Figures

First in the long list of the many people who have helped in this lengthy and complex project must come the Series Editors, John Sawyer and David Gunn. This commentary had several early blips—for example, whether, after Psalms through the Centuries Volume One (2008) there should be just one further volume or two—and it was the editors' unfailing support which made a three‐volume work possible. Both read the manuscript with extraordinary care, giving particular attention to the problem of the transliterations of the Hebrew and Greek. I am particularly grateful to John Sawyer for his help with rabbinic sources and to David Gunn for further suggestions about metrical psalmody and early poetic imitations of psalms. The book would be very different without their input; any remaining errors are mine.

Next, I must thank Rebecca Harkin, who was Publisher for Religion when I wrote Volume One and later was Publisher for Humanities, and so the Wiley‐Blackwell Commentaries have consistently been her remit. Working originally with Blackwell and now, some eight years later, with Wiley‐Blackwell has had its challenges, but Rebecca has been a consistent source of wisdom and good humour. Manish Luthra and Vimali Joseph have each been a mainstay in seeing the book through production, especially over the visual impact of the Plates and Figures. Carolyn Holleyman has done superb work, under pressure of very tight deadlines, with the copy‐editing.

My sabbatical leave and research assistance for Volume Two has been in part financed by the University of Oxford and Worcester College. I want to thank the Faculty of Theology and Religion for allowing me two terms' research leave, especially Alison Broadby for her administrative support. I am equally grateful to the John Fell Fund of the University of Oxford for resourcing substitute teaching and research assistance, and at Worcester College to the Bartlett Sisters' Theology Fund, supported mainly by alumni. Particular thanks are due at Worcester to Rhian Perridge, Phillipa Tarver, Scott Scullion, Trish Pease, Carmy Strzelecki, Elizabeth Smith and Emma Standhaft for their various forms of administrative support. My third source of funding was The St Luke's Foundation, and I thank David Benzie and the trustees for their most generous support towards the production of the images.

Any work on reception history requires inter‐disciplinary collaboration. I am particularly indebted to three close colleagues in Oxford. Peter Groves read the manuscript giving attention to my use of the church fathers and modern theologians, as well as my citations of English poets. Matthew Cheung‐Salisbury read the commentary with his expert eye for Christian liturgy and music. John Barton, who has supported my work for more years than I can remember, looked at the text from the viewpoint of a biblical scholar. Any existing errors are my responsibility alone.

Two Oxford projects have encouraged my work—The Centre for Reception History of the Bible, directed by Chris Joynes, and The Oxford Research Centre for the Humanities (TORCH) which sponsors the Oxford Psalms Network. I am particularly grateful to my fellow‐coordinators, Francis Leneghan and Helen Appleton, for new insights into the reception of the psalms in medieval English literature.

Two other communities, through their music, have enabled me to appreciate the psalms in a different context: I am grateful for the superb singing of the choir of Worcester College Oxford, and for the continuous chanting of psalmody by the new choir of St. Barnabas Church, Oxford.

I have been working on this commentary, amidst other publications, since 2008. Natasha O'Hear was my first research assistant, and after two years' sterling service she handed on to Holly Morse, who worked with me until 2016. I owe a great debt to Holly, for she was in large measure responsible for assembling, then processing the data for me to use within the commentary: her organisational skills and artistic expertise were invaluable. John Ritzema and Danny Crowther have worked with me for the last year, contributing to the final stages of the publication. All have been indispensable in helping to speed up the process of preparing a somewhat challenging manuscript.

