Hebrew Bible and Christian Scriptures

a view of the ghats of varanassi from the river

Varanasi, located on the banks of the Ganges River, is the holiest city in India. It’s regarded as deeply holy by Hindus, Buddhists and Jains and is one of the oldest continuously inhabited cities in the world. Varanasi is in the state of Uttar Pradesh and contains hundreds of temples to various gods in various faith systems. Those are some simple words to sum up one of the most chaotic and fascinating and frustrating and beautiful cities I’ve ever been to. There are hundreds of legends that surround Varanasi, and I’d encourage you to seek them out for yourself. (For instance, the creation of the Ganges as rivets of water flowing from Shiva’s hair is one of my favorite.)

I’ve struggled how to explain this city. I decided that instead of offering my traditional summary, I’d rely largely on the photo summary. Know that we were there for about three days and arrived and left by train. We took a boat ride down the river at sunrise and attended an evening worship service unlike I’ve ever seen. In our team language, Varanasi was the bottom of the Indian well. It was the place that the messes that come with Indian culture came up and demanded our attention in a way that hadn’t happened before. Plus, friends, it was HOT. We were hot everywhere, but Varanasi was like baking inside a humid oven.

My experiences in Varanasi will probably feature in my posts again, especially as I begin to understand how to describe it. In light of that, stay tuned for the final two summaries concerning Agra and Delhi.

How we arrived in Varanasi: night train from Calcutta to Varanasi. This is the compartment I shared with CJ, Katie and Kari.

CJ hangs over to her bed to watch Chef Kari make our snack

I love that the cow is sleeping right underneath the sign for the Internet cafe

Man sitting by the ghats

Me and my travel buddy Casey in the back our of cycle rickshaw

Clearly, I have no idea what this says. But this is what Hindi looks like.

Boy playing in the Ganges

The Ganges Arti is performed each night at the same ghat at sunset. It’s an amazing example of devotion and ritual that I was honored to experience. It’s also typically dichotomous. People sitting next to cows, mixed with child beggars and girls selling hand stamps, next to men selling Dora the Explorer blow-up toys and tourists with expensive cameras. All while the service is happening and the sun sets.

A large part of Hindu worship experiences is about getting the attention of the diety. Gongs are clanged, bells rung, insense burned, candles lit – it’s a completely visceral experience. So here’s a shot of the end of the arti, where the priest ritualistically throws flower petals in the air.

The Bodi Tree where Buddha received his enlightenment – located just outside Varanasi

Tibetan prayer flags hanging around the Bodi Tree

There’s a Jain temple located down the road from the Bodi Tree. Ask me about peacock feathers sometime.

Please remember that I love India when I say this : the three hours we spent on the Varanasi Train Station platform will rank as three of my least favorite hours of life. Hot, stuffy, rats, exhaustion…

Out of order, I know, but I wanted this to be your parting shot of Varanasi.

I have a friend who a Milton scholar Gardner Campbell. I wonder how he puts poetry, prose and narrative together. I thought of him as a read Adele Berlin’s Dynamics of Biblical Parallelism. The question is the role of parallelism in defining poetry. Here she brings into the conversation James Kugel’s work the Idea of Biblical Poetry. Berlin writes “Kugel not only questioned the equation of parallelism with poetry, but attacked the whole notion that one can differentiate prose from poetry in the Bible.” (Berlin 4) There is a context for Kugel’s observations in the reception history of his argument as well as the various elements of his argument. As I read this at first I remembered the work of A.B. Lord, The Singer of Tales that was a key resource for the emerging biblical form critics of the mid twentieth century. This book published in 1961 using comparative literature perspective blurred the line between narrative prose and poetry. Lord, a professor of Slavic and comparative literature spun a story of a band of singers who would perform the epic narrative of the countryside. Those captured by the compelling picture painted by Lord could easily blur the borders of narrative prose and poetry. Duane Christensen’s work on meter in biblical Hebrew narrative in Deuteronomy would seem to confirm this blurring.
However, Berlin takes Kugel to task this background notwithstanding. Not all poetry is parallelistic and symmetrical as demonstrated by Psalm 119 and 122. Berlin accuses Kugel of posing “that not all poetry is parallelisms and not all parallelisms are poetry.” (Berlin 4) According to Berlin Kugel makes two mistakes first he “tacitly accepts the equation of parallelism with poetry…” Second in order to make room for non-poetic parallelism he uses the language of “elevated speech” to describe the overlap of poetry and prose that use parallelism. Berlin observes “The truth is, as linguists have shown, that parallelism is not in and of itself a mark of poetry as opposed to prose…” (Berlin 4) Ultimately Berlin and Kugel agree that there is a continuum of elevated style in the Bible. However, Berlin does come to a clear position. “It is not parallelism per se, but the predominance of parallelism, combined with terseness, which marks the poetic expression of the Bible.” (Berlin 5)
Ternseness and a parataxis, that places elements side by side without an inherently determined coordinating and subordination. That is to say, the relationship is key to understand elevated speech but the nature of the relationship remains open to interpretation, multivalent. “Parallelism, because it involves linguistic correspondences, increases the feeling of connectedness…” (Berlin 6)

What makes a poem not parallelistic elevated styles is that he poem has parallelism as a constituitive device, namely a device on which the artifact is created.

At the end I still wonder what would Gardner say about prose, poetry and narrative.

Share This

Morning readers!

Just a heads up that I’m boarding a flight today to head to Bogota, Colombia. I’ll be spending some time down there with a dear Asbury friend who works for a mission organization with a presence in the country. I’m doing some research about conflict and its affect on society, hoping to have conversations with both perpetrators and victims. I’ll be in Bogota and Medellin over the next ten days.

Hope the rest of your July is fantastic and full of your own brands of adventure. See you in August!