The Traditional Prayer in the Psalms / Literarische Studien zur Josephsgeschichte

Description

Anneli Aejmelaeus" study (pp. 1-117) focuses on the prayer element of the individual complaint psalms. Starting from the Gunkel-Begrich analysis of genre, she concentrates on the imperative prayer and its specific functions in these psalms. The author finds a stock repertory for the psalm tradition, which includes many stereotyped expressions and the use of conventional language. This conventional language of prayers, she thinks, supports Robert Culley’s argument that psalms were originally composed orally. Ludwig Schmidt's monograph on the Joseph story (pp. 121-295) is probably doomed to oblivion by its placement as the second work in this volume, and that fate is not altogether undeserved. It is another technical exercise in German biblical scholarship that seeks to gather in the tradition of critical work on the Pentateuch and the Joseph story. Whether or not this is seen as progress from the standpoint of redaction criticism and tradition history, it certainly offers little in the way of literary criticism or insight. One wonders why a contemporary exegete would employ the adjective “literary” for a study such as this. The answer must lie in the relatively insulated and isolated character and setting of much of German scholarship. There is a world of German exegetical learning to be found in this study, but it is a very limited world. Schmidt dissects the Joseph story with a historical knife. The resultant analysis is not “literary” because it does not focus on language and story as historical realities in their own right. It is not deconstructive because it cuts up the text in order to reassemble a putative historical entity. It is simply more of the same old thing.