Collaboration outside Oxford has involved many colleagues. They include Eberhard Bons (Stuttgart), for invaluable resources on the Septuagint version of the Psalms; Laurence Clémencau (Villefontaine), for online resources for patristic commentaries and illuminated manuscripts; †Peter Flint (Vancouver), for resources on the Psalms scrolls at Qumran; †Erich Zenger (Münster), †Frank‐Lothar Hossfeld (Bonn), Bernd Janowski (Tübingen), Friedhelm Hartenstein (München), Hermann Spieckermann (Göttingen), Beat Weber (Liestal), Johannes Bremer (Bochum), Till Steiner (Jerusalem), Stefan Attard (Malta), Giovanni Barbiero (Rome), Bill Bellinger and Dennis Tucker (Baylor), William Brown (Columbia), and Dirk Human, Alphonso Groenewald, and Philip Botha (Pretoria) for their various contributions on the literary and theological shaping of the Psalter which marks the first vital stage of the reception history process. Robert Atwell, Bishop of Exeter, has been a constant source of encouragement in matters liturgical, as also was †Geoffrey Rowell (Chichester). Jonathan Magonet (Leo Baeck College, London) has been most generous in offering his own resources on Jewish liturgy. Those who have advised on and contributed images of the psalms include Elizabeth Solopova (Oxford), especially on Latin illuminated Psalters; Frans Sellies (Utrecht), for extra insights into the Utrecht Psalter; Ed van der Vlist (Koninklijke Bibliotheek, The Hague) for many online resources of fourteenth and fifteenth century Psalters; Mordechai Balouka (Jerusalem), for information and images of the Museum of Psalms; Michael Falter (London), for regular access to facsimiles of illuminated Jewish Psalters and Prayer Books; Roger Wagner (Oxford), and Michael Jessing (Peebles), for freely allowing me to print their own individual images of psalms. Those who have helped me with their musical expertise in psalmody include Jonathan Arnold and Alexander Massey (Oxford), Howard Goodall (London), David Mitchell (Brussels), Siobhan Dowling‐Long (Cork) and John Sawyer (Amble).

The Preface for Volume One concluded with thanking my immediate family, and it is appropriate that I end similarly here. My daughters have moved on, but I frequently visit The Hague, where Abbie, Omar and Sophia now live, and use it as a base for writing and research. Esther now works between the UK and Brazil: she too has shown an extraordinary belief in a project which has taken so long to materialise. Equally remarkable is the confidence of my husband Dick, who has travelled with me, both literally and metaphorically, for many years in this project, accommodating my constant distractions. Since his retirement in 2011 he has used much of his time to support me in so many practical ways, as well as reading the first draft of the manuscript with a scrupulous eye to detail. I dedicated my last volume to him, ‘my fiercest critic and closest friend’. It is appropriate that I dedicate this second volume to Abbie and Esther, in gratitude for their similar loving support: this project has been consuming, but their role has been to remind me that there are other important concerns even beyond the reception history of the Psalms.

This book is not a typical commentary. First, it does not include the usual historical–critical explanation of the text. So it does not focus primarily on how the text might have been assembled, neither does it provide an exegesis of every difficult word, verse by verse, in a particular psalm. Nor does it seek to give answers about the date, or provenance, or the original purpose of a single psalm. There is some emphasis on all these issues, but only when they are relevant to the reception history of a particular psalm in its earliest stages, Jewish or Christian. Furthermore, this is not a classical ‘devotional’ commentary. It does not focus exclusively on the spiritual value of the psalms as prayers of faithful Jews and Christians. There is a good deal of interest in such matters, from the point of view of both Jewish and Christian reception, but there is more to the commentary than this perspective alone. Thirdly, this is not a typical literary–theological commentary. The interest is only in part in the analysis of the words of the text; it is also about a psalm’s later performance through liturgy, music and art. So although there are discussions of, for example, the possible strophes of each psalm, and of the way the language of any one psalm is echoed in psalms before and after it, this serves only as a starting point for its developing reception history. The literary interests are actually found more in a psalm’s reception in later literature (especially after the early Middle Ages, and in English).

So what then is this commentary about? It starts where most commentaries end: it examines interpretations of the psalms after their composition up to the present day, and examines their later reception in both Jewish and Christian tradition. It is always in search of a different perspective, another insight, something hidden and then uncovered by the later accretions of interpretation.

This volume is based on the first two books of the Psalter—Psalms 1–41 and 42–72. This takes us almost to the mid‐point of the one hundred and fifty psalms.ⁱ Each book is subdivided into smaller collections: the Table of Contents makes these divisions clear. For each psalm, I use a similar method, which follows seven interrelated stages.

