Memories of Asaph: Mnemohistory and the Psalms of Asaph (Emerging Scholars) 9781506423463, 9781506418711, 9781506418728, 1506423469

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Memory as the shaper of tradition Jacobson

Although the Psalms of Asaph (Psalms 50, 73‒83) contain a concentration of historical referents unparalleled in the Psalter, they have rarely attracted sustained historical interest. Karl N. Jacobson identifies these psalms as containing cultic historiography, historical narratives written for recitation in worship, and explores them through mnemohistory, attending to how the past is remembered and to the rhetorical function of recitation in the cultic setting. Asaph “remembers” the past as a movement from henotheism to Yahwism—the core memory that informs a new historical situation for worship participants. Praise for Memories of Asaph “Karl N. Jacobson has written a solid critical study that gives access and illumination to the Psalter. He has two goals. First, to help us read the Psalms of Asaph knowingly. Second, to let us better understand the dynamics and strategies at work in cultic remembering. He has accomplished both goals effectively. He calls us to attend to the work of remembering that requires imaginative, constructive engagement.” Walter Brueggemann | emeritus, Columbia Theological Seminary

Beth LaNeel Tanner | New Brunswick Theological Seminary

“Going beyond a traditional historical-critical method, mnemohistory reaches back to the actual events, considers them in their contemporary setting (which for Israel is the cult), and then points ahead to their implications for the future. Jacobson is fully aware of critical scholarship on the psalms, carrying on a discussion with Gunkel, Westermann, Mowinckel, Nasuti, Zenger, Brown, and others. The writing is crisp and clear, reflecting the author’s years as a scholar, teacher, and preacher on the psalmic material. Anyone dealing with these psalms in a classroom or a pulpit will want to begin—and end—with Memories of Asaph.” James Limburg | emeritus, Luther Seminary

“Karl N. Jacobson’s Memories of Asaph is an important study of one of the lesser-known collections that make up Psalms. His approach, which explores the intersection of memory and history in the Psalms of Asaph, is an example of the rich multiplicity of ways that scholars read and appropriate the biblical text. I anticipate that this work will provide a valuable contribution to the twenty-first-century study of the shape and shaping of the Psalter.”

Memories of Asaph Memories of Asaph

“Jacobson introduces a way through the stalemate in the study of the historical psalms. By engaging in an extensive study of the Asaph collection, he applies the concept of mnemohistory, or remembered history, in an innovative way, a method that has applications beyond the Psalms of Asaph. This is an important volume for anyone who wants to better understand how the writers of the psalms used the known and remembered past to shape the identity and faith of the people of God in the present.”

Mnemohistory and the Psalms of Asaph

Nancy L. deClaissé-Walford | McAfee School of Theology, Mercer University

Karl N. Jacobson is teaching pastor at Lutheran Church of the Good Shepherd in Minnea­ polis. He completed his dissertation at Providence Theological School.

Karl N. Jacobson

Old Testament

e m e r g i n g

s c h o l a r s

Memories of Asaph

Memories of Asaph Mnemohistory and the Psalms of Asaph

Karl N. Jacobson

Fortress Press Minneapolis

MEMORIES OF ASAPH Mnemohistory and the Psalms of Asaph

Copyright © 2017 Fortress Press. All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in critical articles or reviews, no part of this book may be reproduced in any manner without prior written permission from the publisher. Email [email protected] or write to Permissions, Fortress Press, PO Box 1209, Minneapolis, MN 55440-1209.

All biblical citations use Hebrew versification.

Cover design: Alisha Lofgren

Hardcover ISBN: 978-1-5064-2346-3 Paperback ISBN: 978-1-5064-1871-1 eBook ISBN: 978-1-5064-1872-8

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This is for my family; it has been a long time coming. For my parents, Del and Kathy, who taught me the love of Scripture. For my sisters, Anne and Karen, graceful and giving. For Rolf, brother, colleague, and friend. For my siblings-in-law, Bill and Amy; nieces, Ingrid and Mary Ellen; and nephew, Gunnar. For Angela, who believes and has taught me to believe again . For Hannah, Sam, and Lucy, God’s greatest gifts to me; daughters and son, happy am I upon whom such blessings have fallen (Ps 144:12). And for Nora and Claire, daughters of my heart. Special thanks are due to Anne Robertson, Laura Laughlin, and Elise Tweten for their help in editing this project. Any grace and precision herein are due in large part to their efforts; any mistakes that remain are mine alone.

Contents

1.

Introduction and History of Interpretation

2.

Theoretical Considerations: History and Communal Memory

11

3.

Mnemohistory and the Asaphite Corpus

47

4.

How Asaph Remembers

75

5.

Psalm 78: The Heart of What Asaph Remembers

117

6.

What Asaph Remembers

141

7.

Excursus: Residual Memories in the Asaphite Corpus

165

8.

Conclusions: Why Asaph Remembers

191

Bibliography

203

Name and Subject Index

211

Ancient Sources Index

215

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1

Introduction and History of Interpretation

The biblical psalms attributed to Asaph (Psalms 50, 73–83) exhibit the most concentrated collection of historical referents in the Psalter. These historical referents, embodied in the Asaphite collection, serve as the marshals of Israel’s historical memory and establish a cultic framework in which Israel’s memory is formed, its history re-presented , and its identity shaped. My contention is that the historical material in these psalms, paired as it is with a broad vocabulary of remembrance, is a form of cultic historiography that is principally attested in Asaph and is distinctive of the Psalter. The Purpose of this Study As a group, the Asaphite Psalms contain more historical material than any other individual psalm or grouping of psalms. These historical referents play an important role both in the Asaphite collection itself (in terms of how the historical material is at work in it) and, comparatively, within the broader cultic landscape preserved in various portions of the Psalter. There are other individual psalms that contain historical referents. These psalms, 105, 106, 135, and 136, have traditionally been classified (along with the Asaphite Psalm 78) as “historical”; they are noteworthy both for the prominence or volume of the historical material in them and in that they represent minor collec-

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tions, paired together and sharing some key features. In addition, there are individual psalms that contain relatively brief historical referents (e.g., 66:6, 68:7, 99:6–7, 114:1). All of this material falls into the category that I label “cultic historiography.” By this term I mean historical reflection located primarily in the psalms, written for recitation or performance in worship and often attributed to Levitical guilds or groups.1 It is also noteworthy that in addition to those of the Asaphite school, there are psalms attributed to other groups or individual members of the Levitical guilds: the Korahites (Psalms 42, 44–49, 84–85, 87–88) and the so-called Merarites (Heman: Psalm 88; Ethan: Psalm 89; and Jeduthun: Psalms 39, 62, and 77). In some cases, these psalms also contain what may appear to be historical referents. It is within this broader context of cultic historiography that the Asaphite material stands out, both in terms of its sheer volume and its distinctiveness. Amidst the valuable contributions of the traditional interpretive approaches, there has been a glaring absence within the history of interpretation of these psalms to date. The nature of the historical material in these psalms has received little sustained, systematic attention. And while in many of the studies of this group, with their various agendas and emphases, it has been observed that “historical references” and “recapitulation” play a part in or are “typical” of the group of psalms, rarely is much more than the simple observation made.2 The nature and function of the historical material is left either to speak for itself or is ignored almost altogether. Methodology The present study takes into consideration the traditional interpretive methods that have dominated Psalms study for decades and adds to them attention to the mnemohistorical (i.e., the intersection of history

1. Yosef Yerushalmi has suggested that it is primarily through ritual and recital of “capsule history,” historical remembrance that is formulaic, that memory flowed, was shaped, and was sustained not by historians but by “priests and prophets.” Yosef Hayim Yerushalmi, Zakhor: Jewish History and Jewish Memory (London: University of Washington Press, 1996), 11–12. See also Martin L. Brenner, The Song of the Sea: Ex 15:1–21 (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1991), 154. 2. See, for example, Michael D. Goulder, The Psalms of Asaph and the Pentateuch: Studies in the Psalter, III, JSOTS 233 (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1996); and Harry P. Nasuti, Tradition History and the Psalms of Asaph (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1988). One exception is Erik Haglund, Historical Motifs in the Psalms, Coniectanea Biblica 23 (Lund: Gleerup, 1984). Haglund, however, is not primarily concerned with the tradition group from which the historical motifs are derived. More recently, see Christine Danette Brown Jones, The Psalms of Asaph: A Study of the Function of a Psalm Collection (PhD diss., Baylor University, Waco, TX, 2009).

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INTRODUCTION AND HISTORY OF INTERPRETATION

and memory) content of the Asaphite corpus with an eye to understanding the nature and function of cultic historiography. One of my basic presuppositions is that when a historical event or individual, what I refer to as a “historical referent,” is found in a psalm, it is used intentionally, and this intentional usage shapes the psalm rhetorically. For example, a song of complaint could have any of a number of situations or events as its locus, including individual illness (Psalm 38), national troubles (Psalm 60), and the aggressive and destructive speech of the “enemy” (to either the individual, Psalm 64, or the community, Psalm 12); there may be any of a variety of reasons for complaint to the Lord. When a specific historical reference is made—a reference to the exodus, David, or the destruction of the temple—it cannot be viewed as accidental. Mnemohistory is not like history proper. History is the critical study of what verifiably happened (or of verifiable people, institutions, etc.) and the understanding of those events; mnemohistory is concerned with the past as it is remembered. History deals with what actually happened. Mnemohistory deals with the impact of what is maintained. My analysis of historical reflection in the cultus as represented by the Asaphite Psalter is intended to contribute to the understanding of the rhetorical function of cultic historiography in general and to the role it played in the religious practice and theological expression of early Israel. In this study, I take for granted the validity of form and cultic criticism; indeed, more than “valid,” such classical-critical approaches are necessary when seeking to understand a particular rhetorical function within poetry most likely written for worship—in this case cultic historiography. As such, my work is dependent on and indebted to Hermann Gunkel, Claus Westermann, Harry Nasuti, and Sigmund Mowinckel.3 In addition to this, there has, in recent years, been an increase in attention on the literary function of various features of the psalms as poetry, which has had a salutary effect on the nuance and sophistication of interpretive efforts. Another assumption of the present study is the importance, indeed the crucial role, such observations play in the reading of the psalms. In particular, one may note the important surveys of Luis Alonso Schökel (types and genres of poetry) and William P. Brown (on metaphor).4 3. Hermann Gunkel and Joachim Begrich, Introduction to the Psalms: The Genres of the Religious Lyric of Israel (Macon, GA: Mercer University Press, 1998); Claus Westermann, Praise and Lament in the Psalms (Atlanta: John Knox, 1981); Harry Nasuti, Defining the Sacred Songs: Genre, Tradition and the Post-Critical Interpretation of the Psalms, JSOTS 218 (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1999); Sigmund Mowinckel, The Psalms in Israel’s Worship, 2 vols. (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2004).

