Contextual Interpretation of the Psalter: An Overview

Reading all 150 psalms as a book from the beginning to the end with attention to its fivefold structure is a relatively new literary approach, one often called "contextual/canonical interpretation of the Psalter" or ספר תהלים כספר - על פי הפרשנות ההקשרית, and it has managed to reveal new and profound insights into the message of the Psalter. A brief overview of this modern approach will be given along with some relevant sources from the Rabbinic literature. Some of the justifications for this approach to read the Psalter as a unified book will be given: the concluding doxologies (41,14; 72,18-20; 89,53; 106,48) function to divide the Psalter into 5 books, each of which has its own profile; the superscriptions to the psalms group them into collections/clusters, each of which has its own thematic characteristics and specific messages; repetitions of the same expressions in adjacent chapters ("concatenation") function to string them together, thus given them their own literary integrity. The structure of Book I with its overture (Ps 1-2) to the entire Psalter and its four psalms-cycles (3-14; 15-24; 25-34; 35-41) will be presented; this overview will then be elaborated by the 2 next contributions to this session; the second session will present some features of Books II, III, IV and V. In the conclusion there will be a discussion of the future directions of research in contextual interpretation of the Psalter.