The Origin and Religious Contents of the Psalter
by Thomas Kelly Cheyne (9781458931733)

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: PART II. ANALYSIS OF BOOKS IV. AND V. LET us now proceed to analyze these two books with a view to determining the date of the groups of psalms which they contain, most of which of course need not be as late as the period of the editors. It is an easy process, because, as Ewald remarks, this collection, being the latest, has undergone fewer changes than the others, and the strata of which it is composed are almost palpably visible. The first question is, Are there any groups of psalms which are most easily explained on the theory of a Maccabaean origin ? There are strong reasons for expecting to find such. Consider the greatness of the Maccabaean period, more keenly felt by none than by the writers of the Book of Daniel and the Epistle to the Hebrews. It is indeed morally so great that even if no psalms, probably Maccabsean, had been preserved, we should be compelled to presume that they once had existed. If there were psalmists in the age of Pompey (63-48 B.C.), when the stimulus given by Mattathias and his sons was waxing feeble,b how should there not have been in the age of these heroes themselves ? Prophetic and poetic inspiration being closely connected in primitive times prophetic psalm-writing was a common phenomenon both in the Jewish and in the early Christian Church.0 If apocalypse the child of prophecy, began so nobly in the Maccabsean Book of Daniel, how can the same spirit of world-subduing faith have failed to find a worthy expression in spiritual song ? These considerations, I think, justify the provisional acceptance of a Maccabaean date for those psalms in the fourth and fifth Books which, upon exegetical grounds, seem to require it. The non-exegetical arguments against Maccabaean psalms will be considered in connexion with certain disputed psalmsin Books I...

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