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Attention is also due to the increasingly interdisciplinary nature of biblical studies, both in terms of locating Israel in the ancient Near Eastern context (in comparison and contrast) and of the potential contribution of modern critical sociology. In the case of the former, the present study does not seek to make such comparative or contrastive claims. Rather, I draw on the works of other authors on the place and function of memory/history in Israel’s neighbors—specifically the Egyptians in the work of Jan Assmann, the Romans in the work of Alain Gowing, and the Babylonians in the work of Gerdien Jonker.5 In the case of the latter, there is value for the understanding and interpretation of the biblical psalms in modern insights into memory and history, and the interplay between them. The work of a selection of authors (with a significant contribution from the field of sociology) is reviewed in chapter two. History of Interpretation Franz Delitzsch (1871) In his Biblical Commentary on the Psalms, Delitzsch identifies five categories of features that are definitive of the Asaphite Psalms: (1) names for God, (2) prophetic speech and judgment, (3) historical references, (4) northern characteristics, and (5) common language/vocabulary.6 Delitzsch also concludes that the Asaphite superscription provides a link to the original Asaph who, though not the author of all of the psalms—several of which are best dated to the exilic or postexilic period—serves as the model or paradigm for a particular school of psalm writing. Delitzsch offered an early entry into the field of reflection on the Asaphite collection. His identification of these five characteristics of the Asaphite corpus remains an important contribution. 7 4. Luis Alonso Schökel, A Manual of Hebrew Poetics, Subsidia Biblica 11 (Rome: Editrice Pontificio Istituto Biblico, 1988); William P. Brown, Seeing the Psalms: A Theology of Metaphor (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox, 2002). 5. Jan Assmann, Das Kulturelle Gedächtnis: Schrift, Erinnerung und politische Identität in frühen Hochkulturen (Munchen: C. H. Beck, 1997); Jan Assmann, Religion and Cultural Memory: Ten Studies, trans. Rodney Livingstone (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2006); Alain M. Gowing, Empire and Memory: The Representation of the Roman Republic in Imperial Culture (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005); Gerdien Jonker, The Topography of Remembrance: The Dead, Tradition and Collective Memory in Mesopotamia, Studies in the History of Religions 68 (New York: Brill, 1995). 6. Franz Delitzsch, Biblical Commentary on the Psalms, 3 vols. (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1888), 142ff. 7. In various ways, each of the studies mentioned here have engaged Delitzsch’s categories outlining the distinctive elements of the Asaphite collection. In addition, it may be noted that an emphasis particular to the study of these psalms has been their prophetic qualities; see Alfred Haldar, Asso-

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Sigmund Mowinckel (1962) In The Psalms in Israel’s Worship, Mowinckel rightly observes that “it is, in fact, surprising that a cultic interpretation of the psalms has not been suggested long ago.”8 The Psalms of Asaph are particularly suited to this reflection: most likely stemming from a Northern cultus, the nucleus of which, according to Mowinckel, is likely dated to the preexilic period. Hand in hand with these observations is the assertion that what takes place within the cultic setting is intended to be effective. With an objective inner logic, the cultic situations demand a particular content in a particular form. Within the framework of a divine service of worship, nothing is accidental. Everything has its significance and its purpose, which one must try to fathom.9 Mowinckel’s observation about the content of the cultic poetry suggests the need for “fathoming the significance and purpose” (i.e., the rhetorical function) of the historical remembrance represented in the Psalms of Asaph.10 Martin Buss (1963) In “The Psalms of Asaph and Korah,” Buss offers a brief but important survey of the major themes and issues in the Asaphite Psalms. Buss concludes that these psalms are homogeneous, the work of a particular school of thought, with special affinity for wisdom, direct prophetic ciations of Cult Prophets among the Ancient Semites (Uppsala: Almqvist & Wiksells, 1945); William H. Bellinger, Psalmody and Prophecy, JSOTS 27 (Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1984); Frank-Lothar Hossfeld, “Das Prophetische in den Psalmen: Zur Gottesrede der Asafpsalmen im Vergliech mit der des ersten und zweiten Davidpsalters,” in Ich bewirke das Heil und erschaffe das Unheil (Jesaja 45,7): Studien zur Botschaft der Propheten, ed. Friedrich Diedrich and Bernd Willmes (Würzburg: Echter Verlag, 1998), 223–43. Three of the Asaphite Psalms are typically identified as “prophetic”—Psalms 50, 75, and 81. The prophetic character of these psalms has been widely noted and need not be reiterated here. Psalm 73 also shares these familiar prophetic concerns for the poor. Because of its use of direct divine speech and its plea for justice for the weak, lowly, orphan, and destitute (v. 3), Psalm 82 has also been identified as “prophetic.” “The God quotations are usually understood as ‘oracles’ that were delivered by a cultic prophet or priest. While scholars have offered differing reconstructions of the activities and identities of such cultic prophets, the recourse to such prophets as the best way to explain the function of God quotations is a widely-held position.” Rolf A. Jacobson, Many Are Saying: The Function of Direct Discourse in the Hebrew Psalter, JSOTS 397 (New York: T&T Clark International, 2004), 83. 8. Mowinckel, Psalms in Israel’s Worship, Vol. 2, X:12: “The traditional Jewish and Christian interpretation, however, took it for granted that the psalms were originally private, individual poetry. They were of course bound by the theory that most of the psalms had been composed by David and some of his supposed contemporaries, such as Asaph, Heman, etc.” 9. Ibid., Vol. 2, X:29. 10. Mowinckel himself does not pursue in great detail the historical content of the Asaphite Psalter and its function, instead summarizing the collection as a whole, but the present study is indebted to his call for attention to the “particular content” of the cultic poetry.

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oracles, and “historical recapitulation,” which are “the work of religious leadership.” Buss does not attend in detail to literary questions of the function of historical reflection/memory, but his work certainly does suggest such comparison. As Buss notes, “They [a circle of Levitical religious leaders/authors] may be described as forming a sizable class of religious leaders who were largely engaged in exhortation and in the propagation of memory of ancient events—in short, in the religious education of the people.”11 Karl-Johan Illman (1976) Illman’s study of these psalms, Thema und Tradition in den Asaf-Psalmen, begins by acknowledging that their common superscription sets them apart from the rest of the Psalter. The question that drives his study is whether or not there is a discernable tradition-stream present in and derivable from these psalms. By way of answering this question, Illman evaluates content, themes, and key features that are shared by the socalled Psalms of Asaph, and his conclusion is striking. Illman finds that there can be no tradition group behind these psalms because there is no content that is ubiquitous.12 Differing so sharply from other scholars who identify numerous common themes, images, and vocabulary, Illman is either on to something or terribly off the mark. His base observation, that there is no one theme or motif that is to be found in every psalm that bears the name of Asaph, is undeniable. The problem, however, is in Illman’s basic presumption that any tradition group would sound any one note so thoroughly that it would occur in everything they do, say, or produce. A further issue with Illman is his failure to offer a compelling explanation for the presence of the common superscription in which he sees so little importance or contribution. His simplistic dismissal of the superscription is a disappointment. Still, tradition-history provides an important entrée in the study of the Asaphite collection, one that Illman begins but is more fully explored in the work of Harry Nasuti.

11. Martin J. Buss, “The Psalms of Asaph and Korah,” Journal of Biblical Literature 82, no. 4 (1963): 386. 12. Karl-Johan Illman, Thema und Tradition in den Asaf-Psalmen (Abo: Stiftelsens för Åbo Akademi Forskningsinstitut, 1976), 25–29, 55.

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Harry P. Nasuti (1988) In Tradition History and the Psalms of Asaph, building on the work of Illman, Nasuti offers a purely tradition-historical study of the Asaphite Psalms, beginning with a linguistic analysis of the Asaphite Psalms.13 Among the conclusions he is able to draw from his analysis are that there is a definite cultic quality to much of the language, a considerable degree of correlation between the given Asaphite Psalms (contra Illman), and a significant block of material that is Northern or, as Nasuti prefers, “Ephraimite” in character. Nasuti allows, however, that there is also much that is clearly Jerusalemite that stands alongside the Ephraimite material. Ultimately what Nasuti outlines is a final form of the collection that reflects a convergence of Northern and Southern language and perspective. All of this, in Nasuti’s estimation, witnesses to different phases or stages in the work of an Asaphite school, a conclusion that echoes Mowinckel. Nasuti’s conclusions are largely convincing and serve as an important backdrop for a close study of the nature of the historical referents and their function within the Asaphite Psalms both individually and as a group. Michael D. Goulder (1996) The Psalms of Asaph and the Pentateuch assumes the Asaphite Psalms to be adopted from Northern roots and edited for use in Jerusalem. For Goulder, this adoption and editing explains the mix of Northern and Southern vocabulary. There are, then, glosses that have been inserted into psalms originally composed for use in worship at Bethel and Gilgal to alter them for use in Jerusalem (e.g., Ps 78:9, 59-72 ). Goulder furthers this thesis through a “liturgical hypothesis” not only for the Sitz im Leben of individual psalms but for the reading of the collection as a whole. Goulder sees in the Asaphite collection a liturgy for use pre-, mid-, and postfestival. This liturgy is used as guidance and orientation through the entire pilgrim experience: Psalms 50, 73–74 as “prefestival” pilgrim psalms set the tone (one of humility) for the coming festival. 75–76 are then used at the beginning of the festival, shifting the tone to one of praise. 77–78 are the psalms of the vigil, hymns composed for use during the long hours of the night. Finally, 79–80 are petitions, which are the climax of the festival; laments in form, these 13. Harry P. Nasuti, Tradition History and the Psalms of Asaph, SBL Dissertation Series 88 (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1988), 115–16.

