already existed in their place in our Psalter, or that Ps. cvi. even existed in its present form.

musicians with treble lutes and with harps an octave lower (or with lutes and harps over the sopranos and tenors respectively) were to correct-and it certainly accords best with the meaning of in lead the singers in giving out the melody. If this explanation be

Other evidence of date is to be found in the Levitical psalms of the Elohistic collection. These, as we have seen, form two groups, referred to the sons of Korah and to Asaph. In Nehe- played the melody to be sung, virtually corresponding, mutatis 1 Chron. xv. 21-the will be that part of the orchestra which miah xii. 46 Asaph is taken to be a contemporary of David and mulandis, to what we now call the choir organ, and we need not comchief of the singers of his time, and in 1 Chron. xxv. 1 seq. one plicate the compilation of the Psalter by postulating an altogether of the three chief singers belonging to the three great Levitical unnecessary "Director's Psalter." Now we have seen that the > houses. But the older history knows nothing of an individual prefixed to mp cannot refer to authorship; we seem therefore Asaph; in Ezra ii. 41 the gild of singers as a whole is called shut up to one of two alternatives, either the psalms inscribed Bne Asaph, as it was apparently in the time of Nehemiah (Neh.mp belonged to the répertoire of the Korahites, or they were xi. 22, Heb.). The singers or Asaphites are at this time still intended to be sung in the Korahite style. It is indeed possible distinguished from the Levites; the oldest attempt to incorporate that each division of the Levitical singers had its own collection; them with that tribe appears in Exod. vi. 24, where Abiasaph but this is hardly probable unless we are to suppose that they that is, the eponym of the gild of Asaphites-is made one of have expected that the psalm quoted by the Chronicler (1 Chron. never officiated simultaneously, in which case we should certainly the three sons of Korah. But when singers and Levites were xvi.) would be included in the Asaphic collection. But there is no fused the Asaphites ceased to be the only singers, and ultimately, difficulty in supposing that each division of the Levitical musicians as we see in Chronicles, they were distinguished from the Korah-had its own traditional music, certain instruments being peculiar to the one and certain to the other, in which case the assignment of ites and reckoned to Gershom (1 Chron. vi.), while the head of a psalm to the Asaphites or Korahites will merely denote the sort the Korahites is Heman, as in the title of Ps. lxxxviii. It is of music to which it is set. In like manner it is not improbable that only in the appendix to the Elohistic psalm-book that we find Heman and Ethan side by side with Asaph, as in the Chronicles; but this does not necessarily prove that the body of the collection originated when there were only two gilds of singers.

But here it becomes necessary to ask what is the precise meaning which we are to assign to the phrases, "to David," "to Asaph," to the sons of Korah." We certainly need not suppose that the Davidic, Asaphic and Korahite psalms severally once existed as separate books, for, if this had been the case, it is probable that the ascription would not have been prefixed to each separate psalm, but rather to the head of each collection (cf. Prov. i. 1, x. I., xxv. 1), together with some such note at the end as is found in Job. xxxi. 40, Ps. lxxii. 20; moreover we should be compelled to assent to the view expressed in the Oxford Dictionary that those psalms which have the heading ? (A. V. " to "-R. V. " for "—" the chief Musician ") also originally formed a separate collection. But against this explanation of the heading there is an almost insuperable objection; for, since both the first and second books contain psalms with this heading, it is clear that the Chief Musician's or Director's-Psalter must have been in existence before either of these books; in which case, apart from the difficulty of the antiquity which we should be compelled to assign to this earliest Psalter, it is impossible to understand on what principle the first book of Psalms was formed. If the compiler of the first book aimed simply at making a collection of Davidic psalms from a major Psalter compiled by the "Director," why should he have deliberately rejected a number of Davidic psalms (Ps. li. sqq.) which, ex hypothesi, lay before him in this Psalter? It is surely as difficult to suppose that the Davidic psalms of the first book are a selection made from a greater collection of such psalms contained in the " Director's Psalter it is to imagine that St Mark's Gospel is an abridgment of St Matthew's. It is true that the preposition "to "() may denote authorship, as it does apparently in Isaiah xxxviii. 9, Hab. iii. 1, but it certainly has a much wider meaning; and indeed in some cases the idea of authorship is out of the question, for the psalms ascribed to the Korahites can scarcely have been supposed to be the joint composition of that body. Moreover, it is very doubtful whether the word can be translated "Director." In 1 Chron. xv. 21 the verb of which is the participle is used of the duty which was discharged by Mattithiah, Eliphelehu, Mikneiah, Obed-edom, Jeiel and Azaziah (and perhaps, if verse 20 is to be taken in close connexion with verse 21, by Zecharaiah, Aziel, Shemiramoth, Jeiel, Unni. Eliab, Maaseiah and Benaiah also) on one definite occasion. Unfortunately the exact nature of these men's performances is not quite clear, for it is said to have been connected with "harps set to the sheminith," or according to another inter

