Journal: Tyndale Bulletin
Volume: TYNBUL 71:2 (NA 2020)
Article: The Antiquity Of Psalter Shape Efforts
Author: Steffen G. Jenkins

TynBull 71:2 (2020) p. 161

The Antiquity Of Psalter Shape Efforts

Steffen Jenkins

([email protected])

Summary

In recent decades, Psalms scholarship has paid increasing attention to the overall editorial arrangement of the book of Psalms, and to the placement of individual psalms as their literary context. An obvious objection to this enterprise is its novelty, especially since the Psalms have enjoyed unparalleled exegetical attention in the history of Christian and Jewish exegesis. This objection is fed by the nearly ubiquitous inaccurate presentation of Psalter-shape readings as originating in 1985 with Gerald Wilson. While Wilson has changed the landscape and is deservedly named as the recent ancestor of this project, that history is inaccurate. We will show that a desire to understand the shape of the whole Psalter, and its editorial intention, can be dated to the second century, leading through various stages to full-length commentaries following this approach being attempted in the nineteenth century. Finally, without detracting from Wilson’s unique contribution, we will show that he was not alone in his own day but that others were engaged in this task concurrently and in the decades before him.

1. Introduction

1.1 Psalter Shape: A Renewed, But Not New, Project

As is well known, the last thirty-five years have seen a renewed focus on the book of Psalms as the literary context of individual psalms, and this is usually traced to the ground-breaking work of Gerald Wilson.1 An obvious objection to this approach is its absence from the sustained attention which the Psalms have enjoyed in the history of Christian and

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Jewish exegesis: ‘[O]ne has to seriously question any new insight like this that has not been recognized over the millennia of previous interpretation.’2 Without denying that Wilson has changed the landscape, this article will seek to show that the attempt at understanding the Psalter’s deliberate arrangement is no innovation.

This article is not an attempt to detract from Wilson’s genius, but the opposite. He brought a rigour to the discipline, and some unique additions in methodology. He made use of data not previously applied to the problem: ancient Near Eastern temple hymn collections and the variegated psalm collections in the Dead Sea Scrolls. Wilson’s distinctive contribution is hard to overstate. Nonetheless, there is a danger of dismissing Wilson, and the methods he has made mainstream, by painting him as idiosyncratic and his ambitions as without precedent. In this article, I will argue that the narrative...