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

Chapter 3: Methodologylexemes are examined in an attempt to determine which of them, if any, mighthave served as link words beyond the level of adjacent psalms.Thematic unity. Lastly, I search for themes or motifs that occur in multiplepsalms in my corpus. The goal is to determine which themes, if any, give thecollection thematic unity. Moreover, if there is thematic unity, what form doesit take? Is it merely that a similar theme occurs in more than one psalm ordoes that theme develop in such a way that the collection has a sort of literaryplot?Based on the data drawn from the headings, shared words and commonthemes, I advance a theory as to how the editors compiled the collection thatis Psalms 3-8.The final phase of the study is to assess the level of redaction. Thematicdevelopment is the crucial factor. For the study to conclude that there is deeplevelredaction, there must be evidence of thematic development across thecorpus of psalms. By way of illustration, a group of songs grouped together ina church hymnal because they are all used in the Christmas service is notdeep-level redaction. However, if those songs are arranged sequentially to tellthe Christmas story and used as part of a musical pageant, they are acomposition, not just a collection.86