ABSTRACT
In the first four chapters of this book I have tried to spell out—and to a limited extent resolve—some of the problems and ambiguities which confront any effort to make sense of the Psalms in translation. I now turn to discuss a framework within which to work, and which will provide a rough guide to our reading. It contains seven aspects (I prefer not to think of these as stages, since that would seem to imply a kind of chronological ordering, which could be misleading), not all of which will necessarily apply in every case. Moreover, the results of the application of one aspect may well stand in tension with, or contradict, those of another—a point which is implicit in the analysis of Psalm 121 which concluded Chapter 3. It is worth saying again, because it is a point which the Enlightenment notion of singularity of coherence finds hard to tolerate, that meaning is plural, and not infrequently so in a starkly contradictory fashion. Whether at some profoundly metaphysical level there is an ultimate reconciliation of competing interpretations is a moot point (though I personally doubt it); but in the mundane world of our everyday experience, a historical reading of Psalm 2 which presents it as an accurate description of the Israelite monarchy in the time of David would be hard to square with the view that it is a post-exilic fantasy based on an exaggerated sense of the importance of a long-vanished kingdom. My programme is to allow both to be considered, without demanding a closure of the problem of relative probability.
