Path Ponderings

Test Blog.

Hearing that the Psalms were composed in much the same way that a hymnal is composed of seems to take a bit of the mystical power away from the writings. Though I can rationally understand why God worked through a committee, it seems a bit less “spiritual.” As Dr. Olson has said he grew up thinking that the Bible almost fell out of the sky, and the writers who wrote it were only secretaries of the Holy Spirit. To learn that there was a committee, (which as a cynical Baptist the word committee already has a stigma) seems so human.

While compiling a hymnal there are people with agenda’s, preferences and beliefs that they wish to see represented in the hymnal. With the period of the book of Psalms composition consisting of almost a thousand years, it strikes me as dishonest for the authors to not reveal these details. If a Psalm was written by David, say so – if not say who actually did. It would be decent for them to do what the monks of the early Catholic church did when composing the melodies to the Mass, and not even sign their name? What happened when the Levites introduced a new psalm into worship after all of the people attributed as authors in the book of Psalms had died? Who did the Levities say wrote it when they introduced it to worship? It’s likely that the Hebrew’s didn’t even think it mattered that they were writing under a pseudonym and in our Greek mindset accuracy matters significantly.

The title pages of a hymnal either give credit to the committee or list the committee members. I guess this absence of authentic authorship in the Book of Psalms is no different from the people who wrote the Torah and many other books of the Bible under pseudonyms. If I’m honest, it still bothers me a little, but I understand the reasoning. Having a committee compile a large book like the psalms over a long period of time seems like a very tedious process. However, having the multiple voices and perspectives included in the discussion seems to produce a higher overall end product of a higher quality and fairness to all voices. I’m a romantic at heart and I still like the picture of the super spiritual King David singing these psalms, I guess I will deal with my cognitive dissonance soon.