[Dialogue] 4/30/09: Spong: The Origins of the Bible, Part XXV: The Book of Psalms

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The Origins of the Bible, Part XXV:  The Book of Psalms



When I was a child I went with my mother from time to time to Chalmer's Memorial ARP Church, the church in which she had grown up. Those letters "ARP" identified that church as belonging to the Associate Reformed Presbyterian tradition, an ultra-fundamentalist branch of the most rigid form of Calvinism. What was most unusual to me about this church was that they did not sing any hymns. Hymns, they argued, were made up of human words written by human authors and as such they were considered unfit for use in worship where only "the words of God" were meant to be heard. Instead of hymns, the members of this church set to music the 150 psalms from the Bible, which they claimed were "God's words." So the Book of Psalms became the hymnal of this church. For all of the strange literalistic theology that was reflected in this reasoning process, this church had understood correctly the original purpose of the Book of Psalms. It was in fact the hymn book of Judaism, created for use in worship, first in the temple and later in the synagogue. Once this insight is grasped, the language of the Book of Psalms makes sense. There are numerous liturgical references and directions found in the psalms: imploring people "to sing to the Lord a new song," frequently mentioning the choirmaster and referring to a variety of instruments traditionally used in Jewish worship, such as the trumpet, harp and lyre. The psalms also refer to things like20sacrifices, processions, altars, burnt offerings, thanksgivings and sacred vows, all of which are liturgical acts. 

When one looks at the Book of Psalms through the lens of the worship life of the Jews it also becomes apparent that a number of the psalms were designed for the specific celebrations observed in the annual Jewish liturgical cycle. For example, Psalms 113-118 were used in the three extended festivals that mark the Jewish year: Passover, which was expanded into the Festival of the Unleavened Bread; Sukkoth or Tabernacles, the eight-day harvest festival in the fall; and Dedication, an eight-day festival of light that comes in the dead of winter, originally marking the return of the light of true worship to the synagogue at the time of the Maccabees, and which today we refer to as Hanukkah. Psalm 118 was particularly adapted to use in the great procession that accompanied the harvest festival of Sukkoth. In that procession people waved in their right hands bundles of leafy branches called lulabs, made of willow, myrtle and palm, as they recited the words from this psalm: "Hosanna! Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord. Hosanna in the highest." It is clear to see how the Christian observance of Palm Sunday was influenced by this liturgical observance of the Jews. Psalm 119 was probably written originally to be used at the annual Jewish observance of Pentecost or Shavuot, which celebrated the giving of the law to Moses on Mt. Sinai. Shavuot came fifty days after Passover (hence th
e name Pentecost) and was marked by a twenty-four-hour vigil. It takes a long psalm to serve a twenty-four-hour vigil and that is why this is the longest psalm in the Bible. It is also a hymn in praise of the glory and beauty of the Torah, which the Jews believed was God's greatest gift to the world. Psalm 119 is conveniently divided into eight segments of three stanzas each to fit the vigil format of eight three-hour units, thus providing a reading for each part of the vigil. The length of this psalm is not an accident. 

Other psalms, especially numbers 102, 120, 171 and 130, were used on days of public penitence and some festivals. They are quite reminiscent of the earliest hymns of the Christian Church, which were surely modeled on these psalms. I refer to those songs that Luke puts into the mouths of the major characters in the birth narrative: the song of Zechariah, the song of Mary, the song of the angels and the song of Simeon, the priest. These psalm-like hymns are still used in Christian worship today, though we tend to refer to them by their Latin names: the Benedictus, the Magnificat, the Gloria in Excelsis and the Nunc Dimittis. 

Most Christians are not consciously aware of the fact that the gospels themselves were actually born in the synagogue and are largely shaped by the liturgical patterns of the Jews. That is why we find some ninety-three references to the psalms wrapped around the story of Jesus in the gospels alone. The story of the crucifixion is in large me
asure based on Psalm 22. 

