THE NEW SCHAFF-HERZOG
as adequate for that of the people. But Olshausen was in this matter not with his times, and he found more opponents than supporters. Gratz attributed a great part of the Psalter to the circle of Levites which he names Anaioim. He regarded Olshausen's theory as pointing in the right direction, since the Anawim spoke for their group, and in that sense for the entire people. But this idea found acceptance only in Jewish circles. Smend gave the idea once more a general currency, and found adherents for his view. The apparent agreement of the theory with the hypothesis of the late origin of the psalms is not hard to see. It sets forth an idea of the community in its dominating force as it first appeared in later times. Olshausen was wholly logical in pleading for a late origin of the Psalter; Smend's position had been prepared by the attribution of a large part of the Old Testament to postexilic times. This in turn led easily to the conception of the community as the speaking subject of the psalms. Smend's hypothesis was strongly supported by the musical titles prefixed to many of the psalms, and he came to the conclusion that " almost without exception the community speaks " in these compositions. He holds that a priori a psalm is an expression of the community; only under direct proof is a psalm to be considered the expression of an individual. Smend's conclusions nowhere found unconditional acceptance, and many scholars entered the lists against him.
The question of the speaker in the Psalter has generally been brought into connection with the two questions of the age of the Psalter and its relation to worship, and it has been mistakenly held that the answer to one of these furnishes the answer to the others; in fact, clarity is sub- 2. Solution served when the questions are consid- Independ- ered separately. The problem of the ent of " I "of the Psalms has no necessary con- Age and nection with their age, as is shown by Purpose, the contrary answers given by Duhm; and, with limitations, the same is true of the matter of the relation to worship. The fact that the collection was made for public service gives an initial air of probability to the theory of a collective subject. An approach is made to a solution of the problem when it is considered that the Psalter is a composite made from very dissimilar elements. From what has previously been said, it is seen that a number of psalms were from the beginning designed for use in the Temple, and the probability is that the " we " in these designates the community, and that " I " is used in the sense of " we." This is analogous with the use of " thou " in the Pentateuch, where the individual is only apparently addressed, while the precepts are for the entire community. But alongside the group of which mention has just been made is another the psalms in which were clearly not desbied in the making for public worship; and it is then apparent that there is a large number of psalms for which the only conclusion is that the author speaks as an individual. The fact that these can be universalized and fitted for general use does by no means involve that they were composed for collective use and in a collective sense. In more recent compositions of this sort it is
true that a writer may work with the view of suiting his composition to the use of an aggregation of people, and his composition may none the less ring true, especially when the poet knows that his feelings are those of the people for whom he speaks. But where the general trend of life is individual, compositions of this sort are not the rule but the exception; and it is also a fact that a poetically endowed individual, at the moment when he expresses with emphasis the deepest experiences of his own soul, speaks of that which most intimately concerns himself alone. That what he says will fit other cases is not at the time within the range of consciousness. But just the literature which has arisen in this manner, expressing personal feeling and experience, has especial worth from the religious and ethical standpoint. Examples of this are Pss. xxxii., li., and lxxiii. The first is one of the most striking pictures in literature of the distress felt by a soul in dire need; while behind the idealism of the last is the ardent expression of one who feels that heaven, to say nothing of earthly joy, would have no worth were God not there. And these psalms gain in value when they appear as the personal expression of the situation and convictions of their author; if he spoke only of what was common experience and in the name of those whose hap was like his, something of worth seems to vanish from the psalms. On the other hand, if such experiences were general in early Israel, the intent to write for the people may be ascribed if only so the content is best explained. And after the time of Jeremiah such experiences were indeed the lot of the people. But there is a third group which deals not with the people as such, nor with the individual as such, but with a pious nucleus, the " poor," the " wretched," the " feeble," who appear as the upright and God-fearing and faithful. While it is not impossible that these designations should apply to the nation, when it is remembered that in Deutero-Isaiah this class does not constitute the whole people, that in many psalms this class is opposed to the godless in such a way that by the latter the heathen can not be meant, the conclusion of Gratz gains in probability that such psalms arose in this narrower circle which was oppressed by the godless and worldly and saw as imminent the judgment of God against their enemies. Psalms like xvi. and xxii. arose in this circle; the author himself may have been in mind or he may have considered the general situation in the manner in which the prophets viewed the characteristics of their times. Such an author was zealous for the law and foreshadowed the existence of the Hasidhim (the " pious ") and the Pharisees before these parties as political opponents appeared on the scene.
V. Authorship and Date: Most of the psalms in their present form possess superscriptions which profess to give information regarding the author or the circumstances of composition. In many cases the word " of " is meant to indicate authorship, in other cases this meaning is questionable. The persons to whom this applies are David with seventythree psalms, Solomon with two (lxxii. and cxxvii.), Moses with one (xc), Asaph with twelve (1., lxxiiilxxxiii.), the Korahites with eleven (xlii., xliv.-xlix.,