Psalms

41 Episodes

Psalms is an anthology of poetic compositions gathered over centuries rather than the work of a single author. Its superscriptions, shifting arrangements, and manuscript variations make it a rich witness to the growth, reuse, and editorial shaping of Israelite and Jewish liturgical literature.

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Why this book matters

Psalms comes up on the show as a testing ground for questions about textual history, manuscript plurality, and the instability of what many readers assume is a fixed biblical book. Episodes return to Psalm 82, Psalm 22, and especially Psalm 151 to show how later interpreters negotiated divine plurality, messianic rereadings, and competing textual traditions across the Masoretic Text, Septuagint, and Dead Sea Scrolls.

The hosts also use Psalms to push past familiar devotional readings and toward composition history. Rather than treating the collection as straightforwardly Davidic, they repeatedly frame it as an edited anthology whose superscriptions, order, and expansions preserve evidence of ongoing literary development and later theological reinterpretation.

Where to start

Start here for the strongest listening on Psalms.

Quotes from the Data

“Psalm 151 is a psalm that is included in the Septuagint, and it is not included in the Masoretic Text.”

Dan McClellan Episode 125

“Until we discovered the Dead Sea Scrolls and found, guess what, not only a version of Psalm 151 in Hebrew, but two separate psalms which were probably the origin of the single Psalm 151.”

Dan McClellan Episode 125

“[The Great Psalms Scroll is] not arranged exactly as we find in the Masoretic Text, which lends credence to the theory that the arrangement of the Psalms is actually pretty late—is actually something that occurred quite late in the life of these texts.”

Dan McClellan Episode 125

“[Psalm 82 is] probably appealing to a tradition that understands the Israelites at Sinai to be the ones who are referred to as gods upon reception of the law because they become immortal and blah, blah, blah. So that's a post-biblical renegotiation of what's going on here.”

Dan McClellan Episode 155

All episodes

Every episode currently tagged with Psalms.