Semitic Rhetoric

Semitic rhetoric is a form of literary composition-specific texts Bible or Koran. It is studied as such since at least the ^ninth century ec For example, Michel Cuypers states that Ibn al-Mu'tazz already tried to define, in 887 , how the structure of Arab-Muslim texts differed from the rhetoric Greek . The International Society for the Study of the RBS, founded in Rome by the specialists in this field, in Michel Serres and Marc Fumaroli its founding committee, under the honorary presidency of Cardinal Vanhoye. It brings together several groups of researchers .

Biblical and Semitic rhetoric (RBS) is characterized by several constants. These include buildings which obey the principle of symmetry in the form of parallelism, or mirror effect of chiasmus.

The beginnings

In 1753 , Robert Lowth publishes Lectures on the Sacred Poetry of the Hebrews, in which he describes the "parallelism of members" in the Hebrew poetry of the Old Testament. It shows that members of the Bible to fit together so constructed. He describes the "synonymous parallelism" when members express the same idea, "antithetical parallelism" when they express two different ideas, and "synthetic parallelism" in other cases. Bible verses are composed of two (bimembre) or three (trimembre) members.

In the 1820s , John Jebb and Thomas Boys show that the discoveries of Lowth walk for longer texts considering units of text at a higher level, including several members who meet by taking the same terms. They evoke parallel and concentric structures. Their study also covers the New Testament , where they found the same method of operation.

Laws of Lund

In his book Chiasmus in the New Testament: A Study in the Form and Function of Chiastic Structures, Nils W. Lund offers 7 laws on scheduling and ideas in the symmetrical structure of the text :

1. the center is always a turning point, it may consist of one to four lines.
2. the center there is often a change in the course of thought and an idea antithetical is often introduced. Afterwards, the course is taken first and continued until the end of the system.
3. identical ideas are shared in order to find the extremes and center of a system, but nowhere else in the system.
4. in many cases the ideas will move the center of a system at the ends of another system built to go with the first correspondence.
5. certain terms tend to gravitate around specific places in a given system, particularly the divine names in the Psalms and citations in a central position in the New Testament.
6. larger units are frequently introduced by passages that frame them (in the way of doors).
7. chiasm (cross symmetry elements antithetical pairs) and alternating rows appear frequently in a single unit.

In the twentieth ^century

Marcel Jousse , and Jesuit scholar, was interested in his research on teaching rhythm to the oral transmission of the Bible and, even more specifically, the oral training of the Gospels, their oral transmission and their translation and their application in writing. He spent his life studying the functioning of oral traditions in ethnology from the first century Palestine. By revealing the transmission mode by the rabbis of Israel and the importance of memorization, so he explains why the anthropological significance of the oral structures present in the Bible defines "laws" that state: mimisme, rhythmic-energetics, bilateralism formula. The originality of Marcel Jousse is not to be stayed on the theoretical level regarding these issues but to be made available in practice-teaching rhythmic recitation of the Gospel. Several current trends of oral transmission of the Bible are dependent on its research.

Currently, her work is mainly carried on by research conducted by Pierre Perrier (including Karozoutha author, From the Good News Gospel in Aramaic and Greek and Latin, and Gospel of Oral and written).

Enrico Galbiati and Albert Vanhoye , priest Jesuit , were the first to focus the analysis on an entire book.

The systematization

Roland Meynet systematizes rhetorical analysis. He published several books on this subject and is responsible for the collection Semitic rhetoric from the publisher Lethielleux.

Michel Cuypers , as part of the Dominican Institute of Oriental Studies , has published several papers showing that this method of composition is found in the Koran. His book The Feast presents a study of Surat al-Ma'ida. It shows that this Surah deemed incongruous, is built entirely by the rules set by Lund, the smallest segment, but also the whole sura in its various sections, are presented under the laws of Semitic rhetoric. Analysis of concentric structures can release verses particularly highlighted by the text. The analysis allows wider passage to contextualize the text of the sura, showing that it refers inter alia to the Book of Numbers and some psalms.

Semitic rhetoric

Roland Meynet, there is a fundamental difference between rhetoric and his Greek equivalent Semitic: "The Greek wants to convince imposing an unstoppable reasoning, the Jew rather indicates the way that the reader must understand if they wish to borrow. Com-take "take all . "

Terminology

The analysis of the RBS has its own terminology .

Lower levels, not autonomous.

• the word is a word.
• Member is the minimum unit rhetoric is a group of words linked by a narrow syntactic report. It is the Greek word stic.
• the segment is most often bimembre. However there are segments and trimembres unimembres.
• the song is composed of one, two or three segments.
• The party is also composed of one, two or three pieces.

The higher levels self-

• passage, traditionally called includes one or more parties.
• sequence is composed of one or more passages.
• section consists of one or more sequences.
• the book.

Construction

The study of the structure of the texts offer a new reading of the Bible .

