JETS 35/4 (December 1992) 445-456 IMPULSE AND DESIGN IN THE BOOK OF HAGGAI DUANE L. CHRISTENSEN* Comparison between the Hebrew texts of Haggai as edited by O. Procksch in BHK (1937) and K. Elliger in BHS (1970) is revealing, as D. L. Petersen has noted.1 Procksch saw the book as entirely a prose work, whereas Elliger set forth more than half of the book in poetic form (Hag 1:3-11, 15; 2:3-9, 14-19, 20-23). Most of the citations of Haggai in P. R. Ackroyd's seminal discussion are also in the stichic form of Hebrew poetry.2 In some respects the situation parallels changes in scholarly perception of the prophetic lit- erature of the Hebrew Bible in general during the modern period of critical scholarship. Though two hundred years ago relatively few translations or commentaries saw much poetry in the prophetic literature, today large sec- tions, particularly in Isaiah and Jeremiah, are recognized almost univer- sally as poetic in form. Increasingly, more and more of the rest of the Hebrew Bible is being read as poetry as well.3 In recent years J. C. de Moor and I have concluded, on independent grounds, that the books of Ruth and Jonah are in fact narrative poems in their entirety.4 Such a conclusion does not deny the fact that the Song of Jonah in Jonah 2 is clearly a different genre from the rest of that book. It rather raises new questions about how we define poetry in the literature of ancient Israel. Poetry includes a broad range of genres, from lyric to narrative. For de Moor and his associates the quest to define the basic ele- ments of Hebrew poetry has led to an ongoing research project at the Kampen School of Theology in the Netherlands that is expanding our knowledge of both Biblical and Canaanite poetry at all levels of analysis.5 As a result the line between so-called prose and poetry in the ancient Near East is much less clear today than it was a few years ago. * Duane Christensen is acting dean of academic affairs at Christian Witness Theological Seminary, 1525 Solano Avenue, Berkeley, CA 94707. 1 D. L. Petersen, Haggai and Zechariah 1-8 (OTL; Philadelphia: Westminster, 1984) 31-32. 2 P. R. Ackroyd, Exile and Restoration (OTL; Philadelphia: Westminster, 1968) 153-170. 3 See in particular the recent study of W. T. Koopmans, Joshua 24 as Poetic Narrative (JSOTSup 93; Sheffield: JSOT, 1990). 4 D. L. Christensen, "Narrative Poetics and the Interpretation of the Book of Jonah," Direc- tions in Biblical Hebrew Poetry (JSOTSup 40; Sheffield: JSOT, 1987) 29-48; J. C. de Moor, "The Poetry of the Book of Ruth," Or 53 (1984) 262-283; Or 55 (1986) 16-46. See also the arti- cle by R. de Hoop, one of de Moor's students, "The Book of Jonah as Poetry: An Analysis of Jonah 1:1-16," The Structural Analysis of Biblical and Canaanite Poetry (JSOTSup 74; ed. W. van der Meer and J. C. de Moor; Sheffield: JSOT, 1988) 156-171. 5 See Structural Analysis (ed. van der Meer and de Moor). 446 JOURNAL OF THE EVANGELICAL THEOLOGICAL SOCIETY My own research has led me into interdisciplinary study of music and language in antiquity.6 We have long known that the Biblical text was sung according to established rules based on the ancient system of accen- tuation as laid down by the Masoretes. In fact the Biblical text is still canted in worship settings within various synagogue traditions. What is not yet clear is whether this musical reading of the text is a medieval in- vention imposed on a received textual tradition or the memory of earlier practice that these ancient scholars recorded as best they could. Since it does not appear that the Masoretes were musicians as such, it seems likely that the latter is the case. Consequently the accentual system they added to the consonantal Hebrew text may well provide information of considerable value for a musical reading of the Biblical text, from a period perhaps as early as that of the second Temple in Jerusalem as Suzanne Haik-Vantoura claims.7 T. Georgiades has shown, at least for the literature of ancient Greece, that music and language cannot be readily separated.8 In fact their very term mousikê, from which our English word "music" is derived, does not mean music in the modern sense at all. Rather it referred to both music and language as a single concept. Theirs was an aural age, and literature was both conceived and transmitted in a rhythmic, musical form through- out the classical period. The rhythmic nature of classical Hebrew and Ar- abic, in particular, suggests that this was probably the case for the languages and literature of the ancient Near East as well. Assuming that the book of Haggai was a musical text even before the time of the Masoretes, in the manner Georgiades has argued for