The Historians' History of the World 02 [Israel, India, Persia, Phoenicia, Minor Nations of Western Asia]

A careful study of the responsion in all the wonderful variety of form it presents will suffice to show, even from these few examples, that they bear an amazing resemblance to the forms exhibited by Semitic poetry, particularly by the prophetic writings.

SEMITIC INFLUENCE AND THE GREEK CHORUS

Instead of attempting to prove here that the Greek chorus came into being under Semitic influences I will subjoin the opinion of a classical philologist who has studied the question more minutely than any one else. I refer to D. P. Thomas M. Wehofer (Untersuchungen zur altchristlichen Epistolographie, p. 16).

“For the rest, long before the Christian era Greek literature had received a strong admixture of Semitic art-forms. For, as has been convincingly proved, in my opinion, by Dr. D. H. Müller (Die Propheten, p. 244 seq.), the Greek choruses, those splendid productions of Greek poetry, must be referred for their origin to the temple of Apollo at Delphi, whither (according to the tradition preserved by Euripides in the Phœnissæ) ‘chosen Phœnician virgins were sent from Tyre to conduct the service of the god.’ It is evident that the Greek chorus, the germ from which Greek tragedy was destined to be evolved, followed the same path as Greek painting and plastic art.

“The Greek spirit took possession of all the elements of beauty it encountered, not to preserve them in a petrified state, but by its own working to shape and perfect them, and bring them to the highest conceivable pitch of development.”

The genius of Greece recognised the power of Semitic poetry; it gladly left it its soaring flight, but brought into it the noble feeling for form which was its own peculiar gift, and to ideas and responsion added metrical symmetry. The choruses present a happy combination of the Semitic spirit and the Greek sense of beauty.

The assumption that the Greek chorus, with its strophe and antistrophe, is a Semitic invention is not without bearing on the history of the earliest ages of Semitic poetry. If the Greeks borrowed the chorus, it must have been in use in the religious worship of the Phœnicians. If, in connection with this fact, we consider the responsion in the strophes of the prophetic writings, which exhibit precisely the same method of composition and literary form as the Greek choruses, we are forced upon the hypothesis that the earliest form of prophetic composition must be regarded as a chorus with strophes and antistrophes.

Authorities.—Die Propheten in ihrer ursprünglichen Form. Die Grundgesetze der ursemitischen Poesie erschlossen und nachgewiesen in Bibel Keilinschriften und Koran und in ihrer Wirkung erkannt in den Chören der griechischen Tragödie, by D. H. Müller. 2 vols. Vienna, 1896.

Strophen und Responsion. Neue Beiträge. By D. H. Müller. Vienna, 1898. (Cf. also Felix Perles in the Wiener Zeitschrift für Kunde des Morgenlandes, X, 112, 71; and J. Zeenner in the Zeitschrift für Katholische Theologie, XX, p. 378.)

Untersuchungen zur altchristlichen Epistolographie, by D. P. Thomas M. Wehofer. Vienna, 1901.

Ancient Quarry near Jerusalem