Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 20.djvu/42

Rh 30 PSALMS collection once separate. In point of fact books iv. and v. have so many common characters that there is every reason to regard them as a single great group. Again, the main part of books ii. and iii. (Pss. xlii.-lxxxiii.) is distinguished from the rest of the Psalter by habitually avoiding the name Jehovah (the Lord) and using Elohim (God) instead, even in cases like Ps. 1. 7, where " I am Jehovah thy God " of Exod. xx. 2 is quoted but changed very awkwardly to " I am God thy God." This is not due to the authors of the individual psalms, but to an editor ; for Ps. liii. is only another recension of Ps. xiv., and Ps. Ixx. repeats part of Ps. xl., and here Jehovah is six times changed to Elohim, while the opposite change happens but once. The Elohim psalms, then, have undergone a common editorial treatment distinguishing them from the rest of the Psalter. And they make up the mass of books ii. and iii., the remaining psalms, Ixxxiv.-lxxxix., appearing to be a sort of appendix. But when we look at the Elohim psalms more nearly we see that they contain two distinct elements, Davidic psalms and psalms ascribed to the Levitical choirs (sons of Korah, Asaph). The Davidic collection as we have it splits the Levitical psalms into two groups and actually divides the Asaphic Ps. 1. from the main Asaphic collection, Ixxiii.- Ixxxiii. This order can hardly be original, especially as the Davidic Elohim psalms have a separate subscription (Ps. Ixxii. 20). But if we remove them we get a continuous body of Levitical Elohim psalms, or rather two collections, the first Korahitic and the second Asaphic, to which there have been added by way of appendix by a non-Elohistic editor a supplementary group of Korahite psalms and one psalm (certainly late) ascribed to David. The formation of books iv. and v. is certainly later than the Elohistic re- daction of books ii. and iii., for Ps. cviii. is made up of two Elohim psalms (Ivii. 7-11, Ix. 5-12) in the Elohistic form, though the last two books of the Psalter are generally Jehovistic. We can thus distinguish the following steps in the redaction : (a) the formation of a Davidic collection (book i.) with a closing doxology; (6) a second Davidic collection (li.-lxii.) with doxology and subscription; (c) a twofold Levitical collection (xlii.-xlix. ; 1., Ixxiii.-lxxxiii.) ; (d) an Elohistic redaction and combination of (6) and (c) ; (e) the addition of a non-Elohistic supplement to (d) with a doxology ; (/) a collection later than (d), consisting of books iv., v. And finally the anonymous psalms i., ii., which as anonymous were hardly an original part of book i., may have been prefixed after the whole Psalter was completed. We see too that it is only in the latest collec- tion (books iv., v.) that anonymity is the rule, and titles, especially titles with names, occur only sporadically. Else- where the titles run in series and correspond to the limits of older collections. Date of the Collection. A process of collection which involves so many stages must plainly have taken a con- siderable time, and the question arises whether we can fix a limit for its beginning and end or even assign a date for any one stage of the process. An inferior limit for the final collection is given by the Septuagint translation. But this translation itself was not written all at once, and its history is obscure ; we only know from the pro- logue to Ecclesiasticus that the Hagiographa, and doubt- less therefore the Psalter, were read in Greek in Egypt about 130 B.C. or somewhat later. 1 And the Greek Psalter, though it contains one apocryphal psalm at the close, is essentially the same as the Hebrew ; there is nothing to suggest that the Greek was first translated from a less complete Psalter and afterwards extended to agree with 1 The text of the passage is obscure and in part corrupt, but the Latin "cum multum temporis ibi fuissem" probably expresses the author's meaning. A friend has suggested to the writer that for we ought perhaps to read cvxv the extant Hebrew. It is therefore reasonable to hold that the Hebrew Psalter was completed and recognized as an authoritative collection long enough before 130 B.C. to allow of its passing to the Greek-speaking Jews in Alex- andria. Beyond this the external evidence for the com- pletion of the collection does not carry us. It appears indeed from 1 Chron. xvi., 2 Chrou. vi. 41, 42, that various psalms belonging to books iv. and v. were current in the time of the Chronicler, that is, towards the close of the Persian or more probably in the earlier part of the Greek period. But it is not certain that the psalms he quotes (xcvi., cv., cvi., cxxxii.) already existed in their place in our Psalter, or that Ps. cvi. even existed in its present form. Turning now to internal evidence, we find the surest start- ing-point in the Levitical psalms of the Elohistic collection. These, as we hare seen, form two groups, referred to the sons of Korah and to Asaph. At the beginning of the Greek period or somewhat later Asaph was taken to be a contemporary of David and chief of the singers of his time (Neh. xii. 46), or one of the three chief singers belonging to the three great Levitical houses (1 Chron. xxv. 1 sq.). But the older history knows nothing of an individual Asaph ; at the time of the return from Babylon the guild of singers as a whole was called Bne Asaph (Ezra ii. 41), and so apparently it was in the time of Nehemiah (Neh. xi. 22, Heb.). 2 The singers or Asaphites are at this time still distinguished from the Levites ; the oldest attempt to incorporate them with that tribe appears in Exod. vi. 24, where Abiasaph that is, the eponym of the guild of Asaphites- is made one of the three sons of Korah. But when singers and Levites were fused the Asaphites ceased to be the only singers, and ultimately, as we see in Chron- icles, they were distinguished from the Korahites and reckoned to Gershom (1 Chron. vi.), while the head of the Korahites is Heman, as in the title of Ps. Ixxxviii. It is only in the appendix to the Elohistic psalm-book that we find Heman and Ethan side by side with Asaph, as in the Chronicles, but the body of the collection distinguishes between two guilds of singers, Korahites and Asaphites, and is therefore as a collection younger than Nehemiah, but presumably older than Chronicles with its three guilds. The contents of the Korahite and Asaphic psalms give no reason to doubt that they really were collected by or for these two guilds. Both groups are remarkable by the fact that they hardly contain any recognition of present sin on the part of the community of Jewish faith though they do confess the sin of Israel in the past but are exercised with the observation that prosperity does not follow righteousness either in the case of the individual (xlix., Ixxiii.) or in that of the nation, which suffers not- withstanding its loyalty to God, or even on account thereof (xliv., Ixxix.). Now the rise of the problems of individual faith is the mark of the age that followed Jeremiah, while the confident assertion of national righteousness under misfortune is a characteristic mark of pious Judaism after Ezra, in the period of the law but not earlier. Malachi, Ezra, and Nehemiah, like Haggai and Zechariah, are still very far from holding that the sin of Israel lies all in the past. Again, a considerable number of these psalms (xliv., Ixxiv., Ixxix., Ixxx.) point to an historical situation which can be very definitely realized. They are post -exile in their whole tone and belong to a time when prophecy had ceased and the synagogue worship was fully established (Ixxiv. 8, 9). But the Jews are no longer the obedient 2 The threefold division of the singers appears in the same list according to the Hebrew text of ver. 17, but the occurrence of Jedu- tlmn as a proper name instead of a musical note is suspicious, and makes the text of LXX. preferable. The first clear trace of the triple choir is therefore in Neh. xii. 24, i.e., not earlier than Alexander the Great, with whom Jaddua (ver. 22) was contemporary.