26 FORMS OF HEBREW POETRY
perhaps, a little, that was originally written in
Hebrew and was poetical in form. Among these
specimens of late Hebrew poetry we may certainly
include the eighteen " Psalms of Solomon " (c.
50 B.C.)^1 and perhaps some of the most ancient
elements of the Jewish liturgy, such as the "Eight-
een Blessings " (c. A.D. 100), and the blessings
accompanying the recitation of the Shema’;^2
possibly also the Magnificat and other New Testa-
ment Canticles.^3 Several of the apocalypses also
include poems; in those which he has edited
more recently, Dr. Charles has distinguished the
poetry from the prose by printing the former in
regular lines. Without admitting that all parts
thus distinguished by him or others possessed
1 The parallelistic structure is indicated in my translation of these
Psalms in The Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha of the Old Testament
(ed. R. H. Charles), ii. 631-652.
2 The Hebrew text of these and of the " Eighteen " is conveniently
brought together in W. Staerk, Altjudische liturgische Gebete (Bonn,
1910). The rhythm is indicated in the notes and German translation
in P. Fiebig, Berachoth: Der Mischnatractat Gegenspruche, pp,. 26 if.
3 Dr. Burney has recently argued that the parable of the last Judg-
ment in Matt. xxv. 31-46 was a Hebrew poem ; and his Hebrew trans-
lation from the Greek text of the Gospel, his metrical analysis of the
poem and his English translation, as far as possible in the rhythm of
his Hebrew reconstruction, deserve careful attention. See the Journal
of Theological Studies for April 1913 (vol. xiv. 414-424).
Parts, but parts only, of Matt. xxv. 31-46 are thrown into parallel
lines by Dr. Moffat also in The New Testament : a new translation.
That parts only are so arranged in this passage is the more noticeable
because in a considerable number of other, longer or shorter, passages
in this translation of the New Testament an arrangement in lines is
adopted. It is, however, tolerably clear that this line arrangement is
not always intended to imply poetical form. And certainly, even for
example in the parts of 1 Cor. xiii. which are so arranged, the form is
not that of Hebrew parallelism; in vv. 1-3 the formal effect is obtained
by exact repetition of the same phrase ("but if I have no love"), not
by repetition of the same thought by means of synonymous terms.