The first stage is a focus on the compilation of a collection of psalms, because the placing of each psalm in the Psalter as a whole signifies the first stage in its reception history. This is why I begin by comparing the linguistic equivalences between one psalm and its neighbours, to illustrate that the reception of a psalm into a larger collection has not been accidental.ⁱⁱ This is also why I spend some time discussing the division of the psalms into two books (1–41; 42–72), and the different collections within these books, and the different arrangements of psalms within these collections. I do not believe a psalm can be understood as an isolated unit independent of its neighbours. Thus reception history starts with the process of compilation.

The second stage is about Jewish reception from the second century BCE onwards. It includes early translations of each psalm in Greek, as well as different Hebrew versions in the *Qumran Scrolls. The focus is on examples which have a trajectory in later reception history. This then leads to a consideration of other aspects of Jewish reception history, including the Aramaic paraphrase of the psalms in the *Targum and the use of the psalms in rabbinic sources such as the *Talmud (and within this, the *Mishnah), the *Midrash Tehillim, and medieval commentaries by, for example, *Rashi and *Kimḥi.

Jewish and Christian commentators are often in dialogue with one another, so the third stage examines the reception of a particular psalm in Christian tradition. This starts with the New Testament, and progresses to look at readings of the psalms by the church fathers and medieval commentators, writing in both Latin and Greek. So this also includes looking at the (Christian) Latin translation of the (previously Jewish) Greek translation. The final part of this third stage looks at a huge span of Christian commentary starting with the early church, then the so‐called early Middle Ages (c. 600–1300), the later Middle Ages (c.1300–1500) up to the early Modern Period in the mid‐seventeenth century.

Compilation, translation and commentary are, however, not the entire story. A large proportion of this work looks at the more practical and aesthetic modes of reception. Hence the fourth stage examines various prominent adaptations of a psalm (or a psalm verse) through Jewish and Christian liturgy from as early as the third century up to the present day. The fifth stage traces its representation in Christian and Jewish art, starting with ninth‐century *Carolingian and Byzantine illuminated manuscripts and also discussing, where relevant, later paintings, woodcuts, and sketches and more contemporary artistic interpretations. The sixth stage assesses significant Jewish and Christian musical arrangements of each psalm. These are usually compositions from the Renaissance and Reformation experimentation to the present day, and this leads to a consideration of the very different forms of a psalm when it is adapted for a performance in a church, synagogue, theatre or concert hall.

The seventh stage is to examine, where appropriate, the various imitations and interpretations of a particular psalm in English, from the early modern period up to present times. This might be through old English *Glosses in early Medieval Psalters, or through poetry and drama from the later Middle Ages onwards, or through political, social or gendered discourse; it also includes any pertinent English translations as well as modern imitations in poetry, and of course this includes examples from both Jewish and Christian tradition.

This, then, is a skeletal outline of the method I use for each individual psalm. But who is this commentary for?—Its purpose is in part to bridge the gap between the academy and the synagogue or church: so it is directed at two different kinds of reader. The first is a more academic person: this includes not only those who are working on the psalms (and so would appreciate a different and broader perspective on a specific academic project) but also those who are working on a different aspect of reception (and so would use a study of the psalms as a specific point of reference for a larger project). The second type of reader is anyone who enjoys reading, using, praying, and disseminating the psalms; their concerns are more pastoral and confessional, and in this respect their interests coincide with the ways faithful Jews and Christians through the centuries have used the psalms in this way as well.

This dual readership poses something of a problem. The academically involved reader would expect, for example, my references to psalm texts to be precise in their enumeration—for the Hebrew, Greek, Latin and Aramaic are notoriously different from the English psalm numbers and verses—but those more interested in the more practical dissemination of the psalms would find such academic detail somewhat alienating. Similarly academic colleagues would expect extensive references to Rabbinic, Patristic, Medieval and Reformation sources, yet I have tried to simplify the references where too much precision might estrange other readers. This also applies to the use of liturgical sources, and to citations relating to illuminated manuscripts, to musical composers, and to the poetry of the psalms expressed in different ways in English: a more general readership could again find some of this extraneous detail over‐intrusive. Some compromise is therefore necessary, and I have addressed this in the following ways.