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psalms then prepare the festival worshippers for the New Year festival, which is the culmination of the pilgrimage, during which Psalms 81–83, which focus on joy in and celebration of the Lord, are highlighted, followed by a final petition against the wicked. Goulder summarizes his speculation on this festival litany, “We cannot but pay a tribute of admiration to the faith and courage of the Asaph psalmist who has produced such a psalm cycle.”14 Goulder sees the Psalms of Asaph as early, Northern, and attributable to a coherent source. His analysis takes his hypothesis to what may seem an inevitable conclusion: that the Asaph material was composed in the North out of oral traditions and forms belonging to the Vorlage (an early stage of the presentation) of the Deuteronomistic History. Goulder’s argument flows quite freely from the adoption and incorporation of earlier Northern material into the Southern cultus, on into the formation of the Deuteronomic tradition in the Pentateuch. The Scope of the Present Study The focus of this study is a mnemohistorical approach to the material that makes up a significant part of the Asaphite tradition—the Asaphite remembered past—assessing the rhetorical function of this material and the theological emphasis communicated therein. The Asaphite cultus is rooted in history, in the commemoration of events that are not cyclical or repeatable (in the mythic sense of seasonal festivals of renewal) but that must be re-presented and thus reexperienced, reiterated, and thus remembered in order to shape the identity of the people. This has been an underdeveloped theme in the interpretation of these psalms. As noted above, chapter 2, “Theoretical Considerations: History and Communal Memory,” deals with matters of definition—what is “memory,” what is “history,” and what is the nature of the interplay between the two (i.e., mnemohistory). Chapter 3, “Mnemohistory and the Asaphite Corpus,” explores the compositional history, cultic character, and singularity of the remembered past in Asaph. Chapter 4, “How Asaph Remembers,” details the characteristic language, form, and genres in which the mnemohistorical referents are employed. Chapter 5, “Psalm 78: The Heart of What Asaph Remembers,” focuses on the magnum opus of the collection and the longest poetic recourse to the past in the Hebrew Bible, while Chapter 6, “What Asaph Remem14. Goulder, Psalms of Asaph, 176.

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bers,” outlines the principal contents of the Asaphite mnemohistory in the remainder of the collection, and Chapter 7, “Excursus: Residual Memories in the Asaphite Corpus,” outlines material that is not intentionally called to remembrance. Finally, chapter 8, “Conclusions: Why Asaph Remembers,” offers conclusions about the goals and purpose of mnemohistory in the cultic historiography.

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Theoretical Considerations: History and Communal Memory

Even a cursory reading of the psalms that contain historical referents precludes an understanding of this material as history or historiography in any critical, modern sense. These referents are not objective reportings of the past. But if the referents in these psalms are not history-writing per se, what then are they? Because of the frequent use of vocabulary having to do with remembering and forgetting in association with these referents, “memory” seems to provide a plausible designation of both form and function. One might well see in this material a collection of memories of formative experiences. Asaph’s memories are not merely personal memoirs, nor are they nostalgic recollections of the days of old. So can one fairly label the historical referents in the psalms “memories” rather than “history”? Introduction Paul Ricoeur has suggested that “we have no other resource, concerning our reference to the past, except memory itself.”1 Ricoeur makes 1. Paul Ricoeur, Memory, History, Forgetting (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004), 21. Cf. Jack

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this claim while exploring the interconnectedness of memory and history, which he sees as in constant tension: both history and memory are concerned with the past, and both offer a representation of the past. Whether one can conclude that either memory or history has priority is, for Ricoeur, not ultimately decidable.2 However, while Ricoeur is clear that he does not want to prioritize one or the other, the quotation above is significant in that it essentially does just this, characterizing all reflection on the past in terms of memory—including history, historiography, biography, and nostalgic reminiscence. To put it another way: History is essentially an agent of memory. Ricoeur’s insistence on the interconnectedness of memory and history does not mean that they are synonymous. History and memory are not the same, but both are recourse to the past and, as such, are bound to have some sort of relationship. How memory and history overlap and interact, how they communicate, create meaning, and shape identity (in both similar and different ways) demands a critical set of definitions and a sophisticated view of matters related to both genre and function. As we shall see, such interconnectedness of history and memory is not merely evident in but is central to the Asaphite Psalms. A clear idea of what is at stake in the objects of memory in the Psalms of Asaph is important for interpreting them individually and as a literary corpus. I turn now to establishing working definitions of history and memory that will guide my reading of the Asaphite Psalms. I do so mindful that these definitions will likely be inadequate in settling the many difficult issues that arise when one seeks to define categorically or uniformly what either “history” or “memory” is. As Yosef Yerushalmi has lamented, there is a “poverty of language” with which to adequately pursue recourse to the past.3 There is an equal poverty of uniformity of definition. A survey of the numerous studies of history, memory, and Goody and Ian Watt, “The Consequence of Literacy” in Literacy in Traditional Societies, ed. Jack Goody (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1968), 30: “As we have remarked, the whole content of the social tradition apart from the material inheritances, is held in memory.” Also, “Thus all beliefs and values, all forms of knowledge, are communicated between individuals in face-toface contact; and, as distinct from the material content of the cultural tradition, whether it be cave-paintings or hand-axes, they are stored in human memory.” Goody and Watt, “Consequence of Literacy,” 29. 2. Ricoeur, Memory, 385, cf. 392. 3. “The difficulty in grasping this apparent incongruity [of an apparently ahistorical perspective nonetheless accompanied not just by the transition of a sense of connection with past history but by an essentially historically minded sensibility] lies in a poverty of language that forces us, faute de mieux, to apply the term ‘history’ both to the sort of past with which we are concerned, and to that of Jewish tradition.” Yerushalmi, Zakhor, 26.

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text suggests that it is difficult, if not impossible, to arrive at a set of definitions that will apply uniformly across the vast spectrum of biblical books and genres that deal with the past. My first task is to provide a sense of these issues generally and then, vis-à-vis the Psalms of Asaph, specifically, and to come to a functional view of the dialectic of memory and history in these psalms. Following Jan Assmann and others, I refer to this dialectic as “mnemohistory.” In exploring the nature and function of mnemohistory in the Psalms of Asaph, I hope to offer a contribution to the enriching of the language of recourse to the past as it is applicable in the understanding and interpreting of the Psalms of Asaph. History History (or historiography) at its most basic is the recording—including some measure of verification to establish veracity—of past events. There is, of course, a great variety in the way the word itself is used. “History” may refer to the life of a particular individual (i.e., George Washington) or nation (sixteenth-century France), or to an activity, profession, or natural phenomena (i.e., the history of mapmaking or the history of the Mississippi River); the word may refer to a chart containing a person’s medical past (a patient’s history); it may even refer to someone’s or something’s demise (“that car is history”). But colloquial usage aside, “history” in the modern sense typically means a chronicle of the past that is demonstrable and verifiable (i.e., historical knowledge), which often is juxtaposed to other kinds of knowledge that may or may not be represented as more subjective. 4 Among the more important and immediate matters in any attempt to define history is the problem of anachronism. Can we speak, reasonably, of “history” in overarching terms that apply evenly across cultures, even in the same century (or decade), let alone across millennia? To put the matter simply, what is called history in the strict, critical, modern sense is not the same as the writings of Herodotus or Josephus, or the narratives in the so-called historical books of the Bible. And yet the term has been applied to each of these categories of liter4. One example from the realm of popular culture, an admittedly noncritical source but one that nonetheless offers some indication of broader cultural conception: “The study of the past. ‘History’ is often used to mean ‘historical knowledge’ when in reality ‘history’ is the process of researching the past using the available evidence, cross referencing and establishing ‘historical knowledge.’” Urban Dictionary, s.v. “history,” by flankergeek, added June 22, 2006, http:// tinyurl.com/z2w5lzn.

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ature. Neither is objectivity, even for the strict, critical, modern historian, entirely attainable.5 A rigid definition of history—as purely factual (fact-seeking) and objective, “what actually happened” or did not happen, as the case may be—will not do as a practicable goal, at least not in an approach to the interpretation of the Asaphite Psalms. Jacques Le Goff has offered a view of history that is less rigid and more widely fitting. History, according to Le Goff, is narrative wherein the dialectic of true/false may remain open, depending on whether it is governed primarily by a historical imagination or by historical actuality.6 In the writing of “history,” particularly but not exclusively premodern history, there are often elements in play other than “just the facts.” This type of historical reflection need not be dismissed as inappropriate, if imagination (and its various counterparts such as selectivity, ingenuity, inventiveness, etc.) is recognized for what it is. The imagination and creativity that are on display in some forms of historical reflection are often a critical part of how the history that is being recorded communicates and effects reality. In fact, it may be that these elements are too often overlooked or disparaged by critical historical research, to its detriment. Le Goff recognizes that there are more elements in play, more depth of meaning and breadth of type at play in “history” that ought to be explored, than merely the facts. 7 The key lies in recognizing that there are different kinds of history. Greek tragedies, presidential biographies, personal remembrances, state-sanctioned records, stories, lists, annals, poems—“history” may be and is used for all of these.8 Still, consideration of the multivalence 5. For example, histories of the US military’s use of the atomic bomb during World War II vary greatly in the United States, Japan, and China. The time period and the event are the same, but representations of it are vastly different. Cf. J. M. Miller, “Israel’s Past: Our Best Guess Scenario,” in Israel’s Prophets and Israel’s Past: Essays on the Relationship of Prophetic Texts and the Israelite History in Honor of John H. Hayes, ed. Brad E. Kelle and Megan Bishop Moore (New York: T&T Clark, 2006), 19. This is not to suggest that objectivity is impossible or undesirable, simply that this kind of history/history writing is not the only way to view history/history writing. 6. Jacques Le Goff, History and Memory, trans. Steven Rendall and Elizabeth Claman (New York: Columbia University Press, 1992), 102. 7. In responding to a set of hypothetical critiques of the attempt to write a history of ancient Israel, Miller observes the following criticism of trying to write a history of Israel: “The ‘history of Israel’ genre is illegitimate because there was no ancient Israel. The Israel that we encounter in the Hebrew Bible, and which modern histories of Israel set about to explain, never existed. It was a literary construct from the beginning, an idealized time, place, and people perpetrated by late Jewish theologians.” Miller, “Israel’s Past,” 20. Miller accepts the criticism, admitting that Genesis through 2 Kings is more a theology than a history. The historian, for Miller, acknowledges the nature of the material, then seeks to make sense of it. What is striking is that the nature of the material, its literary character and theological construction, remains only tacitly present in the conversation as part of the stuff of history and history writing. 8. See J. J. M. Roberts, The Bible and the Ancient Near East: Collected Essays (Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2002), 61: “Historiography I would define as a literary phenomenon involving the record-

