Hebrew and Jewish epic poetry

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Biblical poetry such as the

Song of Deborah may be considered early examples of Jewish epic poetry, though very short by normal epic standards. Both songs are compared by scholars to Canaanite and Assyrian epic poetry.[1][2]

There are a few medieval and later works, some translations or adaptations of works in other languages, and other adaptations of Biblical material. It is fair to say that few of these achieved very wide or lasting fame, even within the Jewish community. The most lasting were composed in Yiddish. It has been argued that Jewish attitudes discouraged the promotion of hero figures, generally a feature of the epic form. It has also been argued that few if any of the works mentioned below are truly epic, if only on the grounds of length.

Antiquity

Pseudo-Eustathius
, the extensive quotations by these writers make possible the assembly of 269 lines of text, about 20-25% of the whole.

Middle Ages

Two medieval Jewish communities are notable for producing their own epic works: the

Maulānā Shāhīn; Fatḥ-nāmeh and Ḥanukā-nāma by ʿEmrāni (15th century).[4]

14th-16th century Ashkenazi Yiddish epic poems may be divided into 2 major categories: Jewish-themed compositions fusing Biblical and Midrashic material influenced by Germanic epics, especially The Song of the Nibelungs, and Jewish-flavored variants of Arthurian, German and Middle English epics. The first category includes Shmuel-Bukh, a midrashic verse epic characterized by Sol Liptzin as the greatest Old Yiddish religious epic, and Mlokhim-Bukh ("The Book of Kings"), which fuses Biblical material, Midrashic legends, and rabbinical folklore with European chivalric poetry. Both works, strongly resembling the Nibelungenlied, inspired a series of other Yiddish epic poems.

The second category includes

Wigalois. Despite the fact that the contents of such works are unrelated to Jews, they were perceived by the Ashkenazi Jews as an integral part of their cultural and literary tradition.[5][6]

Modern Jewish Epics

Joseph and the story of their lives, Moses and Aaron and the departure from Egypt, Joshua and the entrance into Canaan, Jeremiah and the fall of Jerusalem, Elijah the Prophet, etc. These, however, are often considered only poems with an epic coloring. Singer claimed that a "pure epic poem according to the rules of art" was not produced during the Middle Ages
.

According to Singer, "the stern character of Jewish

The Lay of the Cid and The Song of the Nibelungs were produced in Christian societies, which also "prevented the rise of hero-worship" while encouraging veneration and glorification of heroes and saints. Similarly, the Muslim culture of Iran did not prevent Ferdowsi from writing his Shahnameh
, which inspired numerous Persian-Jewish epic poems. Both Judeo-Persian and Ashkenazi tradition of epic poetry continued to flourish and develop in the 17th century.

In the 16th century, the

converso
poet, Miguel de Silveyra (c. 1578–1638), composed a Spanish baroque epic El Macabeo (The Maccabean).

crypto-Jew, was one of the first Jewish modern epic authors who wrote (Sansón Nazareno: Poema heróico, a Spanish-language heroic epic version of the Samson story),[7][8] followed closely by Solomon de Oliveira's epic ("Elat Ahabim," Amsterdam, 1665). One of the first modern Jewish epic poets was N. H. Wessely with his Moses-themes "Shire Tif'eret" (Berlin, 1789–1802), an epic on the Exodus from Egypt. According to Isidore Singer, the influence of a similar work by the German poet Friedrich Gottlieb Klopstock on is evident. Next to him stands Shalom Kohn with his "Ner David", an epic poem on King David
(Vienna, 1834). The influence of these two epics on the readers and poets of that time was considerable.

In addition the following poets may be mentioned from that and the succeeding period:

St. Petersburg, 1883), Chaim N. Bialik, and S. Tschernichowski.[9]

References

  1. ^ The Song of Deborah and the Epic of Tukulti-Ninurta, by P. C. Craigie, Journal of Biblical Literature, Vol. 88, No. 3 (Sep., 1969), pp. 253-265
  2. ^ Canaanite Myth and Hebrew Epic: Essays in the History of the Religion of Israel, by Frank Moore Cross, Harvard University Press, 1997, pp. 131-144
  3. ^ Early Yiddish Epic, by Jerold Frakes, Syracuse University Press, 2014, pp. xx-xxi
  4. Encyclopedia Iranica
  5. ^ The Emergence of Early Yiddish Literature: Cultural Translation in Ashkenaz, by Jerold Frakes, Indiana University Press, 2017
  6. ^ Introduction to Old Yiddish Literature, by Jean Baumgarten, Oxford University Press, 2005
  7. ^ Enríquez Gómez, Antonio. Sansón Nazareno: Poema heróico. Ed. Moshe Lazar. Lancaster, California: Labyrinthos, 2007.
  8. ^ There is another modern edition of Sansón Nazareno edited and introduced in Spanish by María del Carmen Artigas. The Artigas edition can be previewed in Google Books.
  9. ^ http://www.jewishencyclopedia.com/view.jsp?letter=E&artid=425 Jewish Epic in the Jewish Encyclopedia
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