Search

his paper illustrates how Psalm 137 is used to address the question of suffering by Jews and Christians during various crises of faith. In Jewish tradition, the psalm has a “meta-narrative” which meant reading it as a story set in poetry, speaking to the people as a whole not only emotionally but also materially. Only in later Christian reception does the engagement with this psalm become more obviously physical; Christians tend to avoid seeing the psalm as a meta-narrative and instead select single verses or phrases from it in order to teach spiritual lessons, often through the use of “allegory”, where different words are used to speak to more individual concerns. A selective survey of Jewish and Christian approaches to suffering in the reception of Psalm 137 suggests that the Christian reception of Psalm 137 in times of suffering is distinct from the Jewish one. Whereas early Jewish readings had a more corporate and physical emphasis, as crisis after crisis threatened the identity of the Jews as a people, early Christian readings are more personal and spiritualised, heightened through the use of allegory. https://doi.org/10.17159/2312-3621/2019/v32n2a11

This chapter examines six poetic books, under the headings of liturgical poetry (Psalms, Lamentations), dramatic poetry (Job, Song), and didactic poetry (Proverbs, Ecclesiastes). It assesses, first, the particular features of all biblical poetry, in terms of style and formal structures, and, second, the reasons for ascribing these six books as postexilic works. Each book is then discussed in detail. Particular attention is paid to their poetic style and structures, to their compilation as a whole, and to their reception history: the latter in particular testifies to an ongoing “performative” potential, whether for the synagogue, church, classroom, theatre, concert hall, or as a work of art. The chapter concludes that each book shares several poetic features in common, but what really unites them is their detachment from any single spatial or temporal setting, each being “timeless” as literature and so “universal” in use.

Les psaumes 90-92 font partie de la quatrieme section du Psautier, ou la figure de Moise a une place importante. L’article etudie l’histoire de la reception juive et chretienne des trois psaumes, tant dans les textes, commentaires ou poemes, que dans la liturgie, l’iconographie ou la musique. La figure du Dieu refuge et protecteur du mal traverse les Ps 90-91 dans les lectures juive et chretienne, alors que le Ps 92, lie a la liturgie du shabbat, est peu commente par la tradition chretienne. Au-dela de leur enracinement dans l’histoire biblique, ces psaumes, dans l’epaisseur de leur reception, entrainent leur lecteur dans une conversation multiculturelle.

This paper discusses biblical poetry in relation to the ancient Greek-Latin tradition of lyric poetry. Since the Greek word »lyric« and the Hebrew word »psalterion« each have musical connotations, there must be some connection between biblical psalmody and lyric poetry. Indeed, the liturgical superscriptions of many psalms and the numerous hints to musical instruments and singing within them suggest that many texts were originally used for accompaniment to music and so could be seen as ›lyric poetry‹ in the strictest sense. There are, of course, key differences between ancient and biblical lyric poetry. Hebrew poems are formally marked not so much by metre or rhyme as by more general conventions of sonority and word-play, perhaps to facilitate memorisation. Furthermore, Hebrew poetry is particularly recognizable by its balanced expression of thought, a ›parallelism‹ which includes repeated or contrasting ideas and figurative language. This feature is also evident in some Hebrew prose: this ›blurring of the boundaries‹ between prose and poetry is another feature which distinguishes biblical poetry from ancient Greek or Latin lyric poetry. One other distinctive feature of psalmody is that, although rooted in the liturgy of the first Temple (950–587 BCE), and developing in the liturgy of the second Temple period, it continued to thrive even after the fall of the Temple in 70 CE. The liturgical use of the psalms resulted in its continual prominence throughout Jewish and Christian history; and because the essence of Hebrew poetry is more dependent on sense than sound this has also enabled a rich tradition of translation. So Hebrew psalmody is ›re-invented‹ through the several Greek, Latin, and Aramaic versions, as well as through the many languages of the early modern period, right up to the contemporary vernacular. In this sense psalmody is unusual: unlike ancient classical poetry it provides an ongoing and living tradition for a community of faith.

