Psalms slip from cries of imprecation and lament to divine answer, from quoting the accusations and slander of the enemies to testifying to the character of Yahweh, from reflexive commands to communal imperatives. As these constructed voices and addressees oscillate, they create dialectics of distance and proximity, play with center and periphery, and fluctuate between presence and absence. The poetic devices of biblical Hebrew poetry allow for multiple voices to be heard and evoke experiences. The goal of this dissertation is to demonstrate, by using a lyric poetic approach, that voicing— especially shifts in voicing—contributes to the meaning of a psalm and lyric sequence. The Psalter calls to be read as lyric poetry, a voiced genre that is heard and overheard. The vocality of the Psalter invites hearers to listen to the dynamism of shifting voices, which create dialectics of distance and proximity, presence and absence.
The three chapters of analysis explore the vocalic nature of lyric poetry. These chapters address twenty-five psalms in the Hebrew Psalter. The analyses of the ten individual psalms are sorted into two chapters based on the nature of the voicing they feature: psalms that feature shifts in addressee (Pss 23, 28, 32, 76, and 146) and psalms that featured shifts in both speaker and addressee (Pss 12, 46, 52, 91, and 94). The third chapter of analysis explores vocality in a lyric sequence, the Songs of the Ascents (Pss 120-134). The interpretation of these ten individual psalms as well as the fifteen-psalm lyric sequence demonstrate how the vocality of these lyric poems contribute to the construction of meaning and the cohesion of its respective text. This study makes contributions to biblical scholarship in two main areas: 1) it advances the conversation on voicing in Hebrew lyric poetry and 2) it applies a lyric approach to biblical Hebrew poetry. / Thesis / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:mcmaster.ca/oai:macsphere.mcmaster.ca:11375/29202 |
| Date | 03 1900 |
| Creators | Musy, Meghan D. |
| Contributors | Boda, Mark J., Evans, Paul S., Christian Theology |
| Source Sets | McMaster University |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis |
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