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

Chapter 1: Introductionis a relatively new field of psalms study, many corpi of psalms have not beenanalysed so as to ascertain the literary relationships within them and,therefore, the purpose for and rationale by which they were redacted.1.2 ProblemA fundamental tenet of much modern research on the psalms is that thePsalter is a carefully crafted literary collection in which the individual psalmsare purposefully arranged to convey a message. Whereas some scholarsbelieve each and every psalm was carefully chosen and positioned, othersbelieve the editorial shaping of the Psalter is primarily by the carefulplacement of key psalms.The main problem of this study is to determine redactional criteria andobjectives underlying the arrangement of Psalms 3-8. This main problem canbe divided into three key research questions.a) What verbal, thematic, structural and functional links are there betweenPsalms 3-8? This question needs to be explored at two distinct levels.Firstly, links between pairs of neighbouring psalms need to beexamined. Secondly, broader links within the corpus as a whole needto be explored.3