There is a similar tendency in the gospels to relate the life of Jesus to each of the great celebrations of the Jewish year. The story of Jesus' crucifixion was placed into the Jewish observance of Passover, for example, not because it actually took place at that time but because Passover became the liturgical context in which the death of Jesus was interpreted. From as early as the writings of Paul (51-64 CE), Jesus had come to be seen after the analogy of the newly sacrificed Passover Lamb. When one reads the exodus story, which the Passover liturgy memorializes, one notes that it was the power of the blood of the sacrificed "Lamb of God" on the doorposts of Jewish homes that protected them from death. When the story of the crucifixion of Jesus was told as the sacrifice of the "new" paschal lamb, the cross came to be seen as the doorpost of the world and the blood of Jesus on the cross was viewed as the power that banished death from the lives of believers, thus giving rise to the phrase "saved by the blood." This intertwining of the story of the cross with the story of the Passover drew the two into the same time frame. It was not a reflection of the memory of history. 

Other Christian signs that relate to Jewish holy days are that John the Baptist (and his message of repentance) was simply the transformation into a Christian context of the message of Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year. In both the people gathered and repentance was urged as 
the way to prepare for the coming of the kingdom of God. The story of the transfiguration of Jesus was adapted to reflect the observance of the mid-winter Feast of Dedication. In Dedication the light of God was said to fall on the Temple and in the story of the transfiguration on Jesus as "the new Temple," which is what the body of Jesus came to be called. The gospels are clearly the products of the synagogue and as the psalms were a major piece of synagogue worship they inevitably became a major piece of the developing Christian liturgies. 

Who wrote the Book of Psalms? This question makes no more sense to ask than who wrote the various Christian hymnals. They are both compilations of the worship traditions of the ages. Christian hymnals include the plainsong words and settings of the 13th century, the Reformation words of the 16th century, the social gospel message of the 19th century, the pious evangelical words of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the modern futuristic hymns of the late 20th and in hymnal supplements even the words that express the hopes of the 21st century. Likewise the Book of Psalms reflects the long religious history and pilgrimage of the Jews and thus has no single author. There are psalms dedicated to the beauty of creation, that extol the virtues of the king, that bewail the human condition and that express both the despair of the exile and the joy and hope connected with the return from the exile. Just as our hymnals contain some of the dreadful theolog
y that speaks of blood and sacrifice and the expressions of the wrath of God, so in the Book of Psalms we are frequently embarrassed by the theology of yesterday. We meet in the psalms, for example, some of the worst aspects of a tribal deity who delights in smashing against the rocks the heads of the children of the enemies of the Jews. Contrary to what my mother's ARP Church thought, the psalms are hardly "the words of God," unless you want to attribute to God some dreadful aspects of depraved behavior. The psalms are made up of uniquely human words addressed to God expressing uniquely human emotions and feelings. 

We have no idea how or when the Book of Psalms arrived at the number of 150 as the totality of the psalms that merited inclusion in the sacred text of the people. In one of our earliest complete versions of the Bible, a 4th century work known as the Codex Sinaiticus, the whole set of 150 psalms as we know them today are present. Yet another somewhat later 4th century work, known as Codex Vaticanus, lacks Psalms 49-79. We do know that at some point in Jewish history an order was imposed on the Book of Psalms. From the earliest time they seem to have been divided into five books, each ending with a doxology in the final verse of the last psalm in each section. Book One includes Psalms 1-41; Book Two, Psalms 42-72; Book Three, Psalms 78-89; Book Four, Psalms 90-106; Book Five, Psalms 107-150. That probably represented, once again, a Jewish liturgical adaptation of the=2
0use of the Psalter to accompany the five books of the Torah, Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy, the annual reading of which organized the yearly liturgical calendar of the synagogue. 

There are other things in the Psalter pointing to a long development over time. The name of God is spelled two ways, reflecting the two centers of Jewish life and history: Jerusalem, where the name Yahweh was primary, and the Northern Kingdom, where the name Elohim was preferred. In the last verse of Psalm 79, we are told that "Here the prayers of David are ended," as if to say that an incorporated section has come to an end. Verbatim duplications in some of the psalms reflect the fact that they were from more than one source. We now believe the psalms were compiled into more or less their present form by the Jews somewhere between 400-200 BCE. They reflect various times in the Jewish story and obviously various authors. For the record, the authorship of any of the psalms by King David is pious myth not a fact of history. 