meant originally "to be sung in the Davidic mode "; that is, perhaps," with harp accompaniment " (cf. 1 Sam. xvi. 16), or, since the Chronicler ascribes to David the initiation of the Temple music, "in the oldest traditional mode." Under such circumstances, however, a confusion would easily arise between the composer of the tune and the author; and when once the idea had arisen that David was the author of psalms, it would be natural to endeavour to discover in the story of his life suitable occasions for their composition. The interpretation of the titles here suggested removes an objection brought against the assumption of a Maccabacan date for certain psalms, which lays stress on the fact that some of them, are psalms of the Temple choirs; whereas, when the Temple was e.g. Ps. xliv., are written in a time of the deepest dejection, and yet re-opened for worship, after its profanation by Antiochus, the Jews were victorious, and a much more joyful tone was appropriate. For if the titles m, &c., do not denote that the psalms sc inscribed were collected by the Temple choirs, there is no evidence that these psalms were originally sung in the Temple. The earlier collections of psalms may well have been used first in synagogues, and only adapted to the Temple worship when they had become part of the devotional life of the people. It is noteworthy that the psalms quoted by the Chronicler belong to the last collection, books IV. and V.. which, as a whole, is far more suitable for liturgical use. Since, then, the existence of separate books of psalms anterior to the present divisions of the Psalter is very doubtful, we must look for other evidences of date. Now, both the Korahite and Asaphic groups of psalms are remarkable that they hardly contain any recognition of present sin on the part of the community of Jewish faiththough they do confess the sin of Israel in the past--but are exercised with the observation that prosperity does not follow righteousness either in the case of the individual (xlix., lxxiii.) or in that of the nation, which suffers notwithstanding its loyalty to God, or even on account thereof (xliv., lxxix.). Now the rise of the problems of individual faith is the mark of the age that followed Jeremiah, while the confident assertion of national righteousness_under misfortune is a characteristic mark of pious Judaism after Ezra, in the period of the law but not earlier. Malachi, Ezra and Nehemiah, like Haggai and Zechariah, are still very far from holding that the sin of Israel lies all in the past. Again, a considerable number of these psalms (xliv., lxxiv., lxxix., lxxx.) point to an historical situation which can be very definitely realized. They are post-exilic in their whole tone and belong to a time when prophecy had ceased and the synagogue worship was fully established (Ixxiv. 8, 9). But the Jews are no longer the obedient slaves of the oppressing power; there has been a national rising and armies have gone forth to battle. Yet God has not gone forth with them: the heathen have been victorious, blood has flowed like water round Jerusalem, the Temple has been defiled, and these disasters assume the character These details would fit the time of of a religious persecution. pretation, with harps over the tenors." But whatever the obscure religious persecution under Antiochus, to which indeed Ps. Ixxiv. is expression by may mean, u cannot here mean to "direct," referred (as a prophecy) in 1 Macc. vii. 16. It is contended by those for a choir with six "directors" would have been a veritable bear-who, like the late Professor W. Robertson Smith, are opposed to garden. Obviously the word must refer to something in the music; and inasmuch as the cymbals were for the purpose of producing a volume of sound (on), it is reasonable to suppose that the

as

The threefold division of the singers appears in the same list according to the Hebrew text of verse 17, but the occurrence of Jeduthun as a proper name instead of a musical note is suspicious, and makes the text of LXX. preferable. The first clear trace of the triple choir is therefore in Neh. xii. 24.

