INTRODUCTORY 27
poetical form in the original, I think it may be
safely said that such apocalypses as the Twelve
Patriarchs, the Book of Jubilees, the Apocalypse
of Baruch and IV. Esdras do each contain some
such passages.
Now of these books or passages which show
the same characteristics as the poetry of the Old
Testament, some at least were written by men
who were contemporary both with Josephus
and also with those who after A.D. 70 founded
that Jewish school at Jamnia of whose methods
of exegesis (in the second century A.D.) examples
have been given above. At the very time that
the Rabbis were examining scripture with eyes
blind to parallelism, other Jews were still writing
poems that made all the old use of parallelism.
This may be proved by reference to the Apocalypse
of Baruch: for with regard to this book I believe
that it may be safely asserted^1 (1) that it was
written in Hebrew, (2) that it was written not
earlier than c. A.D. 50, and therefore (3) that
its author was in all probability a contempo-
rary, though perhaps an elder contemporary, of
Josephus and of the founders of the school of
Jamnia. But this book contains a long passage
(xlviii. 1-47) that is among the most regular and
sustained examples of parallelism in the whole
range of Hebrew literature ; a sufficiently large
portion of it may be cited here to prove this
1 Cp. R. H. Charles, The Apocalypse of Baruch.