6/16/2004

The Pivot Pattern, and a mental lightbulb

I'm not done putting my thoughts about Reading Scripture with the Church Fathers into a readable state, but I thought I'd better try to get a couple of more things written in the meantime.


While reading Jeff Lindsay'spage on "Bicola, Tricola, Paired Tricola, and Isaiah Variants in 2 Nephi 12 of the Book of Mormon: Authentic Hebrew Poetry?", I got interested in Bicola and Tricola. I went hunting and found The Pivot Pattern in Biblical Hebrew as another reference. It wasn't about the same thing. Rather, a specific kind of tricola in which the 2nd colon "belongs semantically to the first and third cola alike." (Wilfred G. E. Watson) -- for example:


Hearken unto the voice of my cry,
my King, and my God,
for unto the will I pray.
(Psalm 5:2)



I was pretty excited as I read the paper, and went to look at the examples that they listed. Then, I hit a problem:

















citationexample translationKJV translation
Joel 4:20 (Joel 3:20)


So Judah forever
is inhabited
and Jerusalem from generation to generation.

But Judah shall dwell for ever, and Jerusalem from generation to generation.
Genesis 4:24


If seven times Cain
is avenged
then Lamech seventy-seven

If Cain shall be avenged sevenfold, truly Lamech seventy and sevenfold




The pivot pattern shows up well in a very literal translations, but not so well in the KJV. This presents a problem, the Book of Mormon is closer in style to the KJV than the literal translations used in the paper. So it looks like I'm going to need to try to get a bette rhandle on deconstructing the Book of Mormon text to get at the original (Hebrew) structure to see the pivot patterns that I believe are there.


Any thoughts?

No comments: