These original essays study ritual languages and parallelism (the strict ordering of words phrases in alternative, duplicate form). The introduction puts the topic in historical perspective and what was once viewed as a composition form unique to ancient Hebrew is now seen as a feature common to literatures around the world. Here is the first book to compare in detail living traditions of parallel composition. Yet, despite the diversity of languages discussed by the contributors, their materials are drawn from a single cultural area still unknown to most specialists: Eastern Indonesia. All the essays contain original texts with translations amd with detailed commentary on both content and context.
