Like a Garden of Flowers : A Study of the Formation of the 'Book' of Psalms

This is a study of the formation of the ‘Book’ of Psalms that attempts to provide answers to two fundamental questions: “how?” and “why?”. The first relates to the diachronic growth of the collection (how are these processes to be reconstructed, and on what grounds?), while the second relates to questions of purpose (to what end are psalms being juxtaposed in a collection?). Proceeding from a review of the research on these intertwined issues (not least the ground-breaking work of Gerald H. Wilson), David Willgren argues that one fundamental aspect is still in need of consideration, namely to understand what is designated by the term ‘book’ in relation to the ‘Book’ of Psalms. What kind of collection does it imply? By conceptualizing the ‘Book’ of Psalms as an anthology, and by inquiring into its poetics by means of paratextuality, Willgren reframes the current discussion, and relates the formation process(es) to ancient material and scribal cultures. After a chapter on comparative ancient anthologies, he provides an overview of the ‘psalms’ scrolls from the Judean Desert, followed by an analysis of possible paratexts (prefaces, superscriptions, colophons, doxologies, etc.). Then, he searches for traces of collections of psalms in texts ranging from the Hebrew Bible up until the second century CE. Relating these observations to each other, Willgren provides a fresh reconstruction of the formation of the ‘Book’ of Psalms and concludes, in contrast to the canonical approach, that the ‘Book’ of Psalms does not primarily provide a literary context for individual psalms. Rather, it preserves a dynamic selection of psalms that is best seen not as a book of psalms, but as a canon of psalms

An Elusive String

The starting point for this paper is the conclusions reached in the paper presented at the last OTSEM conference. There, I claimed that the methodological foundation for reading the Book of Psalms as a book was somewhat wanting, that synchronic readings, focusing the theology of the entire book, were not always kept distinct from diachronic considerations, and that ultimately, the question of what kind of collection the Book of Psalms constituted had to be reexamined. As a possible way forward I then proposed that one idea worth further attention was the notion of the Book of Psalms as anthology, and my aim with this paper is to expand on that idea. Proceeding from three overlapping definitions of anthologies by literary scholars, I first describe some main characteristics of anthologies, followed by a discussion of whether the Book of Psalms could be regarded as anthology

Women, Power, and the Bible in Early Anabaptist History

The article argues that the way Anabaptist history and theology is commonly narrated needs to be reshaped. A fundamental question is asked: Did women have positions of power in the early Anabaptist movement? Two points are considered: 1) How is power understood? and 2) On what premises can the history of Anabaptist women be written? These two points are put in relation to portraits of three women – Margret Hottinger, Helene von Freyberg, and Elisabeth Dirks – who represent three fundamental ways in which women related to power and authority in the early years of the movement. The article concludes that the way the stories of early Anabaptist women have usually been told are often both highly tendentious and failing to assess the authority of women on the basis of an Anabaptist theology of power. At the same time, the early movement employed a flat biblical hermeneutic that lead to a failure to process the subversive use of power and authority and the theological potential of the Anabaptist critique of the sword in relation to their own families and communities

A Frozen Colophon in Ps 72?

The colophon in Ps 72:20 has long been puzzling psalm scholars. It reads כלו תפלות דוד בן־ישי—the prayers of David, son of Jesse, are ended—and as such it raises a number of questions. The first observation to be made is that the word תפלה is used, not תהלה. That this is a potential problem is clear already in the LXX, where תפלה is corrected to ὕμνοι. Secondly, the claim that the prayers of David are ended is not true in a literal sense since there are several psalms attributed to David after Ps 72. Thirdly, Ps 72 is not attributed to David but to Solomon. Fourth, the colophon is placed after the doxology concluding the second book in the Book of Psalm, and the last, perhaps most puzzling observation is that the colophon is placed in the midst of the collection often identified as the Elohistic Psalter (EP, Pss 42–83). To solve these difficulties, a number of suggestions have been pre- sented, but I will in this paper suggest that a neat solution is provided if the problem is approached with insights gained from research on scribal habits and material culture. Departing from scholars as e.g. H. Gamble, W.A. Johnson and E. Tov, I claim that the colophon of Ps 72 is likely to be understood not as the conclusion of a collection, but as a frozen scribal colophon, originally inteded to “close” the scroll. A direct analogy to such a fixation of a colophon is found in the Sumerian Temple Hymns