"... The corpus of ancient Yahwistic poetry has not yet been delineated in satisfactory fashion. The proper starting point is the Song of Deborah, a victory hymn, the occasion of which is known, and the approximate date quite certain, i.e., ca. 1100 B . C . Burney's study of this poem 3 is of basic importance; he described the phenomenon of climactic parallelism, a characteristic feature of the Song of Deborah, and now very familiar from the Ugaritic epics. Albright, in a subsequent treatment, 4 went further in the analysis of the metrical and strophic pattern of the poem, and also set it in the context of the comparative materials available from Mesopotamia and Egypt. The present partial study follows the lines laid out in these treatments. 5 This victory hymn, one of the oldest and most dramatic specimens of early Yahwistic poetry, belongs to the same general period as the other great victory songs so far known from the ancient world: the hymn of Rameses II after the battle with the Hittites at Kadesh, the poems describing the victory of Merneptah over the Libyans, and Rameses III over the Sea Peoples, and the victory hymn of Tukulti-Ninurta I, after his defeat of the Cossaeans. The Song of Deborah is also to be grouped with the Song of Miriam (Exodus 15) celebrating the destruction of Pharaoh's host in the Reed Sea. 6 Though this was not generally recognized by the older scholars, it is clear that the victory hymn in Exodus 15 is a literary unit. 7 It has the same antiphonal character and metrical form as the Song of Deborah ..."