the office, one notices how Hedbrew > poetry employes a plethora of metaphors and similes which would be > considered 'over the top' in Latin, or indeed English. Dear Supple Doctor, I'm so glad you're feeling better. The Jerome Bible Commentary mentions that Hebrew poetry is highly unusual, and I think they mean in metre and form. But one despairs of understanding in depth what that means if one doesn't read Hebrew. A few oddities come through even in translation. It might seem 'over the top' to you because we're told in English not to use so-called mixed metaphor...in effect, to have a single focus rather than confusing the reader with an overload of disparate images. For a clumsy (awful) example, "the road ahead was like the sea at night." To the ancient audience, what you're aptly calling a plethora of images might have just seemed rich or baroque or thrilling. In English, Walt Whitman has a similar 'over the top' extravagance, and I suspect he might have picked it up from reading Psalms. Or I can't think of any other prototype, unless perhaps Revelation. The acrostic psalms, which you might know about, are another oddity--each line begins with a different letter of the Hebrew alphabet, and the letters are in order. Translators don't even try to render that in English, although they might use just the first 22 letters of our own alphabet. Acrostic poems have been written in English, but it's usually light poetry or humor. In Psalms, the acrostic form must have had a deeper or even mystical meaning. Some sense of that might still be retained in Augustine's day--in City of God, he regards it as a prophecy that a manuscript attributed to the Sibyl of Cumae is arranged so that if one reads only the first letter of each line, the letters spell out "Jesus Christ, Son of God, Savior." Here, it's very odd because he says the manuscript is in Latin but the prophecy in Greek, and he says a few words about how that could be. Modern students have difficulty relating to the idea that people might have once attributed a great significance to the acrostic form (which, as above, shows up in Psalms). A typical student reaction to the much retold Augustine anecdote is to laugh, because modern students find it ludicrous to read only the first letter of each line in a poem or manuscript--then they make jokes (little cynics!) about how somebody must have rearranged the manuscript to get the desired letter at the beginning of each line. Augustine never saw the Sibyl's acrostic manuscript. Just says he heard about it. pat sloane %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%