ENGL 340
Prof. G. Steinberg

Response Paper:  Psalms and Ecclesiastes

Choose one of the following areas as the focus of your response paper:

1. As you read Psalms, think about what Hebrew poetry is like.  Think about form.  What patterns do you see in terms of the way in which Hebrew poetry is constructed?  What determines a line of poetry?  What is the relationship between one line and another?  When and how do major transitions and shifts in content occur (from one section of a poem to another)
2. As you read Psalms, think about what Hebrew poetry is like.  Think about image, metaphor, and figurative language.  What are the common images and metaphors in Hebrew poetry?  What images are frequently used to describe God, enemies, the singer/poet, “the nations,” Israel, and/or Jerusalem?
3. As you read Psalms, think about what Hebrew poetry is like.  Think about genre.  What kinds of Hebrew poems are there?  How does a royal psalm differ from a psalm of sacred history from a lament from a wisdom psalm from a liturgical psalm, etc.?
4. As you read Psalms, think about what Hebrew poetry is like.  Think about speaker and dramatic situation.  Who says the psalm?  What is the situation?  Who is the speaker speaking to?  How much variation is there in terms of speaker and audience?  (You might look particularly at those psalms that stand out as having an unusual speaker, situation, or audience.)
5. As you read Ecclesiastes, think about Hebrew philosophy.  How does the writer of Ecclesiastes view the world?  How does he view human nature (positively, negatively, optimistically, pessimistically)?  When faced with mortality, how does Hebrew philosophy respond?  How does Hebrew philosophy deal with the fact that bad things happen to good people?  Is the philosophy espoused in Eccleasiastes what you would expect Hebrew philosophy to be like?

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