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

Chapter 7: Conclusionfinal redactors grouped psalms that were in some respect similar(e.g., sharing key words, themes, life settings, etc.), but theirredactive work did not extend to the creative production of a newliterary text with its own purpose and message.For the reasons expressed in the conclusions stated above (§7.2.1 and§7.2.2), I accept the hypothesis that the study of Psalms 3-8 reveals “surfacelevelredaction”. There is evidence indicating that these psalms were notrandomly collected; rather, they were purposefully arranged. At the level ofadjacent psalms, the arrangement was based on verbal links betweenpsalms. At the level of the corpus as a whole, the psalms cohere looselyaround themes pertaining to enemies.7.3 The validity of the conclusionsHow valid are these conclusions? There are two main grounds on which theconclusions might be challenged, namely, (a) inappropriate methodology and(b) size of corpus. A few comments about each of these grounds seemsappropriate.Inappropriate methodology. As with any research, if either the presuppositionsor the methodology is shown to be fundamentally flawed, the conclusions areinvalidated. An honest quest for the editorial criteria underlying the311