'Seamingly' important Psalms

Författare

David Willgren

Summary, in English

The starting point of my paper is the observation that the methodological foundation for reading the Book of Psalms as a book is still somewhat wanting. This is not to say that it should not be read as a book, rather that there exists some confusion as to how the (supposedly intentional) ‘final’ message is conveyed. Synchronic readings, focusing the theology of the entire book, are not always kept distinct from diachronic considerations, questions of how individual psalms relate to the whole collection is not always made clear, and the (perhaps most important) question regarding how intention or purpose is to be detected is seldom touched upon. Divergence in approaches to these issues are often great, seen in particular as one e.g. compares the work of Gerald H Wilson to the work of Erich Zenger, and consequently, this needs some further consideration.

So, after a brief presentation of commonalities, but foremost differences, between some main contributors to the understanding of the ‘shape’ of the Book of Psalms (e.g. the works of W Brueggemann, J Creach, N L deClaissé-Walford, P W Flint, S Gillingham, F-L Hossfeld, D M Howard, J L Mays, J C McCann Jr, D C Mitchell, G T Sheppard, G H Wilson, E Zenger, and others), I intend to tackle the question of ‘seamingly’ important psalms (the misspelling being intentional). Dealing with this fundamental question of which psalms (or parts of psalms) that ought to be considered in a discussion on the final ‘shape’ of the collec- tion, or, in other words, the question of what actually constitutes a ‘seam’, will prove vital to any discussion of the ‘purpose’ of the collection, as well as to my own doctoral project, since it very much affects the selection of psalms to be studied.

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