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of meaning in the term “history” is important in preventing a carelessly or intentionally inaccurate one-to-one equivalence of material or genre. History in the stricter critical sense is appropriate, and essential, to the writing of histories about Israel (reconstructions), while it may be less so, and perhaps problematic, in understanding Israel’s history about itself (its self-representations). And so as I suggest more fully below, history alone is an insufficient term for the material one encounters in the Psalms of Asaph and is in need at the very least of a helping word. While Georg Hegel considered history—impartial, objective, “true” history—to be the pinnacle of human knowing,9 he made a distinction that remains helpful when thinking of history in broader terms. Hegel distinguished between res gestae (what happened) and historia rerum gestarum (the narration of what happened).10 While there may be tension between the two (questions of what actually happened versus what is presented as having happened), still it is tension, not sharp separation. I see support for Hegel’s distinction in Attic Greek’s base root word for history, ‘istorein, which means “to seek to know.” ‘Istorie is, as Le Goff notes, inquiry about the past—the search for what “really” happened, yes, but equally the search for meaning, identity, and direction.11 And in this search both for what happened and for meaning in relation to what happened, in both res gestae and historia rerum gestarum, we come to a fuller and more widely fitting understanding of “history.” History as I define it, then, is a narrative account of what has happened and the search for meaning that is associated with it. Memory Paul Connerton in How Societies Remember has articulated the challenging exercise of charting a “theory of memory as a form of cognition.”12 There is such variety of vocabulary, agency, and subject of memory that it can be difficult to communicate clearly the kind of memory to which one is referring.13 What is remembered? Who remembers ing and analysis, explicit or implicit, of past events. As such it would include a number of literary genres—king lists, chronicles, annals, epics, royal apologies, etc.” 9. See Jonker, Topography, 15. 10. Quoted in Amos Funkenstein, Perceptions of Jewish History (Berkley: University of California Press,1993), 3. 11. Le Goff, History and Memory, 101. 12. Paul Connerton, How Societies Remember (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), 21. 13. Connerton identifies three types of memory: (1) personal memory (i.e., life history, facts about

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it? Why are some events or individuals remembered and others not? How are events and individuals remembered? Such questions abound. Yet, the fact that memory has a place, an essential place, in cognition—in knowing, in forming self-awareness, self-identification, and social identification—is clear. For the present study, an initial issue has to do with who or what remembers. The issue is twofold. First, when thinking about the nature of memory, who is it that remembers? And second, what is the relationship between what is remembered and the means by which it is recalled? First, then, does one think primarily of an individual who remembers, or may one think of a group that remembers? Is it necessary first to witness or experience an event in order to remember it, to know a person or to have been affected directly by them? Is there such a thing as surrogate memory, or a “heritage of memory,” a remembrance that is passed on? Memory is primarily a mental act, one that is fundamentally neurological or psychic.14 Therefore, both Aristotle and Augustine considered remembering to be a purely individual phenomenon, taking place in the mind of a person, not in some imagined or figurative group consciousness.15 It is thus not surprising that the term “collective”—and its usefulness in relation to memory—is much debated. Does it make sense to speak of societal or “collective” remembering?16 Can a group remember together? After all, even a shared experience is remembered individually and, therefore, may in important ways be remembered differently. one’s life and identity), (2) cognitive memory (i.e., the ability to remember definitions of words, stories, jokes, etc.), and (3) habit memory, the “capacity to reproduce a certain performance.” Ibid., 22. Howard Schuman and Jacqueline Scott define two types of collective memory: (1) where there is a common object of memory, remembered by a large portion of a population, and (2) where there is a common sense of an event, when for example a majority of a particular generation have a similar emotional or perceptional reaction to a definitive event, say the Vietnam War. Howard Schuman and Jacqueline Scott, “Generations and Collective Memories,” American Sociological Review 54, no. 3 (June 1989): 378. Le Goff, History and Memory, 55–61, defines (1) urban memory, which is the center of cultural memory, via libraries, monuments, squares, and so on; (2) royal memory, the annals and memorials of kings, national heroes, political figures, and so on; and (3) funerary memory, grave markers, sarcophagi, portraits, and so on. 14. Le Goff, History and Memory, 51; cf. Funkenstein, Perceptions, 5. 15. See Jonker, Topography, 8; so too Assmann, Religion and Cultural Memory, 8: “Neither the group, nor even the culture ‘has’ a memory in that sense. To talk as if they did would be an illegitimate act of mystification. As always, man is the sole possessor of memory.” 16. Schuman and Scott, “Generations and Collective Memories,” 361–62: “In describing our investigation as one dealing with ‘collective memories,’ we make use of a term advanced by Halbwachs to describe memories of a shared past that are retained by members of a group, large or small, that experienced it. The concept is both suggestive and difficult to specify clearly.”

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Perhaps the key question is this: if memory is essentially an individual mental phenomenon, how is it possible to speak of memories that go beyond and even bridge individuals, and how does that bridging occur? Because of this issue, Noa Gedi and Yigal Elam have argued that the term “collective” memory is only metaphorical. Their conclusion is that the terminology is useful as an abstraction, an illustration, but as an “explanatory tool it is useless and even misleading.”17 Such a conclusion is not, however, the only option.18 Le Goff’s characterization of collective memory as “artificial,” something crafted and synthetic as opposed to the organic, mental act of remembering, gets at the heart of the issue.19 There is nothing inherently inappropriate or misleading in employing the term “collective memory,” provided one is clear about what one means and clear about its limitations.20 Collective memory does not describe a literally shared action—some simultaneous or identical neurological performance—but a shared object of action and a common engagement of it. As I argue below, collective memory is made possible and is effected by the commitment of the object(s) of memory to written record (the “scripturalization” of memory), which is then employed in the community to shape the memory of ensuing generations through performance, ritual observance, and recitation. In the case of the Asaphite material, one might call this a ritualization of memory.21 Amos Funkenstein offers a broader definition of memory as “a mental activity of a subject who is conscious of performing it.”22 And because even individual memories cannot be fully differentiated from the social context in which they are set and in which they are recalled, this “subject” may be a group.23 What is more, as Alain Gowing has 17. Noa Gedi and Yigal Elam, “Collective Memory—What Is It?” History and Memory 8, no. 1 (Spring 1996): 34. 18. As Wulf Kansteiner notes, “although collective memories have no organic basis and do not exist in any literal sense, and though they involve individual agency, the term ‘collective memory’ is not simply a metaphorical expression. Collective memories originate from shared communications about the meaning of the past that are anchored in the life-worlds of individuals who partake in the communal life of the respective collective. As such, collective memories are based in society and its inventory or signs and symbols.” Wulf Kansteiner, “Finding Meaning in Memory: A Methodological Critique of Collective Memory Studies,” History and Theory 41, no. 2 (Spring 2002): 188. 19. Le Goff, History and Memory, 61. 20. Funkenstein, Perceptions, 4. 21. “If there is such a thing as a social memory . . . we are likely to find it in commemorative ceremonies; but commemorative ceremonies prove to be commemorative only in so far as they are performative.” Connerton, How Societies Remember, 4–5. 22. Funkenstein, Perceptions, 4. 23. Social context plays a determining role in the form and content of every individual memory. “No

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observed, the social order may wrest control of memory from the individual, sharing it out as the obligation of society as a whole: In Cicero’s mind, memory is not solely the prerogative of individuals; society at large—the civitas, the res publica—may also possess memory, and has the same obligation as the individual to preserve its history. 24

In terms of social or collective memory, Peter Burke understands memory as “a group reconstruction of the past.”25 Taken at face value, this definition seems to do little to move beyond a mystical sense of a culture or a group remembering as a collective unit. Strictly speaking, memory does not work this way. Memory is an individual exercise: it may have a shared object; it may be influenced, shaped, and passed on; it may occur with something approaching simultaneity; but it is not performed together. So while Burke is on point about the nature of shared memory—that it is a reconstruction of the past—I might nuance his position and define memory in the social or collective sense as a reconstruction of the past for the group.26 And in this, we begin to close in on the collective nature of memory in the biblical material. Collective memory is not primarily a mental operation (which distinguishes it from personal memory); rather, it is a rhetorical and practical one, an invitation (or command) to share in the experiencing and recollecting of a particular event or individual, which then serves as a schematic upon which identity (both individual and national) is built. A second issue concerning the nature of memory is how one justifies (or perhaps even juxtaposes) the relationship between the act of memory and the medium of memory. Can one speak of a text—a psalm, a prayer, a narrative—“remembering”? The answer is no, except as an abstraction, again, as a mystical or imaginative construct. Only living things perform the mental act of remembering. But varied media are agents of memory, which are a critical part of remembering. As Jack Goody and Ian Watt have noted, “There was, for one thing, a strong tendency for writing to be used as a help to memory rather than as an autonomous and independent mode of communication.”27 Writing and memory, not even the most intimate and personal, can be isolated from the social context, from the language and the symbolic system molded by the society over centuries.” Ibid, 5. 24. Gowing, Empire and Memory, 15. 25. Peter Burke, “History as Social Memory,” in Memory: History, Culture, and the Mind, ed. Thomas Butler (Oxford: Blackwell, 1989), 44. 26. Similarly, Jonker (Topography, 17) has pointed out that Halbwachs understood memory as a social construct. While this is true, it is also essentially the act of social construction. 27. Goody and Watt, “Consequence of Literacy,” 40.

