Abstract

The authors of the psalms implemented body rhetoric, especially the notion of the �whole body� as the ideal body, in the various genres of psalms, with specific purposes in mind. The whole body as ideal body served as a defining paradigm within the ancient Israelite culture. In this article, the relationship between the embodied God-concept, the ideal societal body and the individual body is investigated in order to determine the purpose of the implementation of this ideology of whole-bodiedness in selected psalm genres. In Psalm 2, the political body as cultural construct plays a prominent role in directing the individual to think of the body in a specific manner. In Psalm 6, the �broken body� drives the lamentation of the psalmist towards recovery. Psalm 29 reflects the poet�s ability to sketch, in hymnic-embodied language, God�s relationship with his creation and his people and the poet�s worship for God�s fullness of existence and activity. Psalm 32, as a psalm of thanksgiving, pictures God as the whole body in terms of the saviour, protector and healer of the broken (sinful) body.

Highlights

  • Ever since the Cartesian dichotomy between body and mind infiltrated Western thinking and dominated perceptions regarding human beings, the body has been neglected

  • Leder (1990:1) argues that the human body is the centre of everything that we perceive, and it is the centre of all our responses to the world, within and outside of our bodies. It is for this reason that Johnson (1987:xiv) states that it is of great importance that the body is brought back into the mind and that a viable, alternative approach to humans and their encounter with their environment be followed. This statement, creates a paradox for any Christian and Jewish studies of the Old Testament (Hebrew Bible) for the bodily perspectives of ancient Israel are to a large extent unknown to us

  • In spite of this gap in knowledge, it is possible to learn about the bodies of ancient Israel through the study of the rhetoric pertaining to the body in the Bible

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Summary

Introduction

Ever since the Cartesian dichotomy between body and mind infiltrated Western thinking and dominated perceptions regarding human beings, the body has been neglected. The psalmists implemented body rhetoric relating to the notion of the ‘whole body’ as the ideal body in the http://www.ve.org.za doi:10.4102/ve.v34i1.766 The specific rhetorical purpose of the implementation of the concept of the ‘whole body’ as the ideal body is to affirm Yahweh’s and his king’s authority for the implied cultic audience and to warn the foreign nations against the threat they pose to the wholeness of the Israelite kingdom body.

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