A Verse Fitly Spoken: Embedded Poetry in Tibat Marqe

Marqe ben Amram remains the single most influential Samaritan author from late antiquity. His legacy includes both a substantial body of liturgical poetry in Samaritan Aramaic as well as the major prose work of the classical Samaritan period, Tibat Marqe (“the anthology of Marqe,” also known as Memar Marqe). Conventionally, these two bodies of work--poetry and exegesis--are treated separately, with one read through the lens of prayer and ritual and the other as a form of exegesis akin to midrash. However, embedded within Tibat Marqe, a number of clearly poetic passages can be discerned. These “exegetical poems” are distinct from Marqe’s liturgical compositions in both style and function, but offer another sense of poetic aesthetics and function in Samaritan antiquity. In this paper, I will present a variety of poetic passages from Tibat Marqe, and I will address questions such as how we can discern poetry from prose in such a work, explore how these poems differ from Marqe’s liturgical poetry, and consider what function poetry may serve in such a work.