诗歌与上帝之音（英文）

Poetry and the Voice of God

圣经在很大程度上运用了诗学,特别是在希伯来文平行体、二元对立思维模式、包裹式结构和分节重叠等问题上。这是众所周知的,而且被认为是文体分析的核心,尤其是对旧约文本而言。但给人以宏伟和音乐体验的最优秀的希伯来诗歌并非只能在《诗篇》中找到,亦能发现于先知书中,以及诸如《约伯记》一类智慧书中。当那种富于诗意的篇章现身时,通常认为它们乃出自神圣作者。这暗示着那些文本包含了某种关乎上帝本质的东西,即他是“诗人的诗人”,因此,要想理解他,我们不但要注意说了“什么”,还要注意其说的“方式”。这篇论文认为,若不知在圣经文学中风格本身就是意义,神学就是不完整的。

That the Bible makes considerable use of poetics,notably in respect to such issues as Hebrew parallelism, binary oppositions, envelope structures and strophic refrains is well known and understood as central to stylistic analysis of the texts of the Old Testament especially. But the very best of Hebrew poetry in grandeur and musicality is not found exclusively in the Psalms, but rather in the prophetic books and in such wisdom books as Job. When such poetic passages occur, it is typically the case that the poetry is attributed to the divine author. This suggests something about the nature of God as conceived in these texts,namely that he is a "poet’s poet",and therefore that for understanding we need to pay attention not only to what is said, but to the manner in which it is said. This paper argues that theology is incomplete without a reckoning that style itself is meaning in biblical literature.