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remembering are thus intimately related, and while it may be inappropriate to speak of a text “remembering,” it is essential to acknowledge that texts bear memories and, in turn, may be employed to instill memories. “Memory,” as I define it (particularly in the interpretive approach to the Psalms of Asaph), is the means by, or the medium in which, the past and the present are brought together. Memory may be (and perhaps in most cases is) primarily a mental act, but memory may also be engendered through a variety of vehicles that are causative of that mental act. Memory and History If it is true that history and memory are recourse to the same subject matter, what then is the relationship between the two? Is Ricoeur correct that memory is the essential element of all recourse to the past? Is Hegel correct that history is the perfection of human knowing, over against the more primal act of remembering? Or is sociologist Maurice Halbwachs correct that history is a corrective to memory? History is, sometimes, seen as superior to memory.28 The reasons for this may be manifold, but foremost is the idea that history deals with what actually happened, with the factuality of events, whereas memories by comparison are subjective and not necessarily closely tied to reality.29 Pierre Nora goes so far as to characterize the relationship between memory and history as essentially antithetical. “Memory and history, far from being synonymous, appear now to be in fundamental opposition.”30 Indeed, history for Nora is often polemical and aggressively corrective:

28. See Ricoeur’s (Memory, 385–89) discussion of the possibility. As Gowing (Empire and Memory, 12) notes, the reverse may be true as well, where “Historia is simply a vehicle for memoria”; cf. comments on the letters of Lucceis in his note 29. 29. As Joseph Blenkinsopp puts it, “It could be maintained, in fact, that the science of historiography is essentially disconnected or even hostile to memory, since it tends to objectify the event wie es eigentlich geworden ist (as it actually came about) and to move along a different groove from that of the tradition within which a particular society transmits its collective memory.” “Memory, Tradition, and the Construction of the Past in Ancient Israel,” Biblical Theology Bulletin 27, no. 3 (1997): 76. Patrick Hutton summarizes the position of Halbwachs vis-à-vis this particular function of history—as a corrective to memory—writing that Halbwachs, “clung to the positivist conception of the historian as an authenticator of documented facts. . . . He believed that the historian’s first task is to keep memory honest, to remedy its distortions of the past.” History as an Art of Memory (Hanover: University Press of New England, 1993), 76–77. 30. Pierre Nora, “Between Memory and History: Le Lieux de Memoire,” Representations 26, no. 1 (Spring 1989): 8.

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At the heart of history is a critical discourse that is antithetical to spontaneous memory. History is perpetually suspicious of memory, and its true mission is to suppress and destroy it.31

Nora may be correct that a certain kind of history writing, one that is committed to a particularly “critical discourse,” may be diametrically opposed to memory, but such a view of history is too narrow and may be anachronistic. Modern critical history may, in this sense, become too much of a corrective, going too far in its effort to uncover the “cold hard facts” and nothing more. Where, then, does one turn for a more holistic view of history? Le Goff’s approach is more balanced. Drawing on Martin Heidegger, he identifies two histories. The first is the history of collective memory; it is mythic, “deformed,” and “constitutes the lived reality of the never-completed relation between present and past.” The second is the history of historians, which is a corrective to false traditional history; it is impartial and, as far as possible, objective.32 Further, Le Goff argues that memory is that “on which history draws and which it nourishes in return, seek[ing] to save the past in order to serve the present and the future.”33 On this last point Le Goff has the relationship exactly right, particularly in the operative sense of cultic historiography. Memory and history are brought together, wrought together, as a textual symbol, inscribed as preservation and source of memory. 34 Halbwachs provides the backdrop against which much reflection on the nature of history and memory has taken place over the last several decades, and his work continues to be important.35 Indeed, many (if not most) studies of the relationship of memory and history—including cultural, societal, and systemic memory; the interplay of memory, text, and tradition; the basics of “religious” writing; and more—make at least passing mention of Halbwachs’s work, and most of these engage that work at some length.36 31. Ibid., 9. 32. Le Goff, History and Memory, 111. 33. Ibid., 99. 34. Memory, like time, is “immobilized” in the written text, codified and established both for preservation and for proliferation; see Hutton, History, 80. 35. Maurice Halbwachs, The Collective Memory, trans. Francis J. Ditter Jr. and Vida Yazdi Ditter (New York: Harper & Row, 1980); Maurice Halbwachs, On Collective Memory, ed. and trans. Lewis A. Coser (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992). For a concise and balanced review of Halbwachs, see, in particular, Patrick Hutton’s “Halbwachs as Historian of Collective Memory,” in History as an Art of Memory, 73–90. 36. See Ricoeur, Memory, 393–97; Goody and Watt, “Consequence of Literacy,” 30; Assmann, Das Kulturelle Gedächtnis, 34–47; Funkenstein, Perceptions, 7–10; Le Goff, History and Memory, 90–96; Danièle

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For Halbwachs, there is a fundamental and unbridgeable difference between memory and history. Memory emphasizes the connections between the present and the past. These are the points at which the past finds traction in the present, often at a personal, even intimate level. History, in contrast, emphasizes not just connections or similarities but also dissimilarities, and seeks to reflect on events and persons from an objective remove. Memory, then, reconstructs the past from a present perspective and need, while history attempts to reconstruct the past from a critical distance.37 For Halbwachs, memory and history are active on the same field, dealing with the same object, but are in important ways different things: How could history ever be memory since there is a break in continuity between the society reading this history and the group in the past that acted in or witnessed the event?38

But couldn’t the same conclusion be drawn about “long distance” cultural memory? How can memory actually be memory of an event that was not experienced or witnessed by the group? The distinction upon which Halbwachs insists is between the social, cultural construction that is “collective memory” and the written chronicle.39 As Patrick Hutton summarizes Halbwachs’s position, “Memory deals in customary events that recur all the time. History identifies singular events that happen once and for all time.”40 This is, at best, an overly sharp distinction between the two and, at worst, basely incorrect about the province and function of memory in relation to history. One might suggest with equal conviction that it is history that shapes and guides memory. What Halbwachs appears to have failed to recognize is that written history cannot be so neatly separated from collective memory, because it is often (though not always) precisely through written recourse to the past that the framework of collective, cultural, societal memory is constructed.41 In contrast to Halbwachs, it must be insisted that memory and history, precisely because they deal with the same object, do have some Hervieu-Léger, Religion as a Chain of Memory (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2000), 125–30; Hutton, History, 73–90; and Kansteiner, “Finding Meaning,” 181. 37. See also Jonker, Topography, 23; Assmann, Das Kulturelle Gedächtnis, 42; Hutton, History, 76. 38. Halbwachs, Collective Memory, 78. 39. See Burke, “History as Social Memory,” 45. 40. Hutton, History, 76. 41. Funkenstein, Perceptions, 8. See also Le Goff, History and Memory, 129: “Just as the past is not history but the object of history, so memory is not history, but both one of its objects and an elementary level of its development.”

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interconnection, one that goes beyond mere dichotomy or diametric opposition.42 This connection is taken up more critically in the work of Jan Assmann to which I turn below. Before moving on from Halbwachs, it is important to take note of two key contributions he made to this subject. The first is his insistence on the reality and importance of a collective memory. Yosef Yerushalmi praises Halbwachs for this insight and for maintaining a clear and critical sense of what it means: Only a group can bequeath both language and a transpersonal memory....... Collective memory is not a metaphor but a social reality transmitted and sustained through the conscious efforts and institutions of the group.43

Memories of events one has not personally or directly experienced do not come to the individual spontaneously. Memories that are held in common must be shared, and it is the group that passes along its memories as a heritage to its individual members. Thus, there is a double meaning in the claim that individual memories do not exist in isolation from societal influences. This is true both of the individual’s personal memories, which are shaped and influenced by various cultural institutions (family, religious community, village, class, etc.), and memories that are instilled in the individual by those groups. 44 One weakness in Halbwachs’s view of collective memory is the strict limitation he places on it. For Halbwachs, the “collective” is restricted by matters of time and space. Only those individuals who share both—the same time and the same location—are a part of the collective group that may share in memory. With his sharp distinction between memory and history, Halbwachs effectively handicaps his understanding of the collective memory as well. Where he fails to understand the bearing, bequeathing, extending function of the various agencies of memory (be it written, ritual, monumental, etc.), he fails to see the broader possibilities of collective memory.45 42. “Because he believed that history begins where living memory ends, Halbwachs never reflected sufficiently on their interconnections.” Hutton, History, 77. 43. Yerushalmi, Zakhor, xxxiv. 44. As Adriane Leveen notes in her study of memory and tradition in the book of Numbers, “Numbers simply does not describe the memories of individuals. Nor does it evince any interest in individual acts of remembering. Instead, Numbers focuses on the people Israel who remember Egypt in a collective voice. . . . No doubt individuals [may] remember those shared events differently and through the lens of their own experiences, but they are in turn exposed to a public rendering of events that then corrupt and transform their individual recollections.” Memory and Tradition in the Book of Numbers (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008), 13–14.

