arts and culture on The Psalms

The psalmist could not see himself as an individual apart from Israel. His self-identity was bound up in his participation in the community of faith.

Most emphatically the Psalms must be read as poems; as lyrics, with all the licenses and all the formalities, the hyperboles, the emotional rather than logical connections, which are proper to lyric p...

For the psalmist there is no autonomous spirituality. There is only a faith that is lived in the company of God’s people.”

Music, vocal and instrumental, played a significant role in the organized institutionalized worship of ancient Israel. It was an accepted constituent of religious self-expression. Nevertheless, Israel...

The primary use of prayer, as the Psalter sees it, is not for expressing ourselves but in becoming ourselves, and we cannot do that alone. In praying the Psalms with others, then, we learn to become m...