"Word" and Literature in Ancient Israel

Abstract

medium of the literary art. What a given society or culture considers literature to be, therefore, will largely depend on its traditional assumptions and beliefs about the nature and powers of words. Such assumptions are handed down in a society or culture along with transmission of its language. Intimations of what words are, of their properties and powers, are caught and absorbed by successive generations of speakers of a language as they learn the various culturally determined modes and relationships in which words can, must, or should be used. In the case of an extinct literate culture like ancient