Holladay on the Psalms

The late William L. Holladay (1926-2016) was professor of Old Testament at Andover Newton Theological School in Boston. In 1993 he published a marvellous book, The Psalms through Three Thousand Years: Prayerbook of a Cloud of Witnesses (Augsburg Fortress). I purchased this book eleven years ago, and, while I read bits and pieces of it afterwards, only now have I got round to reading it from cover to cover. Indeed it is one of the most extensive books in English about the biblical Psalms, covering everything from authorship, sources, compilation, canonization, and liturgical use by Jews and Christians over the centuries. A full review of this encyclopaedic treatment would require more space than I can give to it, but I think it worthwhile to highlight some of the more interesting elements that make it such a rich treasure of information.

The book is divided into three parts: 1: "The Psalms Take Shape: A Reconstruction"; 2. "The Psalter Through History"; and 3: "Current Theological Issues." Within these parts chapters are devoted to "Psalms from the North" (chapter 3), that is to the northern kingdom of Israel between the 10th century BC and 721, when Assyria captured Samaria; "Psalms for the Temple of Solomon" (4); "Steps toward the Status of Scripture: The Psalms Are Collected, Annotated, and Translated" (6); and "Psalms at the Dead Sea" (7). Holladay takes a special interest in the beloved Twenty-Third Psalm, devoting the introduction and epilogue to it. Readers of this blog will want to read chapter 11, "The Psalms for Reformation Protestants," where he discusses the tradition of metrical psalmody, including the Genevan Psalter.

Holladay deals with the knotty issue of the imprecatory psalms and their place in Christian worship, taking something of a mediating position between those preferring to exclude them altogether as pre-christian and those willing to use them against their own perceived enemies. In particular, he spends an entire chapter and more examining and discussing the deletions from the Psalms used in the Liturgy of the Hours, the post-Vatican II version of the ancient Divine Office of daily prayer. Given my own interest in the practice of daily prayer, often associated with the Rule of St. Benedict, I found this of interest, although I sometimes found the author's conclusions unpersuasive.

What I most enjoyed from this book are the unexpected tidbits that the author scatters throughout his text. For example:

• The royal wedding song, Psalm 45, was likely written for the wedding of King Ahab and Queen Jezebel (28), a conclusion to which Holladay comes based on references to the Phoenician city of Tyre (verse 12), to ivory palaces (8), and to a possible play on words with the name Ahab (7).
  
• Psalm 29 was originally a pre-Israelite, Canaanite hymn to Baal adapted to the worship of YHWH, the God of Israel.(21-22). As such, it is one of the oldest of the Psalms.
• While many scholars ascribe late dates to many of the Psalms, Holladay believes that Psalm 2 was very likely sung by the prophet Nathan at David's coronation as king (23).
• The Psalms Scroll from Cave 11 at the Dead Sea, with the biblical Psalms interspersed with other material, may have been Qumran's counterpart to a mediaeval breviary, or prayer book (102).
• Psalm 110 may not originally have contained a reference to Melchizedek, despite the Greek Septuagint's translation on which the author of the Letter to the Hebrews draws. The original may have been: "You are a priest forever, according to my decree my legitimate king" (24).
• Responsive readings of the Psalms originated with Protestants late in the 19th century to fill a gap created by the displacement by uninspired hymns of the old metrical psalms (257-258).
• Charles Augustus Briggs (1841-1913) is one of Holladay's heroes because he pioneered, against considerable opposition in the churches, the use of the historical-critical method in the study of the Bible (252-255).
• Like their Christian counterparts, Jewish liturgies "spectacularly" underrepresent the laments, focussing instead on psalms of confidence in God, thanksgiving, prophetic exhortation, and the "torah liturgy" in Psalm 24 (144).
• In the Orthodox tradition, to which Holladay otherwise devotes little space, "the shift of the Divine Office to private recitation did not take place in the Eastern church; there the Divine Office remained the service of noneucharistic prayer through the hours of the day that has been maintained in the great churches and monasteries" (182).
• Because of a vowel shift from ancient to modern Greek, there is now a wonderful unintended pun in the LXX version of Psalm 34:8 (33:9) where the word χρηστός ("good") now rhymes with Χριστός ("Christ," "Anointed"). This means that when recited, "Taste and see that good is the Lord" can also mean "Taste and see that Christ is the Lord" (180).
  

If Holladay offers a rich feast for lovers of the biblical Psalter, some readers will take issue with him on specific points. For example, he believes that, in quoting from Psalm 79:6-7, the prophet Jeremiah (Jer. 10:25) is warning the people of the embattled kingdom of Judah not to pray this prayer against their enemies (41, 116, 313). Yet this is far from obvious from a reading of the passage in Jeremiah. 

Furthermore, near the end of the book, he asserts with little evidence that most Christians today do not believe in demons, or evil spirits, attributing the ills supposedly produced thereby to psychological maladies instead (350-352). In so asserting, Holladay sounds more than a little condescending towards those who believe what they take to be the clear teaching of Scripture on the existence of demons.

Similarly, the author holds that, because the psalmist is on the side of God and has a clear conscience, 

he located [evil] elsewhere than in himself: among his fellows, among his enemies, among the enemies of the nation . . . . Whereas for the psalmist the struggle is between the good within him and the evil in others, for the Christian the struggle is between the good and the evil within oneself, as well as outside oneself (347). 

But what about such Psalms as 32 and 51? The authors of the Psalms are very much aware of their own failings, as well as the failings of God's people (e.g., Psalm 106). There is no difference between the Psalms and the Christian faith on this score.

This is where Holladay's historical-critical method shows its limitations. The historical-critical method, as currently practised, tends to view the Scriptures in fragments, drawing supposedly scientific conclusions from internal literary evidence in a specific text, without seeking harmony with the other fragments. It misses the forest for the trees, as the cliché has it. Yet, as a Christian, Holladay cannot and does not follow the method to its logical conclusion: that the Bible is no more than a disparate collection of ancient documents to be examined under glass. Had he followed this approach consistently, his book would not have been nearly as interesting as I personally found it to be. But his love for the Psalms and for the Bible as a whole shines through on virtually every page.

One item that would have enhanced this encyclopaedic treatment of the Psalms would be a subject index enabling the reader to find specific themes more easily in a volume of nearly 400 pages. This would aid in its status as a reference work. But there are two appendices, "Psalms in the Divine Office in the Roman Catholic Church Just before the Reformation (372-373), and "Psalms in the Divine Office in the Eastern Orthodox Church (374-377), which those who practise the regimen of daily prayer will find fascinating.

Yes, I strongly recommend this book, but be aware of the limitations of the critical methods used by the mainstream of biblical scholarship.*

*Readers may be interested in my further thoughts on biblical criticism here: Hearing the Word, Seeking Justice: Biblical Studies and Political Science.