Ancient Hebrew Poetry

The Revised Grail Psalter is online

    Here. The revisions move in the direction of bringing the diction of the original Grail Psalter into greater conformity with the Hebrew. The result is laudable. 

Psalm 26: The Kinetic Energy of Protest before God

    The one who asks God to vindicate him in Psalm 26 is committed to "walking" in reliance on God. The alternative the psalmist rejects: that of acquiescing to evil and dishonesty. The prayer is full of controlled kinetic energy. 

Jewish and Christian Approaches to the Psalms

That is the theme of an international conference to be held at Oxford University, September 22-24, 2010. The locale and lineup of speakers is as good as it gets: John Barton, Bill Bellinger, Adele Berlin, John Day, Peter Flint, Erhard Gerstenberger, Susan Gillingham, Knut Heim, Frank-Lothar Hossfeld (who will read the paper the late Erich Zenger had prepared for the conference), David Howard, Dirk Human, Philip Johnston, Corinna Körting, Jonathan Magonet, Aaron Rosen, Klaus Seybold, Elizabeth Solopova, Nancy deClassé Walford, and Geza Vermes. For more information, go here.

Selah in the Psalms

Rick Brannan, who brightens my day every time I visit his blog with his Ella pictures, wants to know more about Selah in the Psalms. So would I, truth be told.

Chris Heard takes a stab at the question. His essay is a jewel of methodological rigor. He surveys the primary data with care rather than discuss previous solutions to the problem. Explanations of Selah in the literature are a dime a dozen, but none of them (the interpretations of the Targum and Jerome, Briggs, Mowinckel, and Eerdmans come to mind), so far as I can see, are convincing.

It’s nice to see someone conclude that the precise significance of Selah is a mystery. I refer the interested reader to Chris’s survey, and among the comments, the note that Selah also occurs in psalms and liturgical texts attested at Qumran which did not end up in the biblical Psalter transmitted by later Judaism. Selah also occurs twice in the Eighteen Benedictions, and is represented in the LXX Psalter in more instances than in the MT Psalter. The additional examples fit into the typology of occurrences known from MT delineated in Chris's essay.