32 FORMS OF HEBREW POETRY
opinion of some they were written even later.
The original language of these Odes is still un-
determined. But some of them (e.g. v., vi.,
vii.) are strongly parallelistic in character, though
Dr. Harris refrained from distinguishing the
parallel members in his translation.
It was long ago pointed out by Lowth that
parallelism can be retained almost unimpaired
in a translation; easier still, therefore, was it for
Jews to reproduce this feature in works written
in the first instance in some other language than
Hebrew ; and to some extent they did so. The
Book of Wisdom, which rests on no Hebrew
original, but was written, as it survives, in Greek,
is the best proof of this. It is possible that the
author of Wisdom attempted to imitate other
features of ancient Hebrew poetry as well as its
parallelism in his Greek work; but these are
questions that cannot be pursued now.
There is no other considerable book originally
written in Greek which employs parallelism
throughout ; but it has been held with differing
degrees of conviction and consensus of opinion
that Tobit's prayer (Tob. xiii.), the Prayer of
Manasses, the Song of the Three Holy Children,
and the latter part of Baruch were written in
Greek, or at least, not in Hebrew; and a Hebrew
original for the Odes of Solomon was postulated
neither by their first editor, nor by many who
have followed him, though more recently Dr.