classical Greek texts, I have turned to the modern world of musical composition for the outline of this particular study. Earlier work on the structure of the book of Jonah already suggested the work of the Polish composer Andrzej 6 See D. L. Christensen, "Two Stanzas of a Hymn in Deuteronomy 33," Bib 65 (1984) 382- 389; "Prose and Poetry in the Bible: The Narrative Poetics of Deuteronomy 1:9-18," ZAW 97 (1985) 179-189; "Form and Structure in Deuteronomy 1-11," Das Deuteronomium: Entstehung, Gestalt und Botschaft (BETL 68; ed. Ν. Lohfink; Leuven: Leuven University, 1985) 135"144; "The Song of Jonah: A Metrical Analysis," JBL 104 (1985) 217"231; "Andrzej Panufnik and the Structure of the Book of Jonah: Icons, Music and Literary Art," JETS 28 (1985) 133"140; "A New Israel: The Righteous from among All Nations," Israel's Apostasy and Restoration: Essays in Honor of Roland K. Harrison (ed. A. Gileadi; Grand Rapids: Baker, 1988) 251"259; "The Book of Nahum as a Liturgical Composition: A Prosodie Analysis," JETS 32 (1989) 159"169; "Dtn 33, 11—A Curse in the 'Blessing of Moses'?", ZAW 101 (1989) 278"282; "The Masoretic Accentual System and Repeated Metrical Refrains in Nahum, Song of Songs, and Deuter- onomy," VIII International Congress of the International Organization for Masoretic Studies (Masoretic Studies 6; Atlanta: Scholars, 1990) 31"36. 7 S. Haik"Vantoura, La Musique de la Bible Révélée (2d ed.; Paris: Dessain et Tolra, 1976). An American edition of this book has been published as The Music of the Bible Revealed (Berkeley: BIBAL, 1991). 8 T. Georgiades, Music and Language: The Rise of Western Music as Exemplified in Settings of the Mass (Cambridge: Cambridge University, 1982) 1-6. The position of Georgiades is in sharp opposition to that of M. O'Connor who insists that "music is distinct from language"; see his discussion of "Musicality," Hebrew Verse Structure (Winona Lake: Eisenbrauns, 1980) 40- 41. O'Connor and the scholars on whom he depends in this particular discussion are apparently unaware of the point Georgiades is making for the history of music in the pre-Christian era. IMPULSE AND DESIGN IN THE BOOK OF HAGGAI 447 Panufnik as a useful point of departure. When asked by his publishers to write descriptions of his musical works, Panufnik wrote a remarkable little book in which he avoids any clinical analysis as such and focuses on what he calls "the less obvious factors: the design upon which each work is built and the impulse behind it." As he puts it: "In all my works, I attempt to achieve a true balance between feeling and intellect; heart and brain; impulse and design." Perhaps we can learn more about the book of Haggai from the example of Panufnik, who likens himself "to an architect, tack- ling each work in three stages, always in the same order: first the purpose, or reason for which the work is composed; then the architectural struc- ture; then the material of which it is to be built."10 The "impulse" that produced the book of Haggai seems clear to anyone who takes the time to peruse the available literature. It was the restora- tion of the sacred Temple in Jerusalem in the Persian period (late sixth century B.C.) on the part of the Jews who had returned from exile in Baby- lon that occasioned this work. Our concern here is to explore in detail the architectural design of the book in terms of a careful prosodie, rhythmic analysis of the accentual tradition of the Hebrew text as preserved by the Masoretes. The fact that this analysis in turn highlights the "impulse" or purpose of the book, as shown on other grounds, lends some confirmation to the validity of this academic exercise. The third step in Panufnik's three stages will receive limited attention here—namely, the study of the mate- rial on which the architectural structure is built. That task would require careful attention to both the full range of musical information preserved in the Masoretic system of notation, perhaps along the lines of the musical in- terpretation of Haik"Vantoura,11 together with detailed historical"critical analysis of the Hebrew text in the more traditional sense of modern Bibli- cal scholarship. Limitations in both space and time require a more modest objective here. In an important study that has yet to be fully integrated into recent discussion on the poetry of ancient Israel, D. N. Freedman has shown that the first three chapters of the book of Lamentations are the same length in terms of syllable count, along with certain other acrostic poems and so" called nonalphabetic acrostics in the books of Psalms and Proverbs.12 From this fact Freedman concludes that something comparable to meter is operative in ancient Hebrew poetry.