the dating of any psalms of the second collection in the Maccabaean period, that, since they are post-exilic, there is one and only one time in the Persian period to which they can be referred, viz. that of the great civil wars under Artaxerxes III. Ochus (middle of 4th

collections had arisen; and if, as seems probable, we may identify this place with the Temple at Jerusalem, the absence of musical titles is easily explained, for the number of skilled musicians who there ministered, and who would, of course, possess the tradition of the various modes and tones, would make precise musical directions superfluous. On the other hand, in a collection intended for synagogue use-and the second collection of psalms is as a whole far more suitable to a synagogue than to the Temple-where there would not be a large choir and orchestra of skilled musicians, it would obviously be desirable to state whether the psalm was to be sung to a Davidic, Asaphic or Korahite tone, or to give the name of a melody appropriate to it. Again, the general tone of large parts of this collection is much more cheerful than that of the Elohistic psalm-book. It begins with a psalm (xc.) ascribed in the title to Moses, and seemingly designed to express feelings appropriate to a situation analogous to that of the Israelites when, after the weary march through the wilderness, they stood on the borders of the promised land. It looks back on a time of great trouble and forward to a brighter future. In some of the following psalms there are still references to deeds of oppression and violence, but more generally Israel appears as happy under the law. The problems of divine justice are no longer burning questions, the righteousness of God is seen in the peaceful felicity of the pious (xci., xcii., &c.). Israel, indeed, is still scattered and not triumphant over the heathen, but even in the dispersion the Jews are under a mild rule (cvi. 46), and the commercial activity of the nation has begun to develop beyond the seas (cvii. 26 seq.). But some of the psalms refer to a time of struggle and victory. In Ps. cxviii. Israel led by the house of Aaron-this is a notable pointhas emerged triumphant from a desperate conflict, and celebrates at the Temple a great day of rejoicing for the unhoped-for victory: in Ps. cxlix. the saints are pictured with the praises of God in their throat and a sharp sword in their hands to take vengeance on the heathen, to bind their kings and nobles, and exercise against them the judgment written in prophecy. Such an enthusiasm of militant piety, plainly based on actual successes of Israel and the house of Aaron, can only be referred to the first victories of the Maccabees, culminating in the purification of the Temple in 164 B.C. This restoration of the worship of the national sanctuary, under circumstances that inspired religious feelings very different from those of any other generation since the return from Babylon, might most naturally be followed by an extension of the Temple psalmody; it certainly was followed by some liturgical inno vations, for the solemn service of dedication on the 25th day of Chisleu was made the pattern of a new annual feast (that mentioned in John x. 22). In later times the psalms for the encaenia or feast of dedica tion embraced Ps. xxx. and the hallel Ps. cxiii.-cxviii.; and though Ps. xxx. may have been adapted from a collection already existing, there is every reason to think that the hallel, which especially in its closing part contains allusions that fit no other time so well, was first arranged for the same ceremony. The course of the subsequent history makes it very intelligible that the Psalter was finally closed, as we have seen from the date of the Greek version that it must have been, within a few years at most after this great event. From the time of Hyrcanus downwards the ideal of the princely high priests became more and more divergent from the ideal of the pious in Israel, and in the Psalter of Solomon we see religious poetry turned against the lords of the Temple and its worship.

