The Lament in Biblical Psalms

Anthology presents new research approaches to the study of Psalms

Cover
© Verlag Herder

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)

Note: Schnocks, Johannes (Hg.): “‘Wer lässt uns Gutes sehen?’ (Ps 4,7): Internationales Studien zu Klagen in den Psalmen” (Herders Biblische Studien, Bd. 85), Freiburg im Breisgau: Herder 2016. (“‘Who Will Show Us Any Good?‘ (Ps 4:7): International Studies on Laments in Psalms” (Herder's Biblical Studies, Vol. 85))

Contents:

Johannes Schnocks
Introduction

I. Laments and Contexts

Johannes Schnocks
Lament Psalms Beyond Questions of Genre. Theological and Anthropological Thoughts

James D. Nogalski
Complaint Psalms and Prophetic Complaints

Joel S. Burnett
The Elohistic Psalter in Light of Mesopotamian Traditions of Hymn and Lament Collection

II. Anthropology and Ethics
Bernd Janowski
The Exhausted Self: On the Semantics of Depression in the Psalms and in the Book of Job

Kathrin Gies
“Why Did the Wicked Man Renounce God? (Ps 10:13) The Lament on the Remoteness of God and Human Action

Johannes Bremer
The Relationship between Violence and Poverty with Regard to the דַּ ךְ in the Book of Psalms. A Focus on Two Psalms Containing the Lament Motif

Nikita Artemov
On the Implicit Legitimisation of Desires for Vengeance in Old Testament Laments. Text Analytical and Biblical-Anthropological Approaches

III. Psalter Composition
William H. Bellinger, Jr.
Praise and Lament in Book V of the Psalter. An Unresolved Relationship?

W. Dennis Tucker, Jr.
Powerlessness and the Significance of Metaphor in Psalms 140–143

Egbert Ballhorn
The Lament as Wisdom of the King. Research on the Typology of David in the Psalms

IV. Individual Psalms

Friedhelm Hartenstein
The Translation as Beginning and Aim of the Exegesis Using Ps 4 as Example

Martin Leuenberger
Laments on the Guilt and the Mortality of Man. Constellations of Lament in Ps 39

Till Magnus Steiner
Psalm 44: Tradition, Remembrance and Lament

Judith Gärtner
“What Can Man Do to Me?” (Ps 118:6) On the Theological and Editorially Critical Complexity of the Rescue Descriptions in Ps 118

Stephen Breck Reid
Zion as Problem and Promise. Psalm 137