The Psalm Through Three Thousand Years Chapter 7 Analysis

In chapters seven through fourteen of the book, The Psalm through Three Thousand Years, the author, William L. Holliday, details the use of the psalter in Jewish and Christian communities throughout the past and into present times. The following discourse will discuss new insights about Psalms acquired through the reading, as well as personal application of these insights. Chapter seven, “Psalms at the Dead Sea,” details the community of sectarians at the Dead Sea (p.98), and their preservation of Psalms found on the Dead Sea Scrolls. The first insight from chapter seven has to do with the Dead Sea sect’s use of the Psalms in their Community Rule, a text also discovered at Qumran (p.98). This Community Rule function as “a kind of constitution and bylaws for the sect” (p.98). Furthermore, on page 105, the author explains that echoes of the Psalms can be found in the Community Rule and states that this “. . . is an excellent example of how the rhetoric of the sect was saturated with biblical phrases” (p.105). I find this insight significant because it depicts a community so in tune with the Psalms as scripture that they naturally use them as guideline for how their community should live.

The author says that “. . . the biblical Psalms had deep influence on some fresh hymns composed within the community” (p.106), and 25 of those compositions were recovered from manuscripts found at Qumran. The Psalms influence on the writings of this Dead Sea community provide a clear example that the Psalms not only say something to us, but do something to us. In the case of the Dead Sea community, they elicited a response of further praise through the development of new