The Bible tells us that before Jesus and His eleven sorrowful, bewildered disciples left the Upper Room to walk the dark pathways to the Mount of Olives, they sang a hymn, a psalm. Through the ages, the psalms have retained their original primary purpose, i.e., to engender the proper praise and worship of God. Psalm 119 is the largest in the entire Bible. Psalm 117 represents the middle (out of 1189), in the Bible. The collected psalms comprise the largest book in the Bible and the most frequently quoted Old Testament book in the New Testament. Thematically, the psalms cover a wide spectrum of topics, ranging from heavenly worship to earthly war. Historically, the psalms range in time from the origin of life to the post-Exilic joys of the Jews liberated from Babylon. (1) The acts of God in creation and history and “Background”: The backdrop for the Psalms is twofold: In such a collection of hymns, a widely divergent range of dates is inevitable: from the oldest, the Psalm of Moses (90), to a number of postexilic psalms, or a period of about one thousand years (1400 – 400 B.C.), to the late sixth or early fifth century B.C. In addition to these authors, 10 psalms are assigned to “The Sons of Korah”, (Psalms 42, 44-49, 84, 85, 87), though they were most likely performers rather that authors. The superscriptions (part of the Hebrew text before the first version English), name six authors. King David wrote at least 73 of the 150 Psalms Approaching authorship from the human side one can identify a collection of more than 7 composers. “Authorship – Date”: From the divine perspective, the Psalter points to God as its author. However, this little preposition most frequently indicates the authorship of a psalm, whether “of” David, the accomplished psalmist of Israel, or “by” Moses, Solomon, Asaph or the sons of Korah. Sometimes it occurs more than once, even in short headings, usually supplying “of”, or “by”, person X … “to”, or “for”, person Y information. It may convey different relationships, e.g. One very tiny, attached Hebrew preposition shows up in the majority of the Psalm titles.
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These titles convey various kinds of information such as authorship, dedication, historical occasion, liturgical assignment to a worship director, liturgical instruction (e.g., what kind of song it is, whether it is to have a musical accompaniment, and what tune to use), plus other technical instructions of uncertain meaning due to their great antiquity. When the titles are surveyed individually and studied as a general phenomenon, there are significant indications that they were appended to their respective psalms shortly after composition and that they contain reliable information (compare Luke 20:42). The Hebrew text includes these titles, with the verses themselves. There are 116 psalms that have superscriptions or “titles”. 3:16), “hymn book”, which defined the proper spirit and content of worship. The Psalms constituted Israel’s ancient, God-breathed (2 Tim. The English title derives from the Greek term and its background. The Greek verb from which the noun “psalms” comes basically denotes the “plucking or twanging of strings”, so that an association with musical accompaniment is implied. Compare “the Book of Psalms” in the New Testament (Luke 20:42 Acts 1:20). The Septuagint (LXX the Greek translation of the Old Testament), labeled it “Psalms”. The entire collection of Psalms was entitled “Praises” in the Hebrew text, and later, rabbis often designated it “The Book of Praises”. If one word could be chosen to describe the book, certainly “praises” would qualify, for there is no psalm that does not contain an element of praise. The Hebrew title for the book is tehilim, meaning “praises”. “Title”: The English title comes for the Septuagint, which entitled the book Psalmoi, meaning “Sacred Songs Sung to Musical accompaniment”.