The Early History Of The Psalter -- By: Roger T. Beckwith

Journal: Tyndale Bulletin
Volume: TYNBUL 46:1 (NA 1995)
Article: The Early History Of The Psalter
Author: Roger T. Beckwith


The Early History Of The Psalter

Roger T. Beckwith

Summary

The Psalms are full of references to music, Jerusalem and the sanctuary. Chronicles, Ezra and Nehemiah say they were being performed there by the Levites, and the titles (which have a marked community of ideas and language with those books, though without dependence) endorse this. The division into five books pre-dates the LXX version, but there are many indications, in the text and titles, of a still earlier division into three. The meaning of the musical directions and other technical terms in the titles had been forgotten, in Semitic circles as well as Hellenistic, before the LXX version was made. Since, after the Exile, the Psalms were being performed continuously, this suggests that the titles are even pre-exilic. The final component of the titles has its own history. The eccentric Psalms MSS from Qumran are probably liturgical adaptations.

The article is followed by a tabular analysis of the psalm-titles.

I. Introduction

The external form of the Book of Psalms is unique in the Bible. It consists of 150 separate items (occasionally counted as slightly fewer, where pairs of psalms are run together), divided into five books, the last psalm of each book ending with a doxology which belongs as much to the book as it does to the psalm, if not more. The whole of the last psalm serves as the fifth doxology. 116 of the psalms (and more still in the Greek) are preceded by a title.

The psalms are all religious in character and poetical in form. In roughly a third of them, drawn from various parts of the Psalter, the predominant sentiments are of praise and thanksgiving, in another third petition, and in the remaining third instruction, meditation, confession of faith or confession of sin. In few of them, however, are

the sentiments exclusively of one kind: rather, the psalmist moves from one sort of devotion to another. The book is known in Hebrew by the name tĕhillîm (‘praises’), a term which frequently occurs in the text of the psalms, as does tĕphillôt (‘prayers’), also. Various technical names for different types of psalm are found in the psalm-titles: mizmōr (‘melody’), šîr (‘song’), maskîl (‘contemplative poem’), and miktām (perhaps ‘psalm of protection’).1 The distinctions between these are very imperfectly understood: even with a word like maskîl, which seems to have a plain root-derivation, it is ...

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