Rediscovering the Psalms

A New Look at Psalms 127 and 131

Abstract

This contribution is born as a result of an experience of working together in an exegesis seminar on the Psalms. The texts chosen were necessarily brief, to allow the participants begin to use exegetical methods and reach valuable conclusions in a relatively short time.

The methodology employed uses in principle the tools known from the historical-critical method, but applied to poetic texts, which have their own rules. The poetic text creates a "world" of its own, a universe of meaning that requires specific understanding.

In these short compositions, every detail counts. Based on some of these details, sometimes not taken into account by scholars, the authors of the works presented here offer a new and suggestive vision of the texts, and of what they intend to produce in us, their readers.