The first challenge concerns the different versions of the psalms in different languages and the use of different numbers for the psalms and their verses. I offer as an Appendix a chart of the versification of psalms, with the NRSV as the normative text. Hence I only use the variant versification and psalm numbers (in parenthesis) when I am explicitly citing a psalm verse in the Hebrew, Greek, Latin and Aramaic. Otherwise I use only the NRSV psalm numbers and verses: those who wish for more consistency can consult the Appendix. Related to this, when citing a word in another language, particularly when that script is not the same as the English alphabet, this is presented in its transliterated form, in italics. A connected issue is knowing which actual Greek or Latin or Aramaic version to use: the best known version in Greek, for example, is the *Septuagint, but other Greek versions seem to be cited in the New Testament, and there is also the Old Greek Psalter and works by *Origen. My preference is to cite from the Septuagint translation.ⁱⁱⁱ Similarly the preferential Latin version I cite is *Jerome’s *Vulgate: this is not to overlook the several other versions in circulation before and after Jerome, and I recognise that the Vulgate is one of three versions which he translated.^iv As for the Aramaic *Targums, I have chosen to use, primarily, the work edited by D.M. Stec.^v Finally, as far as the English version is concerned, for reasons of space I have not been able to print out the NRSV text, but readers are advised to read this commentary with that edition beside them.

A second problem has been trying to account for the early Jewish and Christian liturgical uses of psalmody. There are several works which discuss the general use of the psalms in worship.^vi Nevertheless, we know very little about the specific use of psalmody in the ancient synagogue traditions and in the early Roman and Orthodox Rites in western and eastern Christendom. Hence I have considered it wiser to omit material when I could not be confident of its purported source. I did, however, decide to use Neale and Littledale’s four‐volume Commentary on the Psalms from Primitive and Medieval Writers, published between 1874–79. I am indebted to this work, partly because nothing more recent is quite like it, but I have used it with some caution. It is clear now that we know very little of the *Mozarabic, *Ambrosian or *Gregorian liturgies themselves, even though it is possible to speak of, for example, psalms being sung to Gregorian and Ambrosian plainsong, or to psalms influencing Mozarabic collects. So instead I refer more generally to ‘the Roman Rite’ when referring to western liturgies, of which the so‐called Mozarabic, Ambrosian and Gregorian liturgies are little more than ‘dialects’, and to refer to just ‘the Orthodox Rite’ when referring to the liturgies of the East.^vii

A third decision was whether to use the sources for Jewish and Christian commentators in URL formats. Online versions might not always offer the best translations, but they do provide an easily accessible source, and the more advanced reader would know which hard‐copy resource to consult. So I use many online sources, also including those of illuminated manuscripts, or of different musical compositions. The advantage of a digital version is that readers can then view the text, see the image, and hear the music as well.

A fourth decision has been to offer the reader a fairly detailed Glossary. Even here it was difficult to know how to make the selection, and how to pitch a reader’s familiarity with, for example, Christian heresies, or Jewish liturgical terms, or musical and artistic terminology. But the advantage of a Glossary is that, having cited a particular commentator or heresy (and this is clear in the text by the use of an asterisk next to the term), it needs no further repetition when the same individual, or theological term, or illustrated Psalter occurs several times in later psalms. Those who have no need for this can put the asterisk aside and read on; but those who might need further clarification can at least turn to the Glossary, which has over three hundred entries for this volume alone.^viii

Two earlier publications have been a vital preparation for this work. My The Psalms Through the Centuries Volume One is a companion for this commentary and it offers a broader chronological and geographical overview of the reception of the Psalter as a whole.^ix And A Journey of Two Psalms: The Reception of Psalms 1 & 2 in Jewish and Christian Tradition, which looks at the reception history of just two psalms in considerable detail, uses a similar methodology to the one described above, and this provided a ‘micro’ assignment for the ‘macro’ analysis of the other hundred and forty‐eight psalms, where of course there is much less attention to detail.^x

A Journey of Two Psalms could afford to be reasonably comprehensive in its assessment of the reception history of just two psalms. In this volume, however, working with approximately fifty times fewer words per psalm, there has inevitably been more selectivity.

