The Assyrian and Hebrew Hymns of Praise
9781465642677
265 pages
Library of Alexandria
Overview
The Book of Psalms is no longer to be regarded by Old Testament scholars as an isolated phenomenon. Similar religious poetry is found not only in the narrative and prophetic portions of the Old Testament, in the Apocrypha, and the New Testament, but also in the literatures of Egypt, Babylonia, Persia, India, and Greece. Indeed, wherever religion really develops beyond the primitive stage, it expresses itself in poetry and we get something comparable to the Hebrew psalms. One primary fact, then, to be considered in the study of the Old Testament psalms is that they are only the surviving fragments of the religious poetry of a race; and that they have been preserved partly by reason of the literary merit that made it difficult for them to be forgotten, and partly by reason of the fact that they happened to be included in the song books of the sanctuaries. One must accordingly bear constantly in mind the larger literature of which they were a part, and employ to a legitimate degree the imagination, in order to rightly comprehend the life out of which the psalms have come, and to see in any true perspective the significance of the surviving psalms. Furthermore, it is now to be clearly recognized that the careful philological study of words and sentences, and the further effort to determine the date and authorship of the psalms, while always indispensable, are yet inadequate methods of procedure. It is true that again and again fixing with philological accuracy the meaning of a word or clause is the clue to the understanding of a psalm, yet to arrive at any just appreciation of the psalms it is absolutely necessary to classify them scientifically on the basis of their similarities and dissimilarities, and so to arrange them in the species or groups into which they naturally fall. It is then possible to compare psalm with psalm within the species, fixing as nearly as possible the type and noting every variation from the type. In this way the eye of the reader is opened to the originality and literary beauty of particular psalms, which originality and literary beauty are in turn the expression of the uniqueness and power of the psalmist’s spiritual experience. It may also be suggested that another principle of investigation should prove fruitful, namely, an attempt to arrange the groups of psalms, and the individual psalms within the groups, according to the principle of development from the lower to the higher stages of religious experience. Of course opinions may and do differ as to what is highest in religion, but the student of religion may never cease in his effort to find the line of development and to determine the highest. Since then the psalms are almost exclusively religious literature, and since the supreme motive for studying them is to gain the more complete understanding of religion, it is necessary to arrange the psalms in ascending order, so that one can more readily appraise the worth of religion in them, and determine and properly appreciate that which is most precious.