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A second critical contribution of Halbwachs’s is his description of the relationship between a given present social framework or milieu and that which is remembered: the present situation always exerts its influence, reshaping the memory of the past in order to address current needs. Halbwachs saw present social structures—especially family and tribal groups, class groups, and religious communities—as providing the contexts within which memory is shaped and transmitted, with strict and even restrictive effect.46 These social structures are the “collective frameworks” that both mold and inform memory. In dealing specifically with religious memory, Halbwachs saw that even the cultus, which is typically one of the more conservative frameworks, does not merely preserve the past but also reconstructs and reshapes it with an eye to the impact of the past on the present and the future. This, if it is true also of the cultic historiography of the Asaphite Psalter, is instructive in terms both of the content and the function of its historical reflection. At this point, I make note of one last point of departure from Halbwachs. For Halbwachs, it is memory that most often exerts its influence on the past. For this reason, history is critical in curbing memory’s revision, in keeping memory honest.47 This is, of course, both a correct and laudable function of history and a vital differentiation between history and memory. What cannot be accepted is the insistence that memory is only something that is visited upon the past. To suggest that memory in the present—whether individual or corporate—always (or even primarily) works its will upon the helpless past is troubling. Hutton offers an example of this position: Remembering, therefore, might be characterized as a process of imaginative reconstruction, in which we integrate specific images formulated in the present into particular contexts identified with the past. The images recollected are not evocations of a real past but only representations of it. In that sense, they give expression to a present-minded imagination of what the past was like.48 45. Cf. Jonker, Topography, 24. Leveen, (Memory and Tradition, 15), refers to Stephen Owen on this point: “Stephen Owen elegantly proposes how such a recourse to the text in fact bridges and resolves the tension between individual and collective memory. The transformation of memory through writing ‘aspires to carry memory outside the self.’” 46. “It was the abiding merit of Halbwachs . . . to have insisted . . . that collective memory is not a metaphor but a social reality transmitted and sustained through the conscious efforts of institutions and groups.” Yerushalmi, Zakhor, xxxiv. 47. See also Le Goff, History and Memory, 111. 48. Hutton, History, 78. See also Le Goff, History and Memory, 111: “According to Heidegger, the past is not only man’s projection of the present into the past but the projection of the most imaginary

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While imaginative reconstruction may well be an integral part not just of remembering but, in particular, of official, authorized collective memories (such as one finds in cultic historiography), there is also an important sense in which the past is preserved precisely in order to instill a particular memory of the past in the present, to shape present memory by means of recourse to the past. In other words, it is equally important to understand when the remembered past serves as an image that is pressed upon the present, in order to reimagine both the present and the future. This distinction is of utmost importance in approaching the memorial/historical material in the cultic texts of the Bible. What is needed, then, is a term that is able to encompass the relationship between history and memory, a term that gets at the complex nature both of the material itself and the scholarly approach to it. 49 Mnemohistory An alternative to the sharp distinction between “memory” and “history” is to identify something of both in the way the past is represented. The term “mnemohistory” is salutary in that the language of both history and memory are explicitly present: mneme (memory), historia (history). Mnemohistory holds in tension historical events and the communal memories of those events. Further, “mnemohistory” takes into account the reality that the stuff of early “ethnic” memory is typically historical in nature.50 Mnemohistory also emphasizes the conpart of his present, the projection into the past of the future that he has chosen, a fiction-history or reversed desire-history.” 49. Patrick Hutton, drawing heavily on Gadamer, suggests “tradition” as a fitting middle ground: “It is as if tradition were a continuum that situates both memory and history.” Hutton, History, 159. Tradition, for Hutton, can encompass both the critical objectivity of history and the multifarious nature of memory. Tradition thus broadens the horizons of both memory and history, bearing and integrating them both. While Hutton’s suggestion is worthy of consideration, there are difficulties with this use of “tradition.” Tradition suggests practice, custom; in a positive sense this is typified in observance of torah, and in a negative sense in either an ignorance of torah or an outright rejection of it. See Matt 15:1–6. Cf. Yerushalmi, Zakhor, 113: “For any people there are certain fundamental elements of the past—historical or mythic, often a fusion of both—that become ‘Torah,’ be it oral or written, a teaching that is canonical, shared, commanding consensus; and only insofar as this ‘Torah’ becomes ‘tradition’ does it survive.” Tradition may be equally problematic in the modern colloquial sense of “the way it has always been done.” Where Hutton is on the mark is in seeing the growth of traditions—commemorative acts, ritual observances, cultic operations—out of and around remembered history. Hutton, History, 79–80: “Tradition preserves but also modifies the social frameworks of memory over time. . . . The defenders of a tradition, therefore, are likely to buttress its places of memory through acts of commemoration. . . . Commemorative places of memory reinforce our habits of mind by prompting our specific recollections of the past.” History and memory are often reflected via traditions, borne by them, but tradition itself is something other. There remains a poverty of language.

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scious, deliberate, even calculating act of remembering, recalling, and recollecting. Jan Assmann The term “mnemohistory” was coined by Egyptologist Jan Assmann, who has shown it to be of particular utility in the increasingly complex study of historical matters.51 Assmann writes, “Unlike history proper, mnemohistory is concerned not with the past as such, but only with the past as it is remembered.”52 The goal of a mnemohistorical study is, according to Assmann, not so much to discover what is true or factual in the tradition but to understand the function of the historical referents vis-à-vis collective memory and the nature (genre) of the literature.53 Mnemohistory: Fact or Function? The pressing concern of mnemohistory is not the verifiable historical claim of a given text but the influence that a given memory exerts within the tradition. “The ‘truth’ of a given memory lies not so much in its ‘factuality’ as in its ‘actuality.’”54 This gets at precisely what is missing in an oppositional approach to memory and history. Assmann’s distinction provides a useful and, in the case of much of the biblical material, fitting approach; one that is literary, the goal of which is to understand the functional nature of the material, not necessarily or primarily its factual nature. To approach the matter from a slightly different direction: 50. Le Goff (History and Memory, 55) observes that “ethnic” memory is usually built on “an apparently historical foundation”—a story around which collective identity is formed. 51. Assmann’s position is consistently present throughout much of his work, and is most fully expressed in Das Kulturelle Gedächtnis, Religion and Cultural Memory, and his critically acclaimed monograph Moses the Egyptian: The Memory of Egypt in Western Monotheism. 52. Jan Assmann, Moses the Egyptian: The Memory of Egypt in Western Monotheism (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1997), 9. 53. Assmann (ibid) states, “[Mnemohistory] concentrates exclusively on those aspects of significance and relevance which are the product of memory—that is, of a recourse to a past—and which appear only in the light of later readings. Mnemohistory is reception theory applied to history. But ‘reception’ is not to be understood here merely in the narrow sense of transmitting and receiving. The past is not merely received by the present. The present is ‘haunted’ by the past and the past is modeled, invented, reinvented, and reconstructed by the present.” See also Mark S. Smith: “The goal of explaining Israel’s past has deeply informed its presentation, both in its selection and in its perspectives. The ‘Biblical history’ constructed in the Torah and the Deuteronomistic History represents Israel’s national foundational story hostage to the conditions of the people’s present and their hopes for the future.” The Memoirs of God: History, Memory, and the Experience of the Divine in Ancient Israel (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2004), 13, italics added. 54. Assmann, Moses The Egyptian, 9.

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Interest in the past, down to a relatively late period, was not any general “historical” interest, but was guided by other motives: namely a specific interest in legitimation, justification, reconciliation and change. 55

The intent of the mnemohistorical referents, its effect, is of central importance. As an approach to the Asaphite Psalms, a mnemohistorical perspective emphasizes the constitutive force of the remembered past. The remembered past is re-presented with purpose. What remains to be explored is the way (or ways) in which the remembered past is actualized, via the world of the text, for some given present. Mnemohistory and the Erinnerungsfiguren (Figures of Memory) In describing the nature of the exodus in Israel’s recollection, Assmann writes, “Was wir mit dieser Beschreibung im Blick haben, ist die Exodus nicht nur als historiches Ereignis, sondern als Erinnerungsfigur.”56 It is the event in question as it is effective, as Erinnerungsfigur (figure of memory), that is important. It is the impact and place of a given memory that is Assmann’s concern and that defines mnemohistory.57 And again, “History is not simply written differently depending on the varying socio-cultural frameworks of action and remembrance—it is also differently experienced and indeed differently ‘made’ in accordance with those frameworks.”58 There are two significant points here. First, because mnemohistory is something akin to reception theory, it is the impact—intended and otherwise—of the memory that takes center stage. Questions of fact or fiction—and, more importantly, the often polemical distinction between what is presumed to be solid, reliable, demonstrable history and the less reliable, more fanciful, indemonstra-

55. Jan Assmann, “Guilt and Remembrance: On the Theologization of History in the Ancient Near East,” History and Memory 2, no. 1 (1990): 7. 56. Assmann, Das Kulturelle Gedächtnis, 201, emphasis in the original. Assmann continues, “Die Historizitat des Exodusgescehens ist hochst umstritten. Von agyptologischer Seite kann zu der Frage kaum etwas beigetragen werden. Die einzige Erwahnung Israels in einem agyptischen Text bezieht sich auf einen Stamm in Palastina, nicht auf eine Gruppe von Einwanderern und Gastarbeiten in Agypten. Entscheidend ist aber nicht die Historizitat, sondern die Bedeutung dieser Geschichte in der israelitischen Ruckerinnerung.” Ibid., 201–2, emphasis added. 57. Yerushalmi (Zakhor, 13) makes a related point about Israelite historiography: “That biblical historiography is not ‘factual’ in the modern sense is too self-evident to require extensive comment. By the same token, however, its poetic or legendary elements are not ‘fictions’ in the modern sense either. For a people in ancient times these were legitimate and sometimes inevitable modes of historical perception and interpretation.” 58. Assmann, “Guilt and Remembrance,” 5.

