ABSTRACT
The existence in the Psalter of a number of psalms having an especial affinity with the concept of 'wisdom' supposedly to be found in the books of Proverbs, Job and Ecclesiastes was postulated by Hermann Gunkel. Recent scholarship has tended to discuss the question of 'wisdom psalms' in a broader context. This new approach is closely connected with what B. S. Childs has called a 'hermeneutical shift' in the understanding of the Psalter as a whole. The stage in the development of Jewish psalmody to which the instructional or devotional psalms in the biblical Psalter belong is not easy to determine. Some of them possess fewer formal psalmic features than some of the post-biblical psalms. The psalms which most closely correspond in their entirety to the wisdom literature certainly include Pss. xxxiv, xxxvii and lxxviii. A number of psalms have been designated 'wisdom psalms' because they express a radical or sceptical view similar to that of the book of Job.