Roland Meynet, two elements are typical of the Semitic rhetoric: the binary and parataxis. Binary repetition structures the biblical text whatsoever in bimembres segments, or in books, in which one often finds two parallel structures, so the two accounts of Genesis , the two dreams of Joseph or the Psalms 111 and 112.

Parataxis is the juxtaposition of elements, elements are placed side by side, often simply connected by an "and" (a simple vav "in Hebrew, kai in Greek). The only way to understanding the relationship between two members, it is synonymous, antithetical, or causation.

Michel Cuypers symmetry arises as a fundamental principle of Semitic rhetoric. Three forms are identified:

1. When the parallelism of the textual units appear in the same ABC / A'B'C '.
2. The focus when the units are arranged symmetrically about a center ABC / cell center / C'B'A '. The center then has a particular role, as enacted by the laws of Lund, but also because it highlights the element placed in the center that has a specific function within a structure.
3. The mirror construction when units are arranged along a central symmetry, without a central unit ABC / C'B'A '.

The last two structures are often called chiasmus. Strictly chiasmus is the construction of four cross (AB / B'A ').

The role of the center

J. Jebb and T. Boys had already noticed the concentric structures. J. Jebb called the center of Mt 20.25-28 (26b-27) the "key to the whole paragraph or stanza . John Forbes in 1868 noted the importance of the center .

R. Meynet comment and quantifies the prominence given to issues at the center of a system in the Gospel of Luke and the book of the prophet Amos .

In The Feast, M. Cuypers emphasizes the particular value of the central element. So verse 32 of Sura al-M'ida "Whoever kills a human being not guilty of murder or sedition on Earth is considered the deadliest of all mankind. Whoever saves the life of a single human being is regarded as having saved the lives of all mankind! "Located in the middle of the sequence 27-40, sets out a" fundamental and universal moral principle, "which gives a unique perspective to the entire sequence. But also allows for contextualization, the center here is a quote from the Mishna Sanhedrin IV, 5, where she also serves as a commentary on the story of Cain and Abel. Regis Blachere note that the center of the third verse (Qur'an 5.3) detonates the rest. Mr. Cuypers notes that made his place is the second law of Lund (the center introduced a new idea ...) and that this construction refers to Deuteronomy 10.2, or the center plays the same function: the institution of marriage between God and men, in the midst of food rules.

Report to the text

The precursors of rhetorical analysis started empirically, by describing the phenomena they observed in the biblical texts.

Repeating the same patterns and the same construction rules in different books - up to the composition of an entire book - and several reading levels, shows that the books are composed and constructed in a structured manner. So there is a clean way to build the world Semitic texts, which allows them to understand and analyze their structure.

Then it is for R. Meynet to trust the text. Through the knowledge of well-established laws of organization of the biblical text, the analysis Semitic rhetoric to understand and describe what is believed to be inconsistencies or compilations of disparate elements. So all the books that have been studied in their entirety (Psalms, Amos, Gospels of Luke and Matthew, the Epistle of Jacques, etc..) Demonstrated internal consistency in their entire composition. But also demonstrates that proverbs are not an unconnected series of precepts, instead they obey the same laws of construction . Analysis of Surah al-M'ida, deemed particularly disjointed, and many other suras of the Koran suggest that the text of the Quran is fully built to the same rules.

This method of analysis also helps determine the relevance of the various manuscripts and versions made by biblical criticism. Thus the beginning of the Sermon on the Mount as the Codex Beza "provides an even more regular than that of the text adopted by Nestle-Aland . This is an important contribution to textual criticism , already used at the time of Lowth.

Relationship with other forms of analysis

Playing profane

This form of composition is also used in secular writings of the ancient and more recent. We could find in Flaubert and Shakespeare .

Bibliography

• Robert Lowth , Lectures on the Sacred Poetry of the Hebrews
• Bovati Pietro and Roland Meynet , The Book of the prophet Amos, Cerf, 1994
• Thomas Boys , A Key to the Book of Psalms, Seeley & Sons, London, 1825
• Nils W. Lund , Chiasmus in the New Testament: A Study in the Form and Function of Chiastic Structures, 1942
• Enrico Galbiati , La struttura letteraria dell'Esodo, Paulini Edizioni, Rome, 1956
• Albert Vanhoye , The literary structure of Hebrews, Descle Brouwer, Tournai, 1963.
• Marguerat Daniel and Yvan Bourquin, The Bible tells. Introduction to narrative analysis, Labor et Fides , 1998, 2830911741
• Roland Meynet , Rhetorical analysis. A new method for understanding the Bible. Founding texts and systematic exposition, Les Editions du Cerf, Paris, 1989
• Semitic rhetoric: texts of the Bible and the Islamic Tradition, R. Meynet, L. Pouzet, N. Farouki and A. Sinno, Cerf 1998
• Michel Cuypers , Rhetorical analysis: A new method of interpretation of the Koran, Mixtures of Religious Science 2002, Vol. 59, ^No. 3
• Michel Cuypers , Le Festin. A reading of Surah al-M'ida Collection "Rhetoric Semitic" ^No. 3. Paris: Lethielleux. 2007

References

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