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

Chapter 7: Conclusionchosen corpus consists of only six fairly short psalms, it would seem to permitonly the most tentative conclusions to be drawn.This objection has little relevance as far as the analysis of the basis for theconcatenation of adjacent psalms is concerned since, by definition, thisexamination is limited to specific pairs of psalms with no reference to thesurrounding psalms. Extending the corpus to Psalm 14, for example, wouldnot in any way alter the conclusion that Psalms 3 and 4 were juxtaposed onthe basis of their strong verbal-thematic links.The objection has some merit at the level of the arrangement of the wholecorpus, Psalms 3-8. Had the object of analysis been a longer string ofconsecutive psalms, the consistent recurrence of similar patterns ofarrangement might have reinforced the conclusions drawn with reference to asmaller group. However, it does not necessarily follow that contrary findings inan extended corpus would undermine the validity of my conclusions regardingPsalms 3-8. For the sake of argument, if one extended the study to includePsalms 9-14 and found a different basis of arrangement within the additionalpsalms, it would not necessarily negate the findings with respect to Psalms 3-8. It is quite plausible that the editors used different criteria on differentcollections (especially if there were multiple editors spread over period oftime). If a clear liturgical rationale emerged for the arrangement of Psalms 11-313