APPENDIX B

A NEW CRITERION FOR IDENTIFYING “WISDOM PSALMS”

Gunkel’s systematic investigation of the literary types (Gattungs- forschung) in the book of Psalms provided biblical scholars with a methodological introduction to the study of the “Wisdom Psalms.” Gunkel employed the expressions Gattung and Sitz im Leben, which combine two planes of thought: the former defines and thus distin- guishes among the various genres, while the latter determines the “situation,” i.e., the life setting from the genre (in this case the psalm) developed.1 Gunkel’s meticulous application of aesthetic laws to identify liter- ary types left many psalms relegated to the category of “mixed psalms.” Later scholars, though, have pointed out thematic parallels between Akkadian literature and the individual lament-prayer in Psalms. Both literary sources include descriptions of physical distress and pain, a sense of having been abandoned by the deity, and various hymnic elements that seek to placate the god. The common range of themes in both the Mesopotamian psalms of lamentation and the bibli- cal mixed psalms call Gunkel’s assumption into question.2 His a priori assumption that short psalms and “pure” types are early compositions,

This appendix is a revised version of a lecture delivered in Berlin at the 2002 International Conference of the SBL and published in Birkat Shalom: Studies in the Bible, Ancient Near Eastern Literature and Post-biblical Judaism presented to Shalom M. Paul on the Occasion of his Seventieth Birthday, ed. Ch. Cohen et al. (Winona Lake, IN, in press). 1 H. Gunkel and J. Begrich, Introduction to Psalms: The Genres of the Religious Lyric of Israel, trans. J. D. Nogalsky (Macon, GA, 1998). Buss discusses the problematic term coined by Gunkel in defining “situation” as “referred either to historical circumstances or to the condition expressly described by the text.” See Martin J. Buss, “The Idea of Sitz im Leben: History and Critique,” ZAW 90 (1978), pp. 158–9. 2 See G. Widengren, The Accadian and Hebrew Psalms of Lamentations as Relig- ious Documents (Stockholm, 1937); A. Falkenstein and W. von Soden, Sumerische und akkadische Hymnen und Gebete (Zurich, 1953); R. G. Castellino, Le Lamenta- zioni individuali e gli inni in Babilonia e in Israele: raffrontati riguardo alla forma e al contenuto (Turin, 1940).

157 158 ANIMAL IMAGERY IN PROVERBS while “mixed” and expanded types are “late,” is now considered a dubious criterion in the reconstruction of form-critical history.3 The stylistic and thematic complexity of many psalms led to a sub- division of the main genres: e.g., the “song of prayer” was partitioned into the “individual prayer” and the “public prayer” and the former teased even further into the “prayer of the afflicted individual” and the “confessional prayer of the accused.” But even such sub-subcategori- zation proves to be unable to identify the main theme of a psalm. For cult psalms, one can easily identify the cultic ritual or festival background as their Sitz im Leben. The identification of the original context of the Wisdom psalm, though, is much more complex. There are no references to temple rituals or court ceremonies, or allusions to historical backgrounds or traditions that might facilitate identification of the cultural background. Moreover, as long as scholars cannot agree on criteria for identifying a “Wisdom psalm,” there will be a meth- odological problem about its origin and message. It was von Rad who asked who stands behind the intellectual activ- ity that crystallized practical and empirical knowledge into a prover- bial rule, wisdom saying, or poetry.4 He examined the relationship between this literary activity and other biblical genres such as histori- ography and prophecy. It is precisely when we discuss the psalms as liturgical literature that von Rad’s question takes on sharper focus. This is because of the difficulty in determining the Sitz im Leben of psalms that exhibit the ideas and language of Wisdom literature and their link to the creative workshop of the circles of the wise. Von Rad defused this difficulty by stating that we must not treat the copresence of prayer and didactic instruction as a dichotomy. His view was that texts originally composed as cultic psalms were reworked into didac- tic texts in the post-exilic period. Moreover, the Wisdom-literature features found in some psalms does not reflect a concrete picture of the Sitz im Leben but serves only to point out their literary link to the Wisdom milieu. Murphy summed up the problem of defining the term “wisdom psalm” as follows: “The very idea is as broad as the wisdom litera- ture.”5 In fact, the only criterion agreed upon by scholars is the

3 For a critical approach to Gunkel’s and Begrich’s form-critical research, see Hans J. Kraus, Psalms 1–59, trans. H. C. Oswald (Minneapolis, 1998), pp. 39–41. 4 G. von Rad, Wisdom in Israel, trans. J. D. Martin (New York, 1972), pp. 4–14. 5 Roland E. Murphy, “A Consideration of the Classification ‘Wisdom Psalms’ ”