century, B.C.). But there is no evidence that the Jews were involved in, these; for the account which Josephus gives of Bagoses' oppression of the Jews represents the trouble as having arisen originally from internal dissensions, and does not hint at anything of the nature of a rebellion against Persia. Moreover the statement of Eusebius (Chron. anno 1658 Abr.) that Artaxerxes Ochus in the course of his campaign against Egypt transported a detachment of Jews to Hyrcania does not prove that Judaea as a whole had revolted. There is nothing even to connect these Jews with Palestine; they may have formed a part of the very considerable Jewish community which we know to have been settled in Egypt as early as the 5th century B.C. On the other hand, it is extremely improbable that the Jews of Judaca, whom Nehemiah had entirely detached from their immediate neighbours, would have taken part in any general rising against Persia. Between them and the Samaritans on the north and the Edomites on the south there was the most implacable hostility, which would probably be sufficient in itself to keep them from joining in the revolts in which other parts of Syria were involved. Morcover, even if the Jews had revolted, it cannot fairly be main tained that such a revolt must necessarily have had a religious character. Even Josephus does not say that the Persians tried to interfere with the Jews in the exercise of their religion; and nothing less than this would satisfy the language of Ps. xliv. 22: "Yea, for thy sake are we killed all the day long," &c. On the other hand, not only is the atmosphere of the second collection of psalms as a whole the atmosphere of godly Judaism in the 2nd century B.C., but it may fairly be claimed that this collection contains many psalms which may naturally be interpreted in the light of the history of that period of which no satisfactory explanation (in their details) can be given if they are assigned to any other time. Thus, for example, Ps. xliv., with its description of the sufferings of the righteous for God's sake, would be perfectly appropriate in the mouth of one of the "godly" (Hasidim) about 167 B.C. Ps. xlv., though the unsoundness of the text in certain parts makes it difficult to speak with certainty would suit the marriage of Alexander Balas at Ptolemais in 150 B.C., at which the high priest Jonathan was present as an honoured guest. In this connexion verse 10 is particularly appropriate as addressed to an Egyptian princess whose forefathers, though their rule had not on the whole been tyrannical, had been regarded by the Jews as heathen oppressors. Again, Ps. lx., with its ideal description of Jehovah's kingdom as including Gilead, Samaria, Moab, Edom and Philistia though the ideal was not realized till the days of John Hyrcanus, would be quite appropriate in the mouth of a Maccabaean patriot. The author of Ps. Ixviii. would seem to have been inspired by the sight or the description of the never-to-be-forgotten procession of the victorious Maccabees in 164 B.C. to rededicate the desecrated Temple. Hence the taunt to Bashan, the stronghold of the Seleucid government; hence the mention of Judah and Benjamin with the two Galilaean tribes Zebulon and Naphtali (as in Isaiah ix. 1-a passage which on independent grounds has been assigned to the time of Simon Maccabacus), while schismatic Samaria is completely ignored. The historical background of Ps. lxxix. is apparently the same as that of Ps. xliv. Again, Ps. lxxxvii, would seem to date from a time when the Jews, having won freedom to worship God, were able to look forward to the conversion of their former oppressors (cf. Isaiah xi., xix.). That this psalm was composed at least as late as the 3rd century B.C. is made probable by the name here given to Egypt, Rahab. Having regard to Job. ix. 13, xxvi. 12, Isaiah li. 9, there can be little doubt that Rahab is the (? Palestinian) name of Tiamat the dragon of the abyss, the natural symbol of the power of darkness, or of the kingdom of the world as opposed to the kingdom of the people of the saints of the Most High God. It is extremely improbable that such a name was applied to Egypt simply because Egypt possessed the crocodile. The origin of its application must be sought in a time when Egypt was regarded as hostile to the people of the Lord-fifteen steps or degrees that led from the women's to the men's that is to say, during the Ptolemaic rule over Palestine. These considerations, in addition to numerous phrases and expressions which cannot here be noticed, of which the full force can only be felt by those who have specially studied the Maccabaean period and those other portions of the Old Testament, such as Zechariah ix.-xiv., which may plausibly be assigned to it, make it almost certain that the second collection of psalms was made not earlier than the time of Jonathan or even of Simon.

Now books IV. and V. arc, as we have seen, later than the Elohistic redaction of books II. and III., so that the collection of the last part of the Psalter must, if our argument up to this point is sound, fall within the second half of the 2nd century B.C. And here it is to be noted that though no part of the Psalter shows clearer marks of a liturgical purpose, we find that in books IV. and V. the musical titles have entirely disappeared. This does not necessarily prove that "the technical terms of the Temple music had gone out of use, presumably because they were already become unintelligible, as they were when the Septuagint version was made "; for it does not follow that technical musical terms which had originated in the Temple at Jerusalem and were intelligible in Palestine would have been understood in Egypt. The absence of the musical titles, however, may be taken as an indication that the last collection of psalms was formed in a different place from that in which the earlier

