On Friday afternoon I will be reading a paper I wrote about Psalm 102 at the Mid-Atlantic Regional SBL conference in New Brunswick, NJ. I will not know anyone there, so hopefully I will be able to meet some OT guys. I’ve put my paper online, so if you want access go here. If you do read it I would appreciate some feedback via comments. When I get back I’ll write out how it all went.
Andy
For the past few Christmases I have posted a little note about the season, influenced by what I’ve learned over the last year. This year, I have spent a lot of time in the Psalter, a book which begins with a lot of complaining, but in the end calls us to a posture of praise. In a time of the year when we celebrate the birth of our King, we must come to terms with the fact that his birth meant the death of other children born around the same time he was, from the same town, with a life much like his own. His birth meant that everything was going to change. His birth meant that there would be change, but not right away – not soon enough for a lot of folks. Was it soon enough for those parents who had their little children murdered by Herod? Was it soon enough for the leprous who would die a few years before a grown Jesus would be able to heal them? When would the peace come? When would the “good will to all men” actually come?
Tonight will be the final class of the class I am teaching at Peters Creek Baptist on the Book of Genesis. We’ve spent ten weeks going over the book, and I have been encouraged by both the questions asked and the reception of the message from the book. As a way to preserve the class, I have been posting audio recordings of the sessions, as well as the class notes and several handouts I prepared to better appreciate the text. These are available to all you if you are interested. Just hover you mouse over the “Salt and Light” tab above and click on “Genesis” to be taken to the page. You’ll also notice a “Psalms” link as well. That will take you to the material from a class I taught this summer, also at PCBC.
I’ve been thinking a lot about the shape of the Psalter recently. For quite a while I’ve even thought that finding a principle of arrangement for the Book of Psalms is a near, if not full blown, impossibility. No one that I’ve read has seemed to figure it out, and Gerald Wilson pretty much closed all doors to psalm authorship or psalm genre as the principle behind the book’s structure. Or did he?
As I’ve been studying Book V (Psalms 107-150), the Songs of Ascent (120-134) stick out like a sore thumb. They are the only complete genre collection into the entire Psalter. Wilson even noted them in one of his early articles:
It’s funny how pieces of a puzzle start to fit together and light bulbs start going off in your head. A bunch went off for me tonight, and I’d like to share some brief comments on them.
Though I’m skipping over a large portion of Book I, I will return there in a later post. Here, I would like to offer an hypothesis about the progression of thought in Book Two of the Psalter. Though some scholars see nothing to profit from such a pursuit (such as Tremper Longman III), to me it seems like a fruitful endeavor that produces some interesting insights into the movement and message of the Psalter (see the work done e.g by Cole, Miller, Howard for others who agree).
Looking back at my blog again, I’ve realized that it has been a few weeks since I’ve last posted anything. This was not planned, but has been the result of much busyness in my life. I began a five-week look at the Psalter at my church last Wednesday (7/1), which has reduced my free time to just about zero. It has been exciting preparing the teaching, and I’ve thoroughly enjoyed the classes so far. I’m also putting up all the files from the class on here. Just click on the page above all the way to the left.
I recently had a great conversation with my former advisor, Dr. Robert Cole (prominent Psalm scholar), about the meaning of the opening psalms, and he raised some great points that I need to think through, and thought I might pass on for you to think through as well. As I’m recollecting a conversation in which I did not even take notes, I only hope that my memory serves me correct.
At this point I thought it might be helpful to summarize briefly what the movement and message of the Psalter has been through Psalm 14.
I ended a previous post by commenting on a tentative grouping of psalms 9-15. Since then, I’ve adjusted my view just a bit to what seems to be a more accurate, but still tentative structure. Broadly, the pattern works as follows: Psalms 3-7 with 8 as a response to the plea for deliverance, Psalms 9-13 with 14 as a response to this second group about the righteous, and then 15-24 as a section that seeks to answer how men can ascend the mountain of the Lord (15.1; 24.3). Quite to my surprise, Fee and Stuart’s little book How to Read the Bible Book by Book (Zondervan, 2002) has been of great help, and has confirmed a number of ideas I had had about these opening psalms. Hopefully their insights will continue to be of help. As a side note, I loved their dedication to the book, which ended with, “that they may read the Story well and love Him whose Story it is” — may all Bible scholars have such a goal!
Your Responses