Should the psalms continue to be used in Christian worship? Time does "make ancient good uncouth," noted the poet James Russell Lowell. Nowhere is that truth better seen than in the Book of Psalms. At best they are a mixed blessing!


– John Shelby Spong





When one looks at the Book of Psalms through the lens of the worship life of the Jews it also becomes apparent that a number of the psalms were designed for the specific celebrations observed i
n the annual Jewish liturgical cycle. For example, Psalms 113-118 were used in the three extended festivals that mark the Jewish year: Passover, which was expanded into the Festival of the Unleavened Bread; Sukkoth or Tabernacles, the eight-day harvest festival in the fall; and Dedication, an eight-day festival of light that comes in the dead of winter, originally marking the return of the light of true worship to the synagogue at the time of the Maccabees, and which today we refer to as Hanukkah. Psalm 118 was particularly adapted to use in the great procession that accompanied the harvest festival of Sukkoth. In that procession people waved in their right hands bundles of leafy branches called lulabs, made of willow, myrtle and palm, as they recited the words from this psalm: "Hosanna! Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord. Hosanna in the highest." It is clear to see how the Christian observance of Palm Sunday was influenced by this liturgical observance of the Jews. Psalm 119 was probably written originally to be used at the annual Jewish observance of Pentecost or Shavuot, which celebrated the giving of the law to Moses on Mt. Sinai. Shavuot came fifty days after Passover (hence the name Pentecost) and was marked by a twenty-four-hour vigil. It takes a long psalm to serve a twenty-four-hour vigil and that is why this is the longest psalm in the Bible. It is also a hymn in praise of the glory and beauty of the Torah, which the Jews believed was God's greatest gift to the world.20Psalm 119 is conveniently divided into eight segments of three stanzas each to fit the vigil format of eight three-hour units, thus providing a reading for each part of the vigil. The length of this psalm is not an accident. 

Other psalms, especially numbers 102, 120, 171 and 130, were used on days of public penitence and some festivals. They are quite reminiscent of the earliest hymns of the Christian Church, which were surely modeled on these psalms. I refer to those songs that Luke puts into the mouths of the major characters in the birth narrative: the song of Zechariah, the song of Mary, the song of the angels and the song of Simeon, the priest. These psalm-like hymns are still used in Christian worship today, though we tend to refer to them by their Latin names: the Benedictus, the Magnificat, the Gloria in Excelsis and the Nunc Dimittis. 

Most Christians are not consciously aware of the fact that the gospels themselves were actually born in the synagogue and are largely shaped by the liturgical patterns of the Jews. That is why we find some ninety-three references to the psalms wrapped around the story of Jesus in the gospels alone. The story of the crucifixion is in large measure based on Psalm 22. 

There is a similar tendency in the gospels to relate the life of Jesus to each of the great celebrations of the Jewish year. The story of Jesus' crucifixion was placed into the Jewish observance of Passover, for example, not because it actually took place at that time but beca
use Passover became the liturgical context in which the death of Jesus was interpreted. From as early as the writings of Paul (51-64 CE), Jesus had come to be seen after the analogy of the newly sacrificed Passover Lamb. When one reads the exodus story, which the Passover liturgy memorializes, one notes that it was the power of the blood of the sacrificed "Lamb of God" on the doorposts of Jewish homes that protected them from death. When the story of the crucifixion of Jesus was told as the sacrifice of the "new" paschal lamb, the cross came to be seen as the doorpost of the world and the blood of Jesus on the cross was viewed as the power that banished death from the lives of believers, thus giving rise to the phrase "saved by the blood." This intertwining of the story of the cross with the story of the Passover drew the two into the same time frame. It was not a reflection of the memory of history. 

Other Christian signs that relate to Jewish holy days are that John the Baptist (and his message of repentance) was simply the transformation into a Christian context of the message of Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year. In both the people gathered and repentance was urged as the way to prepare for the coming of the kingdom of God. The story of the transfiguration of Jesus was adapted to reflect the observance of the mid-winter Feast of Dedication. In Dedication the light of God was said to fall on the Temple and in the story of the transfiguration on Jesus as "the new Templ
e," which is what the body of Jesus came to be called. The gospels are clearly the products of the synagogue and as the psalms were a major piece of synagogue worship they inevitably became a major piece of the developing Christian liturgies. 