One decision has been how to determine the balance between the eastern and western reception history of psalmody. I have had to focus increasingly on the western tradition of reception, given that the ultimate destination is the reception of the psalms in English. This has been difficult, because the early origins and development are obviously from the ancient Near East and the Levant, and much of the early Jewish and Christian commentary tradition I refer to here is from these sources, whether from ‘Palestine’ and ‘Babylon’ in Jewish tradition, or from (for example) Antioch and Alexandria in Christian tradition. An engagement with eastern Christian reception is vital when assessing liturgical and artistic examples of psalmody: for example, many of the most significant ninth‐century psalms manuscripts are from Byzantium. One casualty, however, has been any real focus on the Syriac tradition, especially the *Peshitta Psalter. Occasionally I consider some of its psalm headings, for they reveal a fascinating variety of interpretations.^xi Hence the context of this reception history, at least from the ninth century onwards, becomes increasingly western as the language medium progresses from Latin to English. A very different second casualty related to this is a lack of engagement with many examples from the Third World: the bias in this commentary is British, European, and American. It would have been an impossible task in the space allowed to add anything like a ‘global commentary’.^xii

Another issue in selecting material is more about history than geography, and that has been in determining how much material to use from a particular period. I decided to focus on aspects of reception which have stood the test of time, partly because they have provided the foundation for some of the newer developments today. This is why I spend some time discussing the translations, metrical paraphrases, and liturgical experimentation of the Psalms up to the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries before I look at the developments from the eighteenth century up to the present day.^xiii I have also had to be pragmatic in some choices: for example, I have had to use illuminated Psalters which have a secure online presence, because I wanted readers to view these for themselves.^xiv I have been similarly selective in offering musical arrangements of psalms: partly this is because early church and synagogue music is difficult to cite with any confidence, and partly it is the reverse problem of the sheer profusion of musical material on the psalms from the sixteenth century onwards. Metrical psalmody, for example, whether it is Calvinist, Scottish, English and American, has a vast repertoire and much is available online. So I only refer to specific metrical psalms when there is an interesting paraphrase or the arrangement is significant from a reception history perspective. The same is the case with other musical arrangements of psalms for more traditional liturgical occasions, and also with those poetic imitations of psalms which were so popular in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries: if there is a different, well‐known example, I usually cite it, but it would be impossible to refer to everything.

Hence I have not been able to use as many recent or contemporary examples of reception as readers might like. I can hardly deny that a huge sea‐change has taken place in the reception of psalmody over the last century or so, but my aim is to offer a much broader perspective of interpretation. Where relevant I do offer examples of contemporary liturgical innovations and modern translations of the psalms, both in Jewish and Christian tradition, because these illustrate that the language of the psalms has now to be open to gender inclusivity and has to be more politically sensitive. But the number of versions of the Psalms which one could now use, whether for private prayer, public worship or literary enjoyment is again vast and I have had to be selective.

What I do present from a contemporary perspective is the more recent ideological criticism of some of the psalms, partly because this often reverses a long‐standing tradition of interpretation and so makes us think about these texts from a different viewpoint. So I sometimes give examples from more recent political and social commentators; I present the views of those who question centuries of assumptions about the ‘maleness’ of the psalms; and I include those writers who are critical of earlier anti‐Semitic and anti‐Christian interpretations. Mostly I have left the reader to form their own view of these observations: my own concern is to produce a reception history which was as varied and multi‐faceted as possible.

As the commentary has progressed, I have become increasingly aware of specific themes in the reception of particular psalms. First, some psalms bear witness to the very different (often bitter and conflicting) Jewish and Christian interpretations. Secondly, other psalms have an unusual theological, political or ethical trajectory, usually with respect to particular verses, and this dominates the psalm’s reception. Thirdly, some psalms consistently reflect more universal concerns, and these bring together the persuasions of different faiths, whilst still allowing for the integrity of one particular faith‐reading. I make clear these particular themes by way of conclusion to each individual psalm.

It is clear that some psalms are more rich in reception than others: there is an inevitable unevenness in the length of each psalm commentary, and by this the reader can ascertain the most significant psalms, some of which they might not have expected.

So what I offer is what I have referred to elsewhere as an ‘anthology with a purpose’.^xv I leave it to the reader to decide whether my selection from the huge reserves of the reception of psalmody has been worth the effort.