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

Chapter 2: History of Psalms Studiesliturgical explanation nor McFall’s (2000) three-stage sorting theory offerconvincing explanations of the final editorial agenda underlying the Psalter.David Mitchell’s (1997) attempt to account for the shape of the Psalter as aprophetic, eschatological, messianic collection is convincing in its treatment ofcertain groups of psalms, but struggles account for the shape of the entirecollection. In my judgement, both Wilson’s historical explanation andBrueggemann’s sapiential approach offer coherent explanations of the overallshape of the Book of Psalms.A large number of studies have been published which focus on the redactionof smaller groups of Psalms. Although, as best I can determine, only one suchstudy has been done on Psalms 1-8 (i.e., Brennan 1980), the followingsection surveys the major studies to demonstrate the kind of work that hasbeen done to date.2.6.2 Studies on collections of psalmsBefore the current surge of interest in studying the literary relationshipsbetween groups of psalms, Michael Goulder (1975; 1982; 1990; 1996; 1997;1998; 2005) had begun studying collections of psalms in order to uncovertheir cultic life-setting and function before they were incorporated into thecanonical Psalter. He conducted studies of six units: (a) Book IV (Pss 90-106)47