1839. An English divine and Orientalist, Lowth's Lectures on the Sacred Poetry of the Hebrews, exercised a great influence both in England and on the continent. Their chief importance lay in the idea of looking at Old Testament poetry as poetry, and examining it by the ordinary standards of literary criticism. Lowth's presented a new paradigm with his focus on the importance of parallelism of lines. But new studies of the past decade suggest significant adjustments be applied to Lowth's analyses.