The Shape and Shaping of the Book of Psalms: The Current State of Scholarship (Ancient Israel and Its Literature)
Language: English
Pages: 284
ISBN: 1628370017
Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub
A new and innovative way to approach the Psalter that moves beyond form and cult-functional criticism
Drawing inspiration from Gerald H. Wilson's The Editing of the Hebrew Psalter, this volume explores questions of the formation of the Psalter from the perspective of canonical criticism. Though called canonical criticism, the study actually employs a number of historically traditional and nontraditional approaches to reading the text including form criticism, historical criticism of individual psalms as well as of the whole Psalter, and redaction criticism.
Features:
- Exploration of theological viewpoints, sovereignty, and the shape and shaping of Psalms
- Examination of the impact of canonical criticism on the study of the Psalter
- Sixteen essays from the Book of Psalms Consultation group and invited scholars
An Altar in the World: A Geography of Faith
Dominion of God: Christendom and Apocalypse in the Middle Ages
Love, Sex, Fear, Death: The Inside Story of The Process Church of the Final Judgment
Secular Wholeness: A Skeptic's Paths To A Richer Life
The affirmation of God’s kingship that lies at the theological and editorial heart of the Psalter is more than a theological metaphor and more than a sapiential alternative to Davidic ideology. Above all, it is an inherently political utterance that strikes at the heart of the legitimacy of foreign occupiers to rule over Israel, and it constitutes a rallying cry for resistance to their dominion. To be sure, the enemies in the Psalms are a diverse group, and not all of them reside outside Israel’s
her life in reverence of YHWH, imitating the righteousness of YHWH in Ps 111.28 Wealth becomes a way to a happy life if it is shared with others by lending without interest and by gracefully giving to the poor. This twin pair of psalms together teaches that the gracious and charitable rich person becomes an “imitator” of the righteous and caring God of Israel. What remains to be done in this paper is to give a short description of the form and message of Ps 112; determine its literary context;
words is that in every case in which an imperative form of the verb עורis employed, where God is called upon—commanded—to awaken, to rise up, there is clear indication of a “contention” with God, an accusation leveled against God; in other words these psalms entail a ִריבcarried out (in a reversal of the motif as it is found in the eighth-century prophets), even when the word itself does not occur. Furthermore, in every case this ִריבis set in tension with the portrayal of YHWH as Divine
Blumenthal argues in Facing the Abusing God (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 1993), Wiesel’s play ‘is a modern rereading of the Book of Job,’ it is also a rereading of the book of Jeremiah, many of the psalms, and much of the tradition, all of which are centrally expressing the cry, ‘Why?’” Online: http://people.bu.edu/trialofg/brown1.html. jacobson: Perhaps YHWH Is Sleeping 145 Schaefer, Konrad. Psalms. Berit Olam. Collegeville, Minn.: Liturgical, 2001. Weiser, Artur. The Psalms. OTL.
cherubim (Ps 99:1), and is great in Zion and elevated above all the peoples who proclaim their thanks (Ps 99:3). Having established the awesome nature of God, now firmly enthroned and acknowledged by all peoples, the psalm turns from the universal to the particular, the special relationship with Israel, a relationship bound up with concepts of justice and righteousness that YHWH has given to them (v. 4). It is as if after all this public rejoicing and acknowledgement of God by nature itself and