La première partie de l’article définit la réception de l’histoire et son rôle. J’explique son lien avec la critique historique et son intérêt pour l’histoire du texte et avec la critique littéraire et son intérêt pour l’attitude du lecteur face au texte. Puis je mets en lumière cinq types de réception de l’histoire – exégèse, ouvrages de piété, liturgie, traduction et représentation esthétique. En divisant l’histoire de la réception en six périodes, de la monarchie davidique à aujourd’hui, on dispose d’une manière de déterminer quand et pourquoi ces cinq types ont été utilisés dans les traditions juive et chrétienne. Dans la seconde partie, ce modèle est appliqué au Psaume 1, un psaume profondément personnel où s’affirme la confiance en Dieu seul. On peut voir, à travers des traductions, des interprétations, l’art et la musique, comment cette expression de la foi a été utilisée à tort, à la fois dans la tradition juive et dans la tradition chrétienne, de Qumran jusqu’à la Réforme, pour promouvoir la supériorité d’une foi sur l’autre. Mais deux lectures contemporaines du Psaume 1, juive et chrétienne, montrent comment une lecture plus irénique et réconciliatrice du psaume commence à prévaloir. Ainsi, l’histoire de la réception offre une perspective unique d’approche biblique, ce dont le Psaume 1 fournit un bel exemple. The first part of the paper explains what reception history is about and its role. I explain how it is related to ‘historical criticism’, with its interest in the history of the text, as well as to ‘literary criticism’, with its interest in the reader’s response to the text. I then highlight five types of reception history – exegesis, devotional works, liturgy, translation and aesthetic representation. I show how, by dividing reception history into six periods, from the Davidic monarchy up to the present day, we have a way of assessing when and why these five types were used, both in Jewish and Christian tradition. The second part of the paper applies this model to Psalm 1. I emphasise, firstly, that this is a deeply personal psalm which affirms trust in God alone. I then show how, through translations, exegesis, art and music, this expression of faith has been misused, in both Jewish and Christian reception history, from Qumran up to the Reformation, to promote the superiority of one faith over the other. I conclude with two contemporary Jewish and Christian readings of Psalm 1 in order to illustrate how a more irenic and conciliatory reading of this psalm is now beginning to prevail. My conclusion is that reception history can offer a unique perspective on the biblical texts, and that Psalm 1 is a good example of this.

It is impossible to read the first fifteen chapters of Exodus alongside the royal psalms and Zion hymns in the Psalter without noticing that very different perceptions of Israel's beginnings co-existed in the pre-exilic period. The Moses-Egypt tradition is about a wandering people, deprived of land and status, living under the promise of the protection offered by a nomadic clan-god; whilst the David-Zion tradition, fundamental to so many psalmists, concerns an established nation, a royal state cult which ratifies claims to land and status through its deity ‘housed’ in a Temple. And yet the Exodus tradition is used in a handful of psalms: the question thus arises — what purpose does it serve? Furthermore, why should the psalmists use such an anomalous tradition in this way?

In July 2006 the discovery of an early ninth century Psalter, still in its original binding, at Fadden More Bog, north Tipperary, was hailed by Patrick Wallace, Director of the National Museum of Ireland, as the greatest find ever to come from a European bog. Trinity College Dublin, attributed to Pope Gregory, which contains the psalms from 3:7-144:11, the division into ?Three Fifties' is created by the Pater Noster which occurs after Pss. 50 and 100. Looking at the first and last psalms not only within the Psalter as a whole but also within each of the ?Three Fifties' can similarly help us to assess the theological themes of the whole of that division, as Nancy de Claisse-Walford (1997) has demonstrated with respect to the fivefold division of the Psalter. Keywords:Ireland; ninth century Psalter; Pater Noster ; Psalms; Three Fifties

This paper has been the result of teaching and comparing two very different Old Testament texts, both of which are concerned with the relationship between God and the created order. One is Genesis 1, with its priestly concerns for harmony within the created order; the other is the book of Amos, where one encounters a profoundly pessimistic view of the coming disorder throughout the natural world. In making associations between these two texts, one cannot help but ask why the earlier reflections in Amos offer such aradical and developed understandingof God's relationship with creation — quite distinct from the view of God evidenced in the first chapter of Genesis.