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ble myth—are set aside for the realized, discernable (or at least conceivable) effect of the memory or text. Assmann writes: Looming large in this debate is the infelicitous opposition between history and myth, leading to an all-too antiseptic conception of “pure facts” as opposed to the egocentrism of myth-making memory. History turns into myth as soon as it is remembered, narrated, and used, that is, woven into the fabric of the present. . . . Memory is not simply storage of past “facts” but the ongoing work of reconstructive imagination. 59

Notice, however, that Assmann is unable to maintain the tension between history and myth. When memory comes into play, “history turns into myth.” This trouble is present elsewhere in Assmann’s work as he addresses the confluence of theology and both history and remembrance, concluding that “only when one deals with gods does history [in Egypt] become interesting. But that is where it ceases to be history in our sense, and becomes mythology.”60 This strikes me as problematic because it appears to be a return to Assmann’s “infelicitous opposition.” A question that might be pressed here is, whose is the “sense” that is ours? Is this the sense of the modern historian and her definition of history? If so, it must again be insisted that this is anachronistic and does not fit at all with self-understanding of the biblical material as it records “history.” The biblical argument about God’s activity not just in mythological prehistory but in the history of the nation cannot be glossed over. Perhaps Assmann might have said that history may become mythic—dressed in or colored by mythic elements—as memory has its way. It would be careless to see in memory an unbiased treatment of the past. But to say that the act of remembering somehow transforms, or worse deforms, history is to go too far, if the goal is to hold on to the tension of history and memory. History and memory hold the past event/figure not as a repeatable or repeating event, nor as merely an event that is located in the past, but together, as a prior event with present impact. Still, Assmann is correct in this. There is an effect, an impact of a memory that is real, or “actual,” regardless of other questions.61 Mem59. Assmann, Moses the Egyptian, 14. 60. Assmann, “Guilt and Remembrance,” 8. 61. In Remembering Abraham: Culture, Memory, and History in the Hebrew Bible (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), Ronald Hendel traces the biblical memory of Abraham and sees in the memories of him (and of others and other events) the normative quality of the past. According to Hendel, biblical historiography is a process that involves interpretation, adaptation, and even combination (of traditions/memories) rather than a process of verification, falsification, or simple preservation of those traditions. This seems true of the rabbinic wrestling with the text. Given narratives

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ory is often not primarily concerned with pure or simple preservation of the past. Referring to the ongoing role of Masada in modern Israel, based in the story’s origins in Josephus, Assmann notes, “Its interest does not lie in the objectivity of the presentation or its archaeological verification, but rather in the grounding function it serves.”62 Mnemohistory attends to the importance of understanding how such effects play out in the tradition. Second, mnemohistory takes into account the ongoing and at times almost fluid nature of the present’s representation and application of the past. Mnemohistory takes seriously the memory or text as it is, freeing it from dismissive or simplistic (and often irresolvable) equations of pure fact and fiction. The text “as it is,” of course, is not sacrosanct; though the canonical approach to the text sometimes supposes it to be so. A given text should be compared with other texts that contain similar mnemohistorical references (a content question) and similar texts that contain different memories (a genre question). But the effect of the text—the fact that the text remains as a representation of the past, is read or heard as such, and, presumably, at some level is accepted as valid and authoritative—is the aspect central to the mnemohistorical approach. Mnemohistory, then, is recourse to the past that stresses the meaning and relevance of that past for the “present” community in which it is remembered as it lives its way into the future. Mnemohistory: The Mosaic Distinction The stated focus of Moses the Egyptian: The Memory of Egypt in Western Monotheism is “the distinction between true and false religion.”63 Assmann’s goal is to trace the roots of religious antagonism, specifically anti-Semitism, to its foundation “on the symbolic confrontation of Israel and Egypt.”64 In order to do this, Assmann looks primarily at what he calls “a vertical line of memory,” quite intentionally ignoring the larger questions of historicity or factuality. Assmann is clear that his work is not a quest for the historical Moses but is “concerned with Moses as a figure of memory.” It is the impact and note of the socially crafted memory of Moses that is Assmann’s focus.65 are testimonies, confessions that are made up (often in equal parts) of “true and false memories.” For Hendel, not unlike Assmann and Gowing, the past as it is remembered is what is important. The past as it is recalled and reimagined is the material out of which the nation’s identity is formed. And these memories are both expressed in these texts and to some degree created by them. 62. Assmann, “Guilt and Remembrance,” 9. 63. Assmann, Moses the Egyptian, 1. 64. Ibid., 6.

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In his study of the European memory of Moses and Egypt, Assmann arrives at the basic function of mnemohistory. The memory of a historical event or figure tends to resolve itself into a symbolic function. Here are just a few of the examples of the way in which Assmann sees this symbolic role of the object of mnemohistory: Historical reality is reduced to a figure of memory which retains just the two of them [Egypt and Israel] as the basic symbol of the Mosaic distinction. The geographical border between the two countries assumes a temporal meaning and comes to symbolize two epochs in the history of humankind.66 The constellation of Israel and Egypt has proved very powerful and influential as a figure of cultural memory. The biblical image of Egypt means “idolatry.”67 The Egypt of the Bible symbolizes what is rejected, discarded, and abandoned. Egypt is not just a historical context; it is inscribed in the fundamental semantics of monotheism.68

The “Mosaic distinction” to which Assmann refers is the distinction between what is right (Israel and its religion and theology) and what is wrong (Egypt and its religion and theology). The distinction is carried almost exclusively in the memory of the conflict between Moses and Pharaoh. The symbolism of one particular event as it is remembered in Israel’s religion (its writing, liturgy, ceremony, etc.) comes to define all of its relationships and interactions with neighboring cultures and conceptions. The real differences between Egyptian religion and what would become Israelite religion are, according to Assmann, not, for the most part, what the Bible makes them out to be. Neither is the historical reality of Israel’s origins—whether associated with the foreign Hyksos rulers of Egypt who were cast out; indicative (according to Manetho) of a mixed bag of Egyptian citizens, lepers, slaves, and social outsiders who were united under Moses, himself a rebellious Egyptian priest who 65. Ibid., 11. 66. Ibid, 7. 67. Ibid., 208. 68. Ibid., 209.

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led them out; or some other historically plausible derivation—what is ultimately the subject of memory. Nor are the various possible “real” differences what come to matter. Memory serves to establish what is distinctive, to define and normalize what made and makes Israel unique. It is the “present” distinction that memory serves to explain, encourage, and enforce; it is the distinction that matters. “Memory,” Assmann concludes, “is all that counts in the sphere of cultural distinctions and constructions.”69 And it is the memory of Moses, of Egypt, of the exodus that comes to be the defining symbol of that distinction. This critical function of memory is the key; memories of specific differences come to symbolize and to energize religious and cultural identity: All cultural distinctions need to be remembered in order to render permanent the space which they construct. Narratively, the distinction is represented by the story of Israel’s Exodus out of Egypt. Egypt thereby came to symbolize the rejected, the religiously wrong, the “pagan.” As a consequence, Egypt’s most conspicuous practice, the worship of images, came to be regarded as the greatest sin. Normatively, the distinction is expressed in a law code which conforms with the narrative in giving the prohibition of “idolatry” first priority. The story is more than simply an account of historical events, and the Law is more than merely a basis for social order and religious purity. In addition to what they overtly tell and establish, they symbolize the distinction.70

It is important to note the move that Assmann is able to make, encompassing the function of both narrative tradition and legal material under the rubric and function of mnemohistory. Narrative—story that evolves from an oral tradition that preserves cultural memory, transferring or transforming it into textual memory—serves as the vehicle of remembering, establishing, and maintaining the distinction. And “law,” the normative expression of identity, theology, and values, is the vehicle by which the distinction is made effective and definitive. What the culture remembers of its past is put into practice as the normative code of living—both socially and religiously. The symbol of the distinction becomes more than mere symbol; it is quite literally incarnate in the daily lives of the culture’s citizens. The symbol—the mem69. Ibid., 2. 70. Ibid., 3–4.

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ory, the distinction—becomes enfleshed. This is the central identifiable function of mnemohistory. What is significant and relevant is defined, carried on, and realized by memory. This memory is in turn “scripturalized,” written down, codified, and re-presented as of importance to a given present community and reality. What Assmann calls Erinnerungsfiguren, the particular events and individuals that serve not just as remembrances of the past (no matter how significant) but as meaningful symbols for present distinctions and realities, is the “material culture” of memory and history in textual form, the evidence of what is remembered, passed on, preserved with intent. This is what Goody calls the “material content of the cultural tradition,” Le Goff the “fossilized memory of some ‘real’ event,” Wulf Kansteiner the “objectified culture,” and Hutton the “archaeological character of the history of memory.”71 In addition to allowing for nuanced reading of the individual psalm(s), mnemohistory in turn allows one to chart the overall framework that the Asaphite Psalms present, a framework within which identity (both individual and national) is shaped, present reality made sense of, and future possibility may be built.72 All of this may, of course, be of value in the writing of a reconstruction of the history of Israel, but the mnemohistorical approach as I understand and employ it is not primarily interested in this question. In Assmann’s terms, The historical study of the events should be carefully distinguished from the study of their commemoration, tradition, and transformation in the collective memory of the people concerned.73

Ricoeur has argued along the same line, placing the emphasis of the memory/history dialectic squarely in the field of the text and its impact. Ricoeur writes, “despite the distinction in principal between ‘real’ past and ‘unreal’ fiction, a dialectical treatment of this elementary dichotomy imposes itself through the fact of the interweaving of the effects exercised by fictions and true narratives at the level of what 71. Goody and Watt, “Consequence of Literacy,” 29; Le Goff, History and Memory, 134; Kansteiner, “Finding Meaning,” 182; Hutton, History, 88. 72. This is not to say, necessarily, that the identity of the people Israel was formed exclusively or absolutely within this framework. Measuring the actual impact of this material is difficult and perhaps impossible, but the intention to do so is clear. 73. Assmann, Moses the Egyptian, 14. Along similar lines, Goody and Watt, “Consequence of Literacy,” 33; Le Goff, History and Memory, 111; Gowing, Empire and Memory, 11: “if the form of historia was not exclusively prose or historiography proper, its aim was likewise not so much the accurate or ‘truthful’ recording of the past as the preservation and even creation of memory” (italics in the original). See also Hutton, History, 84.