All this does not, of course, imply that there are not in books IV. and V. any pieces older than the completion of books II and III., for the composition of a poem and its acceptance as part of the Levitical liturgy are not necessarily coincident in date, except in psalms written with a direct liturgical purpose. In the fifteen "songs of degrees (Ps. cxx.-cxxxiv.) we have a case in point. According to the Mishna (Middoth. ii. 5) and other Jewish traditions, these psalms were sung by the Levites at the Feast of Tabernacles on the court. But when we look at the psalms themselves we see that they must originally have been a hymn-book, not for the Levites, but for the laity who came up to Jerusalem at the great pilgrimage feasts, and who themselves remembered, or their fathers had told them, the days when, as we see in Ps. xlii., it was impossible to make pilgrimage to Zion. They are hymns of the laity, describing with much beauty and depth of feeling the emotions of the pilgrim when his feet stood within the gates of Jerusalem, when he looked forth on the encircling hills, when he felt how good it was to be camping side by side with his brethren on the slopes of Zion (cxxxiii.), when a sense of Jehovah's forgiving grace and the certainty of the redemption of Israel triumphed over all the evils of the present and filled his soul with humble and patient hope.

The titles which ascribe four of the pilgrimage songs to David and one to Solomon are lacking in the true LXX., and inconsistent with the contents of the psalms. Better attested, because found in the LXX. as well as in the Hebrew, and therefore probably as old as the collection itself, are the name of Moses in Ps. xc. and that of David in Ps. ci., cii., cviii.-cx., cxxxviii.-cxlv. But where did the last collectors of the psalms find such very ancient pieces which had

1 Possibly under Simon; compare the other hallel (Ps. cxlvi.-cl. with 1 Macc. xiii. 50 seq.

been passed by all previous collectors, and what criterion was there to establish their genuineness? No canon of literary criticism can treat as valuable external evidence an attestation which first appears so many centuries after the supposed date of the poems, especially when it is confronted by facts so conclusive as that Ps. cviii. is made up of extracts from Ps. Ivii. and Ix. and that Ps. cxxxix. is marked by its language as one of the latest pieces in the book. The only possible question for the critic is whether the ascription of these psalms to David was due to the idea that he was the psalmist par excellence, to whom any poem of unknown origin was naturally ascribed, or whether we have in some at least of these titles an example of the habit so common in later Jewish literature of writing in the name of ancient worthies. In the case of Ps. xc. it can hardly be doubted that this is the real explanation, and the same account must be given of the title in Ps. cxlv., if, as seems probable, it is meant to cover the whole of the great hallel or tehilla (Ps. cxlv.-cl.), which must, from the allusions in Ps. cxlix., as well as from its place, be almost if not quite the latest thing in the Psalter.

when Abimelech (the Philistine king in the stories of Abraham and
Isaac) could be substituted in the title of Ps. xxxiv. for Achish, king
of Gath. In a word, the ascription of these two collections to David
has none of the characters of a genuine historical tradition.
At the same time it is clear that the two collections do not stand
on quite the same footing. The second collection of "Davidic "
psalms, as well as the Korahite and Asaphic psalms, have been sub-
jected to an Elohistic redaction, for which we must find a reason
if the history of the Psalter is to be written. An explanation that
naturally suggests itself is that, at the time when books II. and III.
(with the exception of the appendix, Ps. lxxxiv.-lxxxix.) were
collected, it was already the custom, from motives of reverence, to
abstain from pronouncing the Tetragrammaton. Upon this sup-
position it might be explained that book I. was collected before this
scruple arose, and books IV. and V. when the custom had arisen of
substituting in reading the word Adonai. - But, as we have seen, it is
impossible to separate the contents of the Elohistic books from those
of the last collection. Both include psalms which are most naturally
understood as referring to the persecution of Antiochus Epiphanes
and to the Maccabaean victories, and cannot therefore be separated
by a long interval of time. Moreover the scruple as to the pro-
nunciation of the Tetragrammaton seems to have arisen carlier, as
in the LXX. version of the Pentateuch is represented by Kúpos.
And further, if the Elohistic redaction was due merely to a desire
to avoid pronouncing the divine name, why was not the presumably
earlier collection of psalms in book I. subjected to a similar redaction?
It is therefore difficult to suppose that the Jewish Church as a whole
passed through a stage in which it was felt desirable to substitute
supposing that such a thing was done in some sections of the Jewish
Church, and it is probable that we must look for an explanation of the
peculiarity not to the time but to the place where the second collec-
books of psalms exhibit no particular suitability for the Temple
tion was formed. Now it must be frankly admitted that the earlier
services. It is only in the last collection, books IV. and V., that we
find any number of psalms appropriate to such a ritual as that of
the Temple, and it is difficult to resist the conviction that the earlier
collections were made for use, not in the Temple at Jerusalem but in
psalms in which the poets, though speaking perhaps, not as in-
some synagogue or synagogues. Thus, for example, the numerous
dividuals but as members of a class, describe themselves as poor and
afflicted at the hands of certain ungodly men, who appear to be
Jews, can hardly have been originally collected by the Temple choirs.
For since the ministers of the Temple at Jerusalem were the aristo-
of Malachi and from the history of the Maccabees, the chief offenders,
cracy of the land, and were often, as we know both from the book
of the Temple compositions directed against themselves.
it is extremely unlikely that they collected for the official services
also remarkable that hymns such as Exodus xv., which would be
specially suitable to the Temple, find no place in the Psalter. More-
over, in Ps. xl., we have the striking assertion, which surely did not
originate in the Temple, that God has no delight in sacrifice and
offerings. On the other hand, the first collection of "Davidic
psalms taken as a whole would be perfectly appropriate in the
period. We have, unfortunately, no information as to the origin of
worship of a Judaean community of Hasidim in the Maccabaean
synagogues, but their existence in pre-Maccabaean times may be
inferred not only from the statement in Ps. lxxiv. 8, but also from the
fact that there must have been some rallying points for the religion of
the Hasidim: besides that supplied by occasional visits or pilgrimages
together to worship away from Jerusalem, especially in times of
to Jerusalem. We need not suppose that congregations gathered
distress, would necessarily sing the religious poems which they
had collected, though it is by no means improbable that they would
do so. At any rate, Ps. cxxxvii. 4 may fairly be taken as evidence
that those heathen among whom the Jews dwelt in a strange
land" had heard and admired the "songs of Zion." Certainly in
happier times, when the worst period of storm and stress was over,
there would be a desire to enliven the services with music, which
would naturally be borrowed from the traditional music of the great
national sanctuary.

