Chapter Two: The Parallelistic Structure of Proverbs 2

Abstract

Semantic parallelism is undoubtedly the main structural feature of Proverbs 2, with the structure of virtually every bicolon somehow dependent on it. It is most important in regular distribution, though it occurs in all distributions. Because of the many features of grammar and the many gradations of semantics, grammatical parallelism is tied in with semantic parallelism in a multitude of ways. There is a high degree of correlation between semantics and grammar, though either can stand more or less alone and this occurs in Proverbs 2 approximately the same number of times for the two types of parallelism: there are ten occurrences of grammatical parallelism without semantic balance and eight occurrences of semantic parallelism without grammatical equivalence. Phonetic parallelism is clearly visible in half-lines and in regular distribution. There is also a significant degree of phonetic recall across verse boundaries, producing near parallelism.Keywords: grammatical parallelism; Phonetic parallelism; Proverbs 2; semantic parallelism