RELIGIOUS ENCYCLOPEDIA
Psalms
accidental, it is part of a system; it is consonant with the substitution of Adonai for the tetragrammaton Yhwh by the Masoretes, the difference is that the Chronicler did not hesitate to change the text; the Masoretes did not change this, but made their alterations in the margin. But a fact of importance is that the latest books become Jehovistic once more. In many cases the use of Elohim must be ascribed not to the poets but to the redactor. The two Davidic collections named show one the Jehovistic and the other the Elohistic trend. When it is seen that the Asaphic and Korahitic collections are prevailingly Elohistic, it may seem that the Elohistic character of Pss. li.-lxxii. may have been gained from contact with the neighboring Psalms. Books four and five are much mixed. Along with many which have Davidic superscriptions are many anonymous, and with these the pilgrim psalms. In view of the various classes of poems here collected, it seems as though a collector had chosen from the various sources at his command such pieces as seemed to him worthy and suitable to transmit to the future.
These data permit a view of the probable course of development of the Psalter. It appears that a Jehovistic redactor made a first collection of Davidic songs. An Elohistic redactor made 2. The from three or four prior collections (a Process of Davidic, a Korahitic, and an Asaphic Collection, book), an Elohistic collection, to which as an appendix were attached various ethical pieces. A Jehovistic redactor made, out of various smaller aggregations such as the Pilgrim Psalms (cxx.-cxxxiv.), the Hallelujah psalms (cxi. sqq., and cxlvi.-cl.), the royal psalms (xciii.-xcix.), and perhaps an independent Davidic collection — not to speak of other sources or aggregations — the collection which forms books four and five of the present Psalter. These three aggregations were then united, after an independent existence of uncertain duration, into one book, with Ps. i. or Pss. i.-ii. as preface, these two psalms together giving the two points of view of the whole Psalter, the Law, and the Messiah. If this view of the growth ' of the Psalter is correct, it follows that the division into five books is not of early origin, but came about in imitation of the fivefold division of the Torah or Law. The relative age of the individual selections and the origin of the Psalter as a whole can be ascertained with only approximation to certainty. Indications are found in the fact that in the first (and oldest) book there exist exilic and postexilic compositions; in other words, this was not collected before the time of Ezra. If there were preexilic psalms in greater number, they must either have existed in a special collection now lost, or they persisted as individual compositions until the collector of the first book included them in his aggregation.
So far as the terminus ad quern is concerned, the translators of the Septuagint found the Psalter existing not in scattered aggregations but as a whole. Still, it is not possible to say when the translation into Greek was made, and thus no absolute date is attainable. William Robertson Smith thought to obtain indications from the history of the temple singers and of the personnel of the attendants of that
institution. He rightly infers that the superscriptions to the Asaphic and Korahitic psalms are weighty evidences which indicate that 3. The these psalms were once a collection or Date. hymn-book of a gild named after the1 master, whose concern was with the musical setting. Further evidence he thinks is found in the Chronicler's work, showing that in the latter's period there were three gilds of singers, those of Asaph, Heman, and Ethan (or Jeduthun), which were reckoned to the three great Levite families of Gerson, Kohath, and Merari. The Psalter is aware of Korah as a leader of a gild alongside of Asaph; but the Korahitic gild is believed by Smith to be one of doorkeepers in the Chronicler's time, while the Asaphic gild is carried by him back to the time of the return (Ezra x. 23-24; Neh. vii. 1, 73). So that the Asaphic and Korahitic psalms are to be placed earlier than the Chronicler and later than Nehemiah — between 430 and 300 B.C. Under Nehemiah Korah does not yet name a gild of singers; at the time of the Chronicler the gild has ceased to be such. On the other hand, a degradation of the Korahites is unlikely, since that period favored rather the elevation of the minor orders, and the retention of the Korah titles in the psalms speaks against it; though such degradation is not impossible under the influence of the story of Korah in the Pentateuch. The general situation in Chronicles does not permit of regarding the Asaphites as the one gild of singers, though they occupy the prominent place in the Chronicler's account; he knows also of the Korahites and Ethanites. The Korahites appear, however, as doorkeepers, but this is hardly to be thought of as the result of a degradation of the gild. The collections of the Asaphic and Korahitic hymn-books appear to have arisen, therefore, soon after 300 b.c. With this agrees the Elohistic character of those collections, thus comporting well with the same characteristic found in the Chronicler. From this same point of view would then be located the Elohistic Davidic collection, Pss. li.lxxii. Of course this says nothing of the date of the individual psalms. In the time after the Chronicler and up to the period of the Septuagint and Sirach the Elohistic tendency was submerged; this accounts for the strongly Jehovistic character of books four and five.
IV. The Ego of the Psalms: The question of the person speaking in the psalms takes its place in Old-Testament exegesis with the problem of the " I " of Job and of Deutero-Isaiah, and the tendency is to see in the pronoun a collective. It is natural to expect to see in this " I " the author, and in not a few cases this is unquestionably right. 1. Varied But in early times even there was a Explana- tendency to see in the pronoun not an tions. individual but the community. Thus Theodore of Mopsuestia held that David had, in many psalms ascribed to him, entered into and expressed the soul of the people; and this opinion has at intervals since been several times repeated. The man of modern times who restated this proposition is Olshausen, who regards the " I " of many psalms to be the personified community, the expression of individual experience being taken
Psalms