Smith DTh Thesis (final).pdf - South African Theological Seminary

Chapter 1Introduction1.1 BackgroundThroughout most of the twentieth century, psalms research was dominated bythe form-critical approaches of Hermann Gunkel (see Gunkel 1926; Gunkeland Begrich 1998) and his student and successor Sigmund Mowinckel.Gunkel’s method was to “define psalms according to categories of literarygenres (Gattungen) and to discover the original life-setting (Sitz im Leben)”(Mitchell 1997:50). Mowinckel laid great stress on the importance of the cultas the setting for which the psalms were written and in which they were used.He attempted to reconstruct Jewish festivals and position specific psalmswithin certain festivals. Common to both form-critical schools was a tendencyto view psalms individually, to see little or no literary relationship betweenadjacent psalms or collections of psalms.1