Sermon Tone Analysis

AUGUSTINE QUOTE

Although the arrangement of the Psalms, which seems to me to contain the secret of a mighty mystery, hath not yet been revealed unto me, yet, by the fact that they in all amount to one hundred and fifty, they suggest somewhat even to us, who have not as yet pierced with the eye of our mind the depth of their entire arrangement, whereon we may without being over-bold, so far as God giveth, be able to speak.

Augustine of Hippo, “Expositions on the Book of Psalms,” in Saint Augustin: Expositions on the Book of Psalms, ed.

Philip Schaff, trans.

A. Cleveland Coxe, vol.

8, A Select Library of the Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers of the Christian Church, First Series (New York: Christian Literature Company, 1888), 681.

Schaff, Philip, ed.

Saint Augustin: Expositions on the Book of Psalms.

Vol. 8.

A Select Library of the Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers of the Christian Church, First Series.

New York: Christian Literature Company, 1888.

Barshinger, David P. Jonathan Edwards and the Psalms: A Redemptive-Historical Vision of Scripture.

Oxford University Press;Oxford, NY. 2014.

Jonathan Edwards and the Psalms

10

“Edwards held that the book of Psalms should be appropriated “as the language of Christ and the Christian Church,” for indeed it “was made use in the public worship in Christian assemblies, from the beginning of the Christian church.”

26

Edwards took a redemptive-historical approach to the Psalms.

Edwards used literal, typological, Christological, and other “methods” of interpretation, none of these methods orients all the others to his interpretive purpose or captures what he was actually doing in his work on the Psalms.

Edwards rather used various methods as tools that were guided by his broad redemptive-historical understanding of the Psalms.

Snearly, Michael K. The Return of the King: Messianic Expectation in Book V of the Psalter.

New York, NY: Bloomsbury T & T Clark, 2016.

1

The editorial-critical method—draws from recent insights in the field of poetics and text-linguistics in order to establish a linguistically based foundation for reading the Psalter as a unified text.

The methodology can best be described as an eclectic method that emphasizes parallel features, with special focus on key-word links….

This method advances editorial criticism by not only discerning links within group but also showing that those links do not occur with the same frequency outside the group.

The method used to drive at these conclusions presupposes that parallelism extends beyond the literary level of the poem to include larger sections of text.

3

…there is a story line in the book.

4

Essentially, the Psalter teaches that the a heavenly king who has appointed an earthly vice-regent to establish his kingdom in a world of unruly kings.

11

Roland Murphy is unconvinced that the Psalter can be read as a book with a literary context.

(MN look at the Shape and Shaping article he has: 23

He contends that even if an association between two psalms can be determined on literary grounds, the benefits for interpreter are negligible.

John Goldingay rejects the notion that the Psalter is a “coherent literary whole” and thus it “does not have a structure that helps us get a handle on its contents, as the structure of Genesis or Isaiahhelps us grasp the whole and the parts.”

(Psalms vol 1. 36.)

Goldingay instead believes that form criticism is a more fruitful discipline because it sets the psalms in their most natural context—the way in which they portray interaction with God.

Norman Whybray concludes that, “There is no evidence that there was a systematic and purposeful redaction of the whole Psalter in any of the suggested ways.”

(Whybry “Reading the Psalms as a Book” 119

12

MKS—Whybry expects too much by demanding proof of textual manipulation.

Responding to Tremper Longmann’s question about “indicators built into the text” MKS states “there is not even punctuation in the earliest manuscripts, so why would we assume that there would be textual indicators of groupings.

Furthermore, the desire for explicit redactional manipulation of the texts themselves should be tempered by the obscure terms in the superscriptions, why would we expect the to manipulate the texts in other ways?” (Footnote 17 pp 12-13)

13

David Mitchell’s work reveals a lengthy tradition—both Jewish and Christian—of reading the Psalms as a book (Mitchell 15-65)

DM quote “Thus a historical perspective at the end of the twentieth century seems to suggests that western scholarship from c. 1820-1970 is, in some respects, a hiatus of Psalm interpretation, during which scholarly opinion diverged sharply from what must be considered, historically speaking, the dominant views [those that propound a purposeful arrangement].”

65

Whybry even acknowledges that the Psalter has been read this way “for many centuries” 124.

13-14

Erhard Gerstenberger’s “Der Psalter als Buch und als Sammlung” is the most the most thoroughgoing critique of editorial criticism.

“whoever one-sidedly emphasizes the canonical final form of the biblical writings devalues, more or less, the historical origins of our faith tradition.

He/She will be inclined to set aside the historicalness of the Word of God in favor of the abiding substance and invariable authority of the unique and ultimately fixed revelation.” 3 (in Neue Wege der Psalmenforschung.

ed.

Klaus Seybold and Erich Zenger, HBS 1. Freiburg: Herder, 1994.

14

Gerstenberger contends that Words must be interpreted in their historical context and, due o their minimizing of the historical background, editorial critics neglect this important component of interpretation.

MKS response—G himself “divorces faith from history when he creates the false dichotomy that the study of an ancient text is not a historical endeavor—as if the only proper form of historical inquiry is to research the history that stands behind the text.”

“Interpretation is inherently historical because any form of a text is a historical artifact, including the final form.

Thus it must be interpreted as such, with special care given to defining words and understanding the nuances of syntax properly—that is, in their historical context.

And the historical context of a text is other contemporary literary texts.