It is

For the later stages of the history of the Psalter we have, as we have seen, a fair amount of evidence pointing to conclusions of a pretty definite kind. We have stiil to consider the two great groups of psalms ascribed to David in books I. and II. We have endeavoured to show that the ascription "to David" in these groups did not originally denote authorship by David, and that, notwithstanding the subscription of Ps. lxxii., which may well be a later note, there is no necessity to suppose an original collection of Davidic psalms from which excerpts were made. It is, however, probable that the title soon came to be understood of David's authorship, with the result that further notes were added indicating the situation in writing for mm. There is, however, no difficulty in in David's life to which the psalms appeared to be appropriate; It is certainly not impossible that the two groups of "Davidic psalms once formed separate collections independently compiled, and that the subscription to Ps. lxxii. originally stood at the end of the second collection; for in book I. every psalm, except the introductory poems i. and ii. and the late Ps. xxxiii., which may have been added as a liturgical sequel to Ps. xxxii., bears the title "of David," and in like manner the group Ps. li.-Ixxii., though it contains a few anonymous pieces and one psalm which is either " of," or rather, according to the oldest tradition," for Solomon," is composed of "Davidic" psalms. It would seem also that the collectors of books I-III. know of no Davidic psalms outside of these two collections, for Ps. lxxxvi. in the appendix to the Elohistic collection is merely a cento of quotations from Davidic pieces with a verse or two from Exodus and Jeremiah. Now that the ascription "to David" was understood of David's authorship before the time of the LXX. is clear from such titles as that of Ps. xviii., for example, but there is no evidence that in carly times David was regarded as the author of any of the psalms. Even the Chronicler, though he regarded David as the great founder of the Temple music, does not quote any psalm as composed by him, and the Chronicler's omission of 2 Sam. xxii.-xxiii. 7 makes it probable that this section has been inserted in the book of Samuel since he wrote. If, as is possible, Ecclus. xlvii. 8 is a reminiscence of Ps. ix. 2 and Ps. xviii. 2, we should indeed naturally infer that these two psalms were.regarded by Ben Sira as the work of David; but this would prove nothing as to the date of the collection in which we now have them. It may fairly be contended therefore that the tradition that David is the author of the psalms which are assigned to him in books I. and II. comes to us from a period later than that in which the Chronicler wrote. And it is not too much to say that that view-which to some extent appears in the historical psalms of the Ehohistic Psalter-implies absolute incapacity to understand the difference between old Israel and later Judaism, and makes almost anything possible in the way of the ascription of comparatively modern pieces to ancient authors. In any case the titles are manifestly the product of the same uncritical spirit as we have just been speaking of, for not only are many of the titles certainly wrong, but they are wrong in such a way as to prove that they date from an age to which David was merely the abstract psalmist and which had no idea whatever of the historical conditions of his age. For example, Ps. xx. xxi. are not spoken by a king but addressed to a king by his people; Ps. v. xxvii. allude to the Temple (which did not exist in David's time) and the author of the latter psalm desires to live there continually. Even in the older Davidic psalm-book there is a whole series of hymns in which the writer identifies himself with the poor and needy, the righteous people of God suffering in silence at the hands of the wicked, without other hope than patiently to wait for the interposition of Jehovah (Ps. xii., xxv., xxxvii., xxxviii., &c.). Nothing can be further removed than this from any possible situation in the life of the David of the books of Samuel, and the case is still worse in the second Davidic collection, especially where we have in the titles definite notes as to the historical occasion on which the poems are supposed to have been written. To refer Ps. lii. to Doeg, Ps. liv. to the Ziphites, Ps. lix. to David when watched in his house by Saul, implies an absolute lack of the very elements of historical judgment. Even the bare names of the old history were no longer correctly known

