The often fragmentary Aramaic texts preserved by the Qumran community represent a large collection of well edited texts, whose publications have triggered numerous contributions that have brought a significantly clearer understanding of them. Little attention, however, has been devoted to the poetic structure of these Aramaic texts, much less on Aramaic literature as a whole. This study presents a model for the analysis of Aramaic poetry as well as a detailed poetic discussion of six Aramaic texts within the Qumran collection. These texts are: 1) 4Q246, The Son of God text; 2) 4QLevia, a portion of the wisdom poem in the Aramaic Levi Document; 3) 4Q534, The Elect of God text; 4) 4Q542, The Testament of Qahat; 5) 4Q541, two fragments from the Apocryphon of Levi; 6) 1QapGen, the beauty of Sarai in the Genesis Apocryphon.

Peter Lee is Associate Professor of Old Testament at Reformed Theological Seminary, Washington, D. C. He earned his PhD and MA in Semitic Languages and Literature at the Catholic University of America. He also earned a MDiv. at Westminster Seminary in California.