Page:04.BCOT.KD.PoeticalBooks.vol.4.Writings.djvu/36

Rh seventeen more added here in the last two. They are certainly not all directly Davidic, but partly the result of the writer throwing himself into David's temper of mind and circumstances. One chief store of such older psalms were perhaps the historical works of an annalistic or even prophetic character, rescued from the age before the Exile. It is from such sources that the historical notes prefixed to the Davidic hymns (and also to one in the Fifth book: Psa 142:1-7) come. On the whole there is unmistakeably an advance from the earliest to the latest; and we may say, with Ewald, that in Psa 1:1 the real bulk of the Davidic and, in general, of the older songs, is contained, in Psa 42:1 predominantly songs of the middle period, in Psa 90:1 the large mass of later and very late songs. But moreover it is with the Psalm-collection as with the collection of the prophecies of Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel: the chronological order and the arrangement according to the matter are at variance; and in many places the former is intentionally and significantly disregarded in favour of the latter. We have often already referred to one chief point of view of this arrangement according to matter, viz., the imitation of the Thôra; it was perhaps this which led to the opening of the Fourth book, which corresponds to the Book of Numbers, with a psalm of Moses of this character.

5. Arrangement and inscriptions
Among the Fathers, Gregory of Nyssa has attempted to show that the Psalter in its five books leads upward as by five steps to moral perfection, ἀεὶ πρὸς τὸ ὑψηλότερον τὴν ψυχὴν ὑπερτιθεὶς, ὡς ἂν ἐπὶ τὸ ἀκρότατον ἐφίκηται τῶν ἀγαθῶν; and down to the most recent times attempts have been made to trace in the five books a gradation of principal thoughts, which influence and run through the whole collection. We fear that in this direction, investigation has set before itself an unattainable end. Nevertheless, as we shall see, the collection bears the impress of one ordering mind. For its opening is