Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley door pickup 10am - 7pm 3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611

  • Open Daily: 10am - 10pm
    Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm

    3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
    612-822-4611

Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm
3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611
The Conflict Between Faith and Experience, and the Shape of Psalms 73-83

The Conflict Between Faith and Experience, and the Shape of Psalms 73-83

Smith, Stephen J.
Quick, Laura
Vayntrub, Jacqueline

Hardcover

Series: Library of Hebrew Bible/Old Testament Studies, Book 723

Bible Studies

ISBN10: 0567702731
ISBN13: 9780567702739
Publisher: T&T Clark
Published: Jul 14 2022
Pages: 224
Weight: 1.08
Height: 0.56 Width: 6.14 Depth: 9.21
Language: English

Stephen J. Smith enters the lively field of editorial-criticism of the Hebrew Psalter or Psalterexegese with this detailed investigation into the final form of Psalms 73-83. In the book, he engages scholarly disagreements over this collection's structure, the degree and nature of its literary unity, and the primary theological message(s) it communicates. Smith argues that the sequence of Psalms 73-82 - and possibly 83 - has a deliberate design that reflects a sustained focus on addressing, and resolving, a multidimensional collision between faith (i.e., core Israelite beliefs about God) and experience (i.e., the individual/community's lived experience of God) that was precipitated by God's prolonged absence in the Temple's destruction (c. 586/587 BCE).

Parting ways with previous scholarship, Smith contends that a recursive organizing principle rooted in biblical parallelism structures the collection. Over the book's nine chapters, he makes the case that the editor(s) grouped its psalms into two major blocks (74-78; 79-82) of two sub-groupings each (74-76, 77-78; 79/82, 80-81) in order to develop a single topic in multiple dimensions: the severe threat that God's prolonged absence in the temple's destruction posed to the ongoing viability of various core Israelite beliefs about God, most fundamentally God's goodness. Smith makes the case that the collection is shaped to resolve this crisis by bolstering the reader's confidence in, and commitment to, these beliefs in the face of their apparent failure.

1 different editions

Also available

Also in

Bible Studies

View All