Recently I spent a few days looking into a section of the first chapter of Luke called the Magnificat or the Song of Mary. I’ve always wondered exactly what features of a Greek New Testament passage cause it to be considered verse instead of prose.
One thing I had already discovered was that it was not the same criteria that Classical Greek uses for poetry. Their rules of poetry had nothing to do with rhyming words but are defined by meter-patterns of accented and unaccented syllables. Meter-based poetry gave us terms like iambic pentameter which were later adopted by English poets such as William Shakespeare. When I learned about those rules I immediately tried to apply them to passages I’d seen depicted as verse such as the Magnificat or 1 John 2:12-14. After laboriously writing these out syllable by syllable and figuring out where the accents should be, I discovered that no pattern existed.
What I’ve learned recently is that. much like Hebrew poetry, Biblical Greek poetry uses parallel alignments of similar words and ideas as a framework. This can be shown by translating the a few lines of Mary’s Song using literal Greek and the original word order:
Magnifies / the soul (or life) of me / the Lord
And rejoices / the spirit of me / in God
He made / strength / in the arm of Him
He scattered / the arrogant / from the understanding / of their heart
Those hungering / he filled / with good thingsThose being rich / he sent away / empty
As you can see from the second pair of lines there is some flexibility allowed in the pattern. Comparison and contrast is the goal. A strong verb or participle (verbal noun) starts the line. The nouns and adjectives which follow are related in some way. “Good things” are the opposite of “Empty,” and “life’ is related to “spirit.”
One passage of the Magnificat is a particular pattern breaker. It’s the line; “For behold from henceforth all generations shall call me blessed.” It’s so out of place that some scholars have suggested it was a later addition. As it is practically the sole foundation of Catholic dogma concerning the worship of Mary and the earliest manuscripts of Luke don’t include the first two chapters, draw your own conclusions.
Finally, a word on the word “poem.” It’s a Greek word, ποίημα (poi-ē-ma). Literally it means “something made.” A poet then is a “maker.” Greeks used the term not just for writers but also sculptors and other artists. It’s used twice as a verb in the Magnificat. God “poemed” strength in His arms and the Mighty One “poemed” great things to Mary.
God is the Master Poet, the Maker of all good things. This, in my opinion is a good reason to study poetry.
