Beyond Orality: Biblical Poetry on its Own Terms

by Jacqueline Vayntrub

(Routledge, 2019)

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.

Read the review in RBL 02/2021 by Steven Bishop (Seminary of the Southwest).

The Art of Biblical Performance

Biblical Performance Criticism and the Drama of Old Testament Narratives

by Travis West

(Glossa House, 2023)

For centuries the Bible's essential identity “as a book” has been taken for granted by scholars and lay people alike. Over the past hundred years or so, the oral transmission of biblical material has been researched and advanced with great rigor, and today many scholars accept the oral origins of the Hebrew Bible. However, for many of these scholars their acceptance seems to be primarily intellectual as opposed to practical—orality has not been integrated at a methodological level. This volume is one attempt to address that oversight. It argues that, with respect to the narratives, the ancient crafts of drama and performance are evident in the received texts, that they reach their fullest interpretive potential when they are (re)enacted through body and voice in space and time before a gathered audience. A fuller understanding of Israel's performance tradition—the art of biblical performance—will lead to a greater appreciation of Israel's dramatic and theological achievement.