So, while editorial critics tend to minimize the historical background of the text, this does not mean that they eschew history outright because, presumably, they are defining the words and interpreting the syntax of the text within its historical context… even if we can say nothing about the historical background of the psalms for the process of the Psalter’s redaction, we have a text.

And editorial critics seek to answer the question, “What can be said about that text?”

15

Gerstenberger questions whether a compilation of individual texts can be read as a unified text.

He states “the Psalter is possibly the book of the Old Testament that most intensely rejects an integral reading.”

While Gerstenberger grants that connections within the Psalms are indisputable he does not grant that these connections reveal intentionality.

(p 5)

16

Gerstenberger’s final conclusions: Psalms is not a “book,” the purpose of the final redaction will remain unknown because the situation of writing is unknown, Psalms should be interpreted individually, no evidence from ANE of organization of individual poems or songs being organized into a book, and finally there is worry that grand statements of purpose will overshadow what individual psalms contribute to the Psalter.

IE editorial criticism says more about the critic than the text.

17

MKS response: Ideally editorial criticism will balance the unique contribution of the individual psalm with the way in which it fits into the fabric of the whole.

Editorial criticism makes grand statements about the text that are backed up with evidence from the text.

A risk worth taking.

18

MKS-Going forward 1. Editorial critics must avoid the tendency to overreach (Wilson and deClaissé-Walford are guilty of this).

Editorial critics must instead be committed to a thorough analysis of the pertinent data—the text intself—in order to make substantive contributions to biblical studies.

2. On the opposite end Editorial critics need to learn how to apply exacting methodological controls to larger sections of the text in order to make headway in the task of explaining the editorial significance of the book as a whole (David Howard’s The Structure of is an example).

19

3 Finally, evidence must be weighed not counted.

Too often frivolous links are accumulated that either overshadow the more plausible evidence or, worse, stand in the place of genuine evidence.

(Robert Cole is guilty of former in ) Editorial critics risk the possibility of losing their audience because their evidence that supports their work presses the limits of credulity.

24

(see J Grants article in DOTWPW 3 key observations 150-151)

“of of The Book of Psalms is a book that was incorporated into the canon of the Hebrew Bible.

It is not an appendix to the Canon; it does not come with special instructions on how it should be used in public worship.

It is a part of a canon of books that was meant to be read as a book.

(see J. Grant’s quote from 149)

“the catalyst for all the schools of Psalms’ scholarship is a quest for contexts.

In what context should the individual psalms be interpreted?”

25

Helpful quote MKS “I am not arguing that editorial criticism is the way to read the Psalter, but a way.”

We can argue about which perspective of Psalms’ interpretation is more fruitful without having to argue that other schools are fruitless.

27

“The techniques that Wilson uses to structure the Psalter are more related to the binding of the whole, and not necessarily the phonological and lexical links between neighboring psalms.”

D. Howard’s 1986 dissertation clearly delineated a methodology for observing links between psalms, recognizing the linguistic and thematic links between smaller units of psalms.

Key-word links, thematic connections, and structure/genre similarities.

(book pg 100)

29

Robert Cole’s approach “Examine parallelism and repetition from the level of individual cola (where abundant phonetic or sound repetition was observed), to bicola (or occasional tricola), verse paragraphs, strophes, complete psalms, and finally the stretch of psalms from 73-89 known as Book III.”

MKS “In practice, Cole’s observations depend heavily on the word links and syntactical similarities.”

33

Jerome Creach (MKS) “contributes to the field of editorial criticism by demonstrating that it is not simply key-word links among psalms that exhibits cohesion, it is also key-word placement.

Furthermore, if one word can be interpreted as being dominant, attention should be given to its placement in the section under consideration.”

39

"Text-linguistics and poetics offer promising principles for recognizing that the Psalter is a unified text and that five criteria distinguish themselves as the soundest, most controlled ways of demonstrating links among neighboring passages.

Those five criteria are: key-word links; distant parallelism; common superscriptions; common theme; structural parallels."

45

"A text is a written communication that is both cohesive and coherent.

Some of the key elements in discerning cohesion and coherence are structure, development, repetition, and related theme.

Consequently, if the Psalter displays elements of cohesion (that is repetition and related theme) and coherence (that is, discernible structure and development), then it would meet the text-linguistic requirements for being called a text."

49

Robert Cole (The Shape of the Message of Book III, p 10) states that "It has become clear in recent years that the phenomenon of parallelism and repetition in the Psalter must be extended beyond that of individual poems to the surrounding psalms and finally the entire collection.

The ordering and shaping of the collection casts the individual psalms in a new light, even beyond that discerned through rhetorical criticism.

Such a focus moves from what the individual poem expresses to a meaning implied by the final compilation, the latter becoming a single "text."

Consequently, the study of the final shape of the Psalter is simply a recognition that parallelism is not restricted to the individual poem."

MKS--"Parallelism binds texts; the literary unity of the Psalter can be discerned by the parallels that exist within it."

85

The Psalter displays characteristics of narratively an should be interpreted as a multiple-focus narrative.

Although it is not narrative like Samuel or Kings, the Psalter as a whole should be read with an overarching narrative framework in view.

The Psalter has a beginning, middle, and end, and there is one dominant character (the royal/Davidic figure) who acts.

Therefore, the Psalter should be read with sensitivity toward the story line and literary context of the entire book.

Gordon Wenham Psalms as Torah

“I have called it Psalms as Torah out of my conviction that the psalms were and are vehicles not only of worship but also of instruction, which is the fundamental meaning of Torah, otherwise rendered “law.”