Who wrote the Book of Psalms? This question makes no more sense to ask than who wrote the various Christian hymnals. They are both compilations of the worship traditions of the ages. Christian hymnals include the plainsong words and settings of the 13th century, the Reformation words of the 16th century, the social gospel message of the 19th century, the pious evangelical words of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the modern futuristic hymns of the late 20th and in hymnal supplements even the words that express the hopes of the 21st century. Likewise the Book of Psalms reflects the long religious history and pilgrimage of the Jews and thus has no single author. There are psalms dedicated to the beauty of creation, that extol the virtues of the king, that bewail the human condition and that express both the despair of the exile and the joy and hope connected with the return from the exile. Just as our hymnals contain some of the dreadful theology that speaks of blood and sacrifice and the expressions of the wrath of God, so in the Book of Psalms we are frequently embarrassed by the theology of yesterday. We meet in the psalms, for example, some of the worst aspects of a tribal deity who delights in smashing against the rocks the heads of the=2
0children of the enemies of the Jews. Contrary to what my mother's ARP Church thought, the psalms are hardly "the words of God," unless you want to attribute to God some dreadful aspects of depraved behavior. The psalms are made up of uniquely human words addressed to God expressing uniquely human emotions and feelings. 

We have no idea how or when the Book of Psalms arrived at the number of 150 as the totality of the psalms that merited inclusion in the sacred text of the people. In one of our earliest complete versions of the Bible, a 4th century work known as the Codex Sinaiticus, the whole set of 150 psalms as we know them today are present. Yet another somewhat later 4th century work, known as Codex Vaticanus, lacks Psalms 49-79. We do know that at some point in Jewish history an order was imposed on the Book of Psalms. From the earliest time they seem to have been divided into five books, each ending with a doxology in the final verse of the last psalm in each section. Book One includes Psalms 1-41; Book Two, Psalms 42-72; Book Three, Psalms 78-89; Book Four, Psalms 90-106; Book Five, Psalms 107-150. That probably represented, once again, a Jewish liturgical adaptation of the use of the Psalter to accompany the five books of the Torah, Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy, the annual reading of which organized the yearly liturgical calendar of the synagogue. 

There are other things in the Psalter pointing to a long development over time. The name of God is spelled=2
0two ways, reflecting the two centers of Jewish life and history: Jerusalem, where the name Yahweh was primary, and the Northern Kingdom, where the name Elohim was preferred. In the last verse of Psalm 79, we are told that "Here the prayers of David are ended," as if to say that an incorporated section has come to an end. Verbatim duplications in some of the psalms reflect the fact that they were from more than one source. We now believe the psalms were compiled into more or less their present form by the Jews somewhere between 400-200 BCE. They reflect various times in the Jewish story and obviously various authors. For the record, the authorship of any of the psalms by King David is pious myth not a fact of history. 

Should the psalms continue to be used in Christian worship? Time does "make ancient good uncouth," noted the poet James Russell Lowell. Nowhere is that truth better seen than in the Book of Psalms. At best they are a mixed blessing!


– John Shelby Spong





The Origins of the Bible, Part XXV: The Book of Psalms



Question and Answer
With John Shelby Spong



Dear Professor Goggin, Knox College, Toronto, writes: writes:

