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Ancient Israel allowed only small roles to individuals. Ancient Israelite writers stood under the intense pressure of the style established by the Gattung. Poetry came from Volk, not from Kunst. Writing a history of Israel's literature became possible again. Only first, produce a history of Israel's Gattungen, emphasizing the unique qualities of each. 9 Such a history would begin with poetry, since Israel's literature began with popular songs, often accompanied by instruments and dance. 6. D. ), Biblical and Hebrew Discourse Linguistics (Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns for the Summer Institute of Linguistics, 1994), pp.

313 In his introductory essay, House described older methods, particularly form criticism, as having run their course, becoming stale with overuse, and thus producing diminishing returns. House saw literary criticism in all its modern faces as a return to the full biblical text and away from the atomizing, divisive work of form criticism that obscured the unity of and reorganized texts. N. 35 1. The use of writing. Israel, like others in the ancient Near East, had access to writing at an early date, and oral tradition studies cannot depend on evidence from societies that recited written texts orally.

385. 46 Ljungberg, wanting to liberate genre, dares question the timehonored form-critical connection of Gattung and Sitz im Leben: 'The implication, is that a Gattung will not predict a Sitz im Leben with any accuracy'. 47 He says that 'genre provides the literary context for a given sentence, and thus partly determines what it means. 49 But Old Testament genre interpretation is complicated for the Christian reader because the Christian reader reads the Old Testament with a secondary meaning from outside its original context but within the context of the entire Christian canon.