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

Chapter 6: Composition of Psalms 3-8if anything, was the editorial agenda reflected in the final arrangement of thepsalms?From the analysis of the headings (see §6.1), it seems clear that thecompilers began with a group of Davidic psalms. Several of these Davidicpsalms belonged to a separate collection, the music director’s collection. Ingeneral, the editors tried to keep psalms that shared a genre designation(e.g., זְ‏ מוש ‏(מִ‏ or came from the music director’s collection together, but thesedesires were sometimes overruled by their desire to ensure that there weremeaningful verbal and thematic links between adjacent psalms.With reference to the criteria of arrangement employed at the verbal andthematic level, two operational criteria are evident. First, at the level ofindividual psalms, the editors sought to juxtapose psalms that havemeaningful verbal and thematic links. They wanted each psalm to be placedimmediately after and before psalms with which it shares some commonground. Second, at the level of the corpus as a whole, the redactors tried togroup psalms with similar major themes. 142142 These two procedures remind me of how I used to arrange my box of 24 coloured pencilswhen I was a child. Each colour needed to have a “related” colour on either side and groupsof the same colour (e.g., greens, blues) needed to be kept together. There were a few291