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

Chapter 7: Conclusion14, for instance, this would not undermine the conclusion that verbal-thematiclinks provided the basis of arrangement for Psalms 3-8.While recognising that evidence from the larger corpus to which a group ofpsalms belongs may influence one’s interpretation of the basis for theirarrangement, the relationship between each group of psalms, whether largeor small, needs to be analysed first and foremost in isolation, on the merits ofthe evidence within that particular group. My conclusions regarding thearrangement of Psalms 3-8 should stand or fall primarily on the analysis of theevidence of links between these very psalms.It should be borne in mind that a study of this nature becomes exponentiallymore cumbersome as each additional psalm is added to its length. Extendingthe corpus to the next sensible end point, probably Psalm 14, would havemade it impossible to analyse the psalms in the depth I have done in thisstudy. The small gains that may have been made in terms of the potentialvalidity of the conclusions would have been more than offset by the fact thatthe analysis of the psalms could not have been anywhere near as thorough aswas possible with a smaller corpus.Certain of my conclusions rest on a greater preponderance of evidence thanothers. For example, the conclusion that the primary criterion of arrangementthroughout the corpus was lexical-thematic similarities seems well founded.314