Poetry

We spent 3 1/2 hours last night talking about poetry. My professor is somewhat like me in that he has a bachelor's degree in an engineering discipline and is fairly logical in his thinking. He said that he never enjoyed poetry much in high school and at other times I remember him saying that he was never a fan of creative writing.

We talked a lot about how to see the various literary devices in biblical poetry. Of course, most of it is found in Psalms, though Proverbs and Song of Songs are both poetic books. You can find it in other places like Hannah's prayer in 1Samuel 2:1-10 or in the Magnificat in Luke 1:46-55. There is particularly a lot of parallelism in the Psalter. Often the second line will clarify the first a bit. In Proverbs often the second line is antithetical to the first. And so on.

Knowing that my professor is an OT guy I asked him if learning Hebrew made him appreciate the Psalter more. He said that it did. I am learning to appreciate the Psalter more and more in English, but I think that there would be something to reading the acrostics like they are supposed to be read.