Identifying Alphabetic Compositions in the Hebrew Bible

Abstract

Alphabetic acrostics (AA s) are a known phenomenon in the Hebrew Bible (HB). Recently, scholars have argued that other poems in the HB evidence “alphabetic thinking”, or some kind of consciousness of alphabet in their composition. Peter C. W. Ho has argued for what he calls alphabetic compositions (AC s), i.e., poems that are not proper acrostics but share common poetic devices with acrostics. In this article, I attempt to refine Ho’s list of common features of AA s and regroup them into macro-level and micro-level alphabet-imitating devices. With a clear understanding of these devices I test whether certain poems attempt to imitate the alphabet in their overall shape at macro-level as well as in their choice of words at micro-level. I argue that only when clear alphabet-imitating devices are present in both the form and the linguistic content of a poem can it be reliably identified as an AC. Finally, I problematize the use of AC s as a set of cross-referring poems designed to carry Psalter motifs by dealing with the possible presence of reworked and repurposed alphabetic poems in the Psalter.