Interest of called 'prose,' and that kind of speech which 'measures' itself into metres and verses. A glance at the Book of Job in any properly printed version shows that this work, like the plays of Shakespeare or the later stories of William Morris, presents an interchange between the two fundamental forms of language, being a dialogue in verse enclosed in a frame of prose story. When however the English reader calls in his ear to supplement his eye, he finds that the verse passages of Job differ essentially from what he is accustomed to find in English verse. There is no rhyme, nor do the lines correspond in meters or syllables. The Book of Job, then, in addition to its other literary suggestiveness, raises the elementary questions of Biblical versification. Plan of the whole work The purpose of this Introduction is now accomplished. I have engaged the reader's attention with a single book of the Bible; we have seen that, over and above what it yields to the theological faculty or the religious sense, the Book of Job is a piece of literature, the analysis of which brings us into contact with all the leading varieties of literary form. What the Introduction has done in reference to a single book, the work as a whole is to do in reference to the whole Bible, proceeding however by a method more regular than has been necessary so far. The work will be divided into six books. The first book will start with the point last reached Biblical Versification and widening from this will search out other distinctions which may serve as a basis for the Classification of Literature under such heads as Lyric, Epic, Philosophic, Prophetic, Rhetoric. The subsequent books will take up these departments one by one, illustrating each, with the subdivisions of each, from the most notable examples in the Sacred Writings. The reader who has thus given his attention to the general literary aspects of the Bible will then find, in an Appendix, Tabular arrangements into which the whole of the Bible enters, intended to assist him when he desires to read the Sacred Writings from the literary point of view. BOOK FIRST FIRST PRINCIPLES OF BIBLICAL LITERATURE PAGE CHAPTER I. THE FUNDAMENTAL LITERARY FORM OF VERSIFICATION 45 II. THE LOWER PARALLELism of RhytHM AND THE HIGHER 64 III. CLASSIFICATION OF THE HIGHER LITERARY FORMS IN 74 IV. APPLICATION OF LITERARY CLASSIFICATION TO BIBLICAL LITERATURE 83 CHAPTER I THE FUNDAMENTAL LITERARY FORM OF VERSIFICATION AS SEEN IN THE BIBLE THE Bible is the worst-printed book in the world. No other monument of ancient or modern literature suffers the fate of being put before us in a form that makes it impossible, without strong effort and considerable training, to take in elements of literary structure which in all other books are conveyed directly to the eye in a manner impossible to mistake. Literary form of Scripture obscured by ordinary modes of printing By universal consent the authors of the Sacred Scriptures included men who, over and above qualifications of a more sacred nature, possessed literary power of the highest order. But between their time and ours the Bible has passed through what may be called an Age of Commentary, extending over fifteen centuries and more. During this long period form, which should be the handmaid of matter, was more and more overlooked; reverent, keen, minute analysis and exegesis, with interminable verbal discussion, gradually swallowed up the sense of literary beauty. When the Bible emerged from this Age of Commentary, its artistic form was lost; rabbinical commentators had divided it into chapters,' and mediæval translators into 'verses,' which not only did not agree with, but often ran counter to, the original structure. The force of this unliterary tradition proved too strong even for the literary instincts of King James's translators. Accordingly, one who reads only the 'Authorized Version' incurs a double danger: if he reads his Bible by chapters he will, without knowing it, be often commencing in the middle of one com |