I lead two study groups that have covered several of your books, and we are currently reading The Sins of Scripture. I would like to know about your new book, Jesus for the Non-Religious. Both groups have expressed an interest in reading this book next, after we finish The Sins of Scripture in April. Both groups, mostly seniors,=2
0all life-long Christians and representing three denominations, have found The Sins of the Scripture fascinating, raising many questions and challenges. I think I've read all of your books, and I think this is your best. I have studied and taught theology for more than 40 years, but even I am learning things I did not know. Although I am mostly in complete agreement with your position (some of the group members are not so sure), it has been most exciting for me to see things in scripture I had not seen before. Or perhaps more accurately realized things are not there that I thought were. 
Yesterday we were discussing the section on the Bible and Children. I was amazed at how little actual reference there is to hell, sin, guilt and punishment in the New Testament. All I could think of was the library at the college where I taught, which is filled with theological books about sin, salvation and redemption. You are making vast collections in theological libraries literally out of date. But as a process theologian I believe that every word that we utter is in a sense out of date by the time it s uttered as reality has changed in that split second. It was in process theology that I first met the ideas of a non-interventionist God and a Jesus who was human, albeit a very special human being. My faith journey has been a long, rich and very fruitful one, which I have tried to share as a religious educator with anyone who was interested. Thank you for the many years you have been doing th
e same in a much more public way. I just hope the church is listening, though as you point out from time to time it is a mixed reaction of relieved understanding for moving into the future and a fearful, defensive declaration of past beliefs. Thank you for saying we do not need to create the church of the future, just take steps toward helping that church to be a possibility. My little group yesterday found that very comforting.


Yesterday we were discussing the section on the Bible and Children. I was amazed at how little actual reference there is to hell, sin, guilt and punishment in the New Testament. All I could think of was the library at the college where I taught, which is filled with theological books about sin, salvation and redemption. You are making vast collections in theological libraries literally out of date. But as a process theologian I believe that every word that we utter is in a sense out of date by the time it s uttered as reality has changed in that split second. It was in process theology that I first met the ideas of a non-interventionist God and a Jesus who was human, albeit a very special human being. My faith journey has been a long, rich and very fruitful one, which I have tried to share as a religious educator with anyone who was interested. Thank you for the many years you have been doing the same in a much more public way. I just hope the church is listening, though as you point out from time to time it is a mixed reaction of relieved 
understanding for moving into the future and a fearful, defensive declaration of past beliefs. Thank you for saying we do not need to create the church of the future, just take steps toward helping that church to be a possibility. My little group yesterday found that very comforting.

Dear Helen Goggin, Professor Emerita of Religious Education, 

Thank you for your letter. I am glad that your group has found The Sins of the Scripture helpful. Jesus for the Non-Religious came out in hardcover in September of 2007 and in paperback in the summer of 2008. It has had an interesting history. 

For years I have sought to find a way to talk about the God Presence experienced in Jesus without using the language of traditional theology. That language lost its meaning for me when the understanding of God that I call "theism" lost its meaning. The theistic God forms the backbone of traditional theology. By "theism" I mean that view of God as a being, supernatural in power, external to life who invades life periodically in miraculous ways to accomplish the divine will or to answer prayers. Copernicus, Kepler and Galileo expanded the universe to such dimensions that this theistic God became homeless. Isaac Newton described the mathematically precise ways in which the natural laws of the world operated and the theistic God became unemployed. Charles Darwin destroyed the boundary between the animal world and human beings and the theistic God became uninvolved. 

Yet the God experience continued to be real, and the aff
irmation that lies at the heart of Christianity (that in some way God had been encountered in a new way in the person of Jesus) drove me to find a new language in which to talk about Jesus that preserved the integrity of the God experience in him. Jesus for the Non-Religious was the result. It was the culmination of about forty years of theological wrestling. This book therefore became my favorite of all my titles and remains in that position to this day. It will be interesting to see whether my book on Eternal Life, scheduled for publication late next summer, will supplant it. 

My interpretative clue in Jesus for the Non-Religious was to look at Jesus as his disciples and the gospel writers did, through a Jewish lens, and to see at least the synoptic gospels as liturgical books produced in and influenced by the synagogue. From that perspective the "supernatural" elements looked very different. 

We get to Toronto from time to time. I would love to meet you and your class some time. 



My thanks,
John Shelby Spong







 

New Book Now Available! 
JESUS FOR THE NON RELIGIOUS




"The Pope," says the publisher about this new edition, "describes the ancient traditional Jesus. John Shelby Spong brings us a Jesus by whom modern people can be inspired." Newly published in paperback, Jesus for the Non-Religious is now available in Bishop Spong's online store. 

Order your copy now! 





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