From the Psalter back to the Psalms: Observations and Suggestions

The essay is a plea for ending the hunt for the message inscribed into the final shaping of the Psalter. After the psalms had to suffer from exaggerated form-critical categorisation and other approaches, the Psalter is not in need of having its content labelled with inadequate generalising terms. The complexity of the psalms does not favour this approach. Instead, the psalms are waiting to be appreciated as textual individuals and each psalm as part of its special position in a manageable cluster of texts. In view of the Psalter as a whole the predominance of petition and praise, manifest in the title Tehillim, deserves closer theological attention.