The explanation of suggested above offers another alternative.-R. H. K.

"

community of Hasidim in the earlier Maccabaean period we need In thus assigning the first collection of psalms to some Judaean first composed at this time. Although there is no psalm which can not conclude that all the psalms contained in this collection were that there are some which date from as carly a time as the age of be shown with any probability to be pre-exilic, it is not impossible Zerubbabel, by whose appointment national hopes were raised to so high a pitch. Thus, for example, Ps. xviii., xx., xxi., which in some respects recall the language of the song ascribed to Hannah in 1 Sam. however, be admitted that as a whole the psalms of the first collection ii., may possibly, like that song, be referred to this period. It must. quoted in Job. vii. 17, need not have been composed long before the are more suitable to a later date. Ps. viii., which is almost certainly book in which it is quoted: the references to the "godly" and to their persecutions at the hands of wicked men, who seem to be Jews, recall the Maccabaean age; in Ps. xxii. the speaker, who is not an individual but speaks in the name of a community, bears a remarkable resemblance to the "suffering servant of Isaiah lii. 13-liii.

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In books IV. and V. we have a collection probably made originally for use in the Temple, consisting in the main of recent hymns, but embodying, at least to some extent, older traditional hymns of the Temple. On this hypothesis we are able to explain the presence of certain poetical pieces both in the book of Chronicles and in the Psalter. We need not suppose that the Chronicler quotes from the Psalter or vice versa, the matter which they have in common being probably derived from certain traditional songs current among the Levitical singers. Since this last collection includes a psalm (cx.) which can scarcely refer to any one earlier than Simon the Maccabee, and cannot well be later than his time, we are justified in assigning the compilation of this collection to about the year 140 B.C. But by this time a great change had taken place in the aims and aspirations of the Jews. The earlier Maccabacan policy of concentration had given place to one of expansion. The Jews in Jerusalem could not ignore the Jews of Galilee or even of the Dispersion. The hymns which had brought comfort to the faithful in the time of their distress had become an integral part of their religion which could not be given up. Jerusalem was now the religious metropolis of a great nation, and accordingly it was felt desirable that the hymn-books of the several parts of the nation should be combined into a hymn-book for the whole. The synagogue collections, since they contained psalms which at this time were probably considered to be the work of David, were placed first, and the Temple collection added to them. There was then prefixed to the whole collection a hymn (Ps. ii.) describing the hoped-for greatness of Simon's kingdom, and finally Pharisaic sentiment prefaced the whole by a psalm in praise of the law. In the final compilation, or perhaps in a subsequent redaction, some alterations were made in the original order, some notes were added describing the circumstances in which various psalms had been composed, and lastly, in order to assimilate the outward form-R. H. K. of the Psalter to that of the Pentateuch, the three collections were divided into five books. The final redaction is probably to be dated between the years 140 and 130 B.C.

This version has peculiar titles taken from Eusebius and Theodore | Origin of the Psalter, Bampton Lectures (1891), and the article