The Lament in Biblical Psalms
Anthology presents new research approaches to the study of Psalms
A new publication from the Cluster of Excellence “Religion and Politics”, edited by Catholic theologian Prof. Dr. Johannes Schnocks, is about laments in the biblical Psalms. In the anthology, academics from North America, Germany, Switzerland and Israel present new research approaches in the exegesis of Psalms. It is published by Herder Verlag under the title “‘Who Will Show Us Any Good?’ (Ps 4:7): International Studies on Laments in the Psalms” and is a result of the conference “Laments in the Psalms” at the Cluster of Excellence in 2015. “The changes in the exegesis of Psalms in the past decades have assigned a new role to form and genre criticism”, explains the Old Testament scholar. “This shift of paradigms is especially visible in the exegesis of the Psalms of Lament.”
Among the examples that the scholar describes as new approaches are research questions about the anthropological features of the Psalms of Lament, about the role of violence, poverty, or mortality in their rhetorical concepts, about ethical implications, about their individual profile as poetic theological literature and about their function in the composition of the Book of Psalms. “At the same time the contributions show the high theological potential that the newer paths of the analysis of Psalms open up.”
Social and Religio-Historical Connections
At the Cluster of Excellence, Prof. Schnocks heads the research project D2-10 “The Experience of Violence and the Wrath of God: Religious-Historical and Reception-Hermeneutic Analyses of Old Testament Laments”. The new book and the conference “Laments in the Psalms” are part of the project work. The anthology is published in the series “Herders Biblische Studien” (Herder's Biblical Studies ). It aims to look closely at the embedding of biblical texts in social and religio-historical connections and foster discourse amongst international experts in the field. (ill/vvm)