Abstract
his paper illustrates how Psalm 137 is used to address the question of suffering by Jews and Christians during various crises of faith. In Jewish tradition, the psalm has a “meta-narrative” which meant reading it as a story set in poetry, speaking to the people as a whole not only emotionally but also materially. Only in later Christian reception does the engagement with this psalm become more obviously physical; Christians tend to avoid seeing the psalm as a meta-narrative and instead select single verses or phrases from it in order to teach spiritual lessons, often through the use of “allegory”, where different words are used to speak to more individual concerns. A selective survey of Jewish and Christian approaches to suffering in the reception of Psalm 137 suggests that the Christian reception of Psalm 137 in times of suffering is distinct from the Jewish one. Whereas early Jewish readings had a more corporate and physical emphasis, as crisis after crisis threatened the identity of the Jews as a people, early Christian readings are more personal and spiritualised, heightened through the use of allegory. https://doi.org/10.17159/2312-3621/2019/v32n2a11
Highlights
This paper illustrates how Psalm 137 is used to address the question of suffering by Jews and Christians during various crises of faith
In later Christian reception does the engagement with this psalm become more obviously physical; Christians tend to avoid seeing the psalm as a meta-narrative and instead select single verses or phrases from it in order to teach spiritual lessons, often through the use of “allegory”, where different words are used to speak to more individual concerns
A selective survey of Jewish and Christian approaches to suffering in the reception of Psalm 137 suggests that the Christian reception of Psalm 137 in times of suffering is distinct from the Jewish one
Summary
Some seven years later, with imminent retirement looming for both of us, it seemed appropriate to revisit that paper and offer it as a sign of my respect for Phil Botha’s work: We have met several times since 2011 at international conferences where we have both given papers, and I have always gained a good deal from Phil’s studies of individual psalms. I am aware that another colleague, Professor Bob Becking, Senior Research Professor at the University of Utrecht, has argued in a paper ( given at the University of Pretoria) that the exiles might not have encountered terrible material suffering in Babylon, and that Psalm 137 speaks more about the psychological trauma as about anything more material.[2] I agree that there is archaeological evidence that supports this, I would argue that the later reception of Psalm 137 in Jewish tradition has undoubtedly addressed both aspects of suffering. In what follows I offer a study of Jewish and Christian reception history of Psalm 137 to demonstrate these very different concerns
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