Thursday, December 29, 2016

The Book of Psalms—part 3


The Book of Psalms—part 3

            Although it is sometimes astonishingly purported that David penned the entire Book of Psalms, it is known that he did not since the inscriptions of the psalms, which are a part of the original compositions, name several other authors.  Also, many of the psalms were written after David's death.  This is substantiated by the fact that they make reference to happenings that occurred after the psalmist David’s death.

            It is important that the church musician realizes the seriousness of regarding the inscriptions as either spurious or as later additions of the redactors of Scripture.  There is no conclusive evidence that any of the inscriptions were added at a later date.  On the contrary, they contain the te'amim and would have been chanted just like any other part of the Psalm text.   

Thought for the Day

Recent scholarship has brought to light that the psalm texts and their melodies were most likely written as a unit (a Melos) at the same time.

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