Psalms In The Southern Kingdom Of Judah

The Psalter is a collection of individual Psalms located in the middle of the Bible. In total, there are one hundred and fifty psalms, with approximately one third of them being laments. It is believed that they were written by those in a cultic lifestyle for worship in the temple, with the majority originating in the southern kingdom of Judah and that the composition of the Psalms spans approximately five hundred years. In Catholic masses the Psalms are read every Sunday and can be done so in a number of ways; antiphonally (with half of the psalm being read by the Priest and the rest by the congregation in alternate verses), directly (with everyone reading the same Psalm together) and responsorially (where the Priest or choir recite the Psalm and the congregation responds to it at the end of each verse) (‘The Psalms’, 2014). I will be using the New International Version of the Bible throughout this essay as well as the King James Version when necessary to make a valid point.

Origins

“Psalms have been composed from the earliest days of Israel right down to the time of Christ” (Drijvers, 1965, p.16), this makes them hard to date and attributed to an individual author. We can see in 1 Samuel 16 that there is a myth that David wrote the Psalms, in addition to this, seventy three headings of the Psalms say ‘of David’. However, when the Hebrew language was originally translated to English through the King James Version some of the words were difficult to translate meaning that ‘of’ has several meanings; by, for, concerning, in the tradition of and belonging to the tradition of. As well as David, we also have Asaph and the Sons of Korah being named at the being of the Psalm causing further misperceptions as to who created