Bounded by Obedience and Praise: the Psalms as Canon

Abstract

Standard approaches to the Psalms, critical as well as liturgi­ cal and devotional, take up the Psalms one at a time. The primary unit for interpretation is the individual poem. Some attention has been given to the sub-groupings or collections of Psalms that have been brought together in the larger collection of the entire book, but no great progress has been made in that regard.1 Even less attention has been given to the shape and intention of the book of Psalms as a literary unit. Brevard Childs has freshly legitimated the question con­ cerning the literary shape and theological intentionality of the book of Psalms as a whole.2 What gain can be made with reference to the canonical question, however, remains far from clear. When one focuses on the literary shape of the 1. See Claus Westermann, 'Zur Sammlung des Psalters', Forschung am Alten Testament (ThB, 24; Munich: Chr. Kaiser, 1964), pp. 226-43, and Patrick D. Miller, Interpreting the Psalms (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1986), pp. 3-28. 2. Brevard S. Childs, Introduction to the Old Testament as Scripture (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1979), pp. 511-23. See also the detailed study of Gerald Henry Wilson, The Editing of the Hebrew Psalter (SBL Dissertation Series, 76; Chico, CA: Scholars Press, 1985), and James Luther Mays, The Place of the Torah-Psalms in the Psalter', JBL 106 (1987), pp. 3-12, and 'Psalm 118 in the light of Canonical Analysis', in Canon, Theology, and Old Testament Interpretation (ed. Gene M. Tucker et al.; Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1988), pp. 299-311.