The Antiquity of Psalter Shape Efforts

In recent decades, Psalms scholarship has paid increasing attention to the overall editorial arrangement of the book of Psalms, and to the placement of individual psalms as their literary context. An obvious objection to this enterprise is its novelty, especially since the Psalms have enjoyed unparalleled exegetical attention in the history of Christian and Jewish exegesis. This objection is fed by the nearly ubiquitous inaccurate presentation of Psalter-shape readings as originating in 1985 with Gerald Wilson. While Wilson has changed the landscape and is deservedly named as the recent ancestor of this project, that history is inaccurate. We will show that a desire to understand the shape of the whole Psalter, and its editorial intention, can be dated to the second century, leading through various stages to full-length commentaries following this approach being attempted in the nineteenth century. Finally, without detracting from Wilson’s unique contribution, we will show that he was not alone in his own day but that others were engaged in this task concurrently and in the decades before him.