Canter Bridge

Even if John C.L. Gibson admits that the OT is “capable of causing not a little embarrassment to the two religions which have adopted it as their Scriptures”, he finds it also “seductive”, “moving” and “illuminating”. His little book is meant to guide the reader to fuller appreciation of the latter qualities and in this he must be judged to have succeeded. His first of seven well-written chapters, entitled “The Energies of the Hebrew Language”, presents the lack of abstract terms and the linking together of clauses by “and” as the “two basic characteristics of biblical Hebrew.” The picture is filled out by several not unimportant features: prominence of direct speech, cosmological descriptions of heaven and Sheol, the extravagance of Semitic address, folk etymologies, figurative language, hyperbole, personalisation, irony, et al. Throughout this chapter Gibson indicates the considerable distance which separates theological language from that of the OT. (more…)

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