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we can call the ‘world of the text,’ the keystone to a theory of reading.”74 The “world of the text,” the medium by which the remembered past is presented and re-presented to a given “present” audience—and as a result of the ongoing authority of the religious text, to a string of new generations of audiences—has an important place in the exploration of the past, precisely because via this medium (the textual commemoration of the past) the past and the present are brought together. As Assmann summarizes the intrusive, inbreaking quality of the historical event (as opposed to the mythical), “The historical event, which is already actualized, must be published, eternalized, commemorated, remembered.”75 Mnemohistory as an Approach to the Study of Cultural Memory and Ritual With an eye to the distinctive form that the remembered past takes in the Asaphite Psalms, and through the lens of mnemohistory, I turn now to a brief review of three comparative works. First is Alain Gowing’s study of memory and the Roman empire, in which he characterizes the confluence of memory and history as “architectural mnemonic,” as an intellectual and moral framework that is the foundation of the empire. Second is Gerdien Jonker’s exploration of remembrance and the cult of the dead in Mesopotamia, where collective memory is embodied in the remembrance of the dead and in the cultic prayers (both oral and written) offered on their behalf. Finally, in Adriane Leveen’s exploration of memory and tradition in the book of Numbers, it is the text itself that embodies—not unlike a symbol or object—the collective memory for the individual. Gowing and Jonker are surveyed relatively briefly with an eye to their understanding of the schematic effects of mnemohistory. Leveen, whose work with Numbers is closer to my own with the Asaphite Psalter both in terms of provenance and particulars, is explored in more detail.

74. Ricoeur, Memory, 262. 75. Assmann, “Guilt and Remembrance,” 17.

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Alain Gowing, Empire and Memory: The Representation of the Roman Republic in Imperial Culture Gowing argues that the Romans understood “history” not so much as a genre of literature but as its content, the substance of what is remembered. Poetry, prose, and epistolography could all contain and communicate historical memory: “For the Romans historia is less a genre than a definition of subject matter. Poetry is therefore not excluded, nor monuments and inscriptions.”76 These texts were not simply memorials to past events but served to establish or create memory. For the Romans, “History enacts memory, and memory, in turn, enlivens history.”77 It is through memory that the Romans, for Gowing, make a connection between the dead and the living, Behind the link between historia and memoria, as the terminology Cicero uses to describe it suggests, lie some related notions about the connection between the living and the dead in Roman thought.78

Living on after physical death is quite literally conceived of as possible, and necessary, in the collective memories of the empire. What Gowing describes as the “memoria publica” is achieved and preserved through a variety of venues, including commemorative practices (festivals, funerary rites, monuments, and inscriptions), the public efforts of orators (those trained in memory as one of the key elements of rhetorical expertise), and national exemplars (figures from the past whose deeds have been invested with moral authority). These elements come together to form an “architectural mnemonic,” a structure that houses and sets limits on the course of empire’s memory. According to Gowing, because memory can be a dangerous thing, and remembering a perilous enterprise, it was important to the political authorities to control or channel just what and just how the public remembered.79 It becomes a social and political imperative for society 76. Gowing, Empire and Memory, 11. “Romans would have regarded the historian Velleius Patercallus, the epic poet Lucan, and the epistolographer Pliny as all engaged at some level in preserving and handing down memory when they narrate the past, which they obviously do to greater and lesser degrees. And certainly . . . the authors themselves saw remembrance as an important if not central aim of their respective projects. This is a phenomenon that therefore cuts across traditional distinctions of genre in a way that will make some modern students of history and memory uneasy.” Ibid., 9. 77. Ibid., 12. 78. Ibid., 13. 79. Ibid., 2. Leveen (Memory and Tradition, 15) makes just this point about the rival memories of Egypt that threatened the Hebrew people during their wilderness sojourn.

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to remember, and remember in a particular manner. Thus the “architectural” structure that is provided through the various agencies of memory, and the specific objects of memory, provide the means by which the empire is understood and maintained. There is also no doubt that the memory of the Republic provided the foundation on which the Empire was laid. Just as an individual’s identity is inevitably the product of past experience and thus memory, the Principate initially took its form and political identity from the institutions of the past. Precisely the same may be said of the physical city, whose present appearance bears the mark of its past. Memory, in other words, manifests itself in all manner of ways.80

Gowing’s “architectural mnemonic” is not unlike Halbwachs’s collective framework and similar in function to Assmann’s Erinnerungsfiguren. For Gowing, there can be no question that memory serves as the foundation upon which the empire is settled and built. Gerdien Jonker, The Topography of Remembrance: The Dead, Tradition and Collective Memory in Mesopotamia Jonker locates the place of collective memory in Mesopotamia primarily in preserving a social—sometimes familial, sometimes societal—memory of given individuals in the cult of the dead. This collective commemoration was originally performed orally—in both home and temple—but after literacy was introduced late in the fourth millennium, and as reading and writing were taught in scribal schools with increasing regularity, “the cultural memory was represented by the written word. Here transition was effected by means of reading and writing and was concentrated on central institutions.”81 What Jonker calls the “topography” of the dead has to do with locating both memories about and memories of the dead within the social landscape of Mesopotamia. Jonker notes that in Mesopotamia the living and the dead were closely connected. Houses were built with a place above ground as dwelling for the living (elēnu) and with resting places below the ground floor for the dead (šaplānu). “The dead were regarded as social beings. . . . It was possible to communicate with them.”82 It was the responsibility of the living to maintain the memory 80. Gowing, Empire and Memory, 154. 81. Jonker, Topography, 30. 82. Ibid., 189.

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of the deceased.83 “The close ties between the living and the dead culminated in the kispu ritual in which continuity with the past was emphasized.”84 The kispu ritual was a commemorative ceremony in which the individual remembered was invoked by name in the context of prayer and offered both food and drink. This commemoration was essential in preserving the relationship of the deceased with the family because, for the Mesopotamians, the finality of death was absolute and if one was not remembered, one was lost altogether. “By caring for the dead [through ritual actions and prayer], the next-of-kin hoped to be able to exert a direct influence on their ‘existence,’ whether endurable or not, in the world of the dead.”85 The place of the dead was maintained via the cult of the gods through ritual, prayers, and hymns—both oral and written prayers offered before the icons of the gods86—as the scribal, temple schools employed them in instruction (in the practice of literacy). The copies of prayers and hymns then took over (or better, are made over) as bearers of memory. According to Jonker, the topography of the dead is found literally in the physical topography of Mesopotamian homes and cities, and also in ritual, which becomes more than merely the means for preserving the memory of an individual. As it is retained, copied, and passed on, it becomes the collective memory embodied in written text. One final observation Jonker makes is striking, as it has to do with writing become symbol and with Hammurabi. Jonker notes that there is an increasing tendency for inscriptions to “historicize.” By this she means that the inscriptions or narû (an inscribed tablet or boundary marker) served not just to address the present moment but to establish a written, concrete memory of the inscriber. “When Hammurabi promulgated his new legislation at the beginning of the eighteenth century, he had his laws engraved on a narû.”87 He did so in a unique way, incorporating a variety of literary types: narrative, legal directive, and most importantly, direct speech. The existence of a literature which provided people with all sorts of stories, pieces of information and warnings from the past must have had a strong influence on the style of composition of the inscribed narûs, 83. Ibid., 104. 84. Ibid., 190. 85. Ibid. 86. Ibid., 81, cf. 90, 236–37. 87. Ibid., 106.

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which continued to be erected. This development was opportune for Hammurabi. There was a literal command that everyone read his laws and draw conclusion from them. He was thus able to kill two birds with one stone, maintaining justice, and ensuring that his name would be remembered for all time.88

Hammurabi is, in a sense, an exemplar of the topography of the dead as he is both remembered and passes on his memory in the narû. So for Jonker, the topography of the dead is a ritual place, a locale in which collective memory is both established and communicated. A la Assmann, this is communicative communal memory, ritualized and perpetuated in writing. Adriane Leveen: Memory and Tradition in the Book of Numbers Leveen identifies a particular function of remembered history in the book of Numbers. Historical remembrance in Numbers is employed in order to help make sense of Israel’s present situation. The motives behind memory are to explain the past and to order the memory of it, to be sure of its preservation and thus to ensure avoidance of history repeating itself, all of which serves to “chart a course for the future.”89 The memories and traditions preserved in the book of Numbers, while they concern the wilderness years, are instructional for and metaphorical of a present situation—that is, the remembered past both preserves the memory of God’s people during the critical post-exodus period and is meant to speak directly to the present people, guiding them in their relationship with their God. It follows to ask, just what “present” situation and people are being addressed by Numbers? For Leveen’s reading of Numbers, the editors—who are understood to be a broadly identified group of “priests”—were probably working over an extended period, beginning, perhaps, in the time of Hezekiah, with the final form of the book coming to full fruit in the Second Temple period. In addition, Leveen argues that the goals and vision of the work are identifiable.90 Numbers seeks to bring into focus the vision of the “targeted audience,”91 a vision that seeks to affect a shared understanding of God’s promises (made to 88. Ibid., 106–7. 89. Leveen, Memory and Tradition, 3. 90. Ibid., 56. 91. The “targeted audience” is possibly the Judah of Hezekiah’s time, the Israel of the postexilic, Second Temple period, and points both in between and after. Elsewhere, Leveen identifies the intended audience quite generally as the “people of Israel.”

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generations past) and a shared view of the potential future, a future intended to be shaped by the priestly editors behind the book of Numbers.92 The function of mnemohistory in Numbers is to make of the past a blueprint for the future: Numbers presents its audience, the people Israel, a narrative of past events in order to explain present circumstances, opportunities, and dangers. It also attempts, just as crucially, to chart a course for the future. 93

The connection of a vision of the past to the future is not, however, a simple process. There are almost always different recourses to the past, different memories that intrude. Leveen recognizes this and stresses the competition of events and places for Israel’s remembrance. In the wilderness and not yet in the promised land, rival memories of Egypt stand in the way of Israel’s understanding of both past and future. The memories of Egypt, where the Israelites fed on “the cucumbers, the melons, the leeks, the onions, and the garlic” (Num 11:5), stands as an impediment to the future to which Moses is leading the people.94 The memory of relative comfort in Egypt vies with the older memory of the promise of a new and better home provided by God and the wonders God performed in the exodus. The danger in Numbers is not so much that what God has done for Israel might be forgotten but that other memories might usurp the primary place of the exodus event. Memories of Egypt can and will undo that seemingly permanent relationship between God and those liberated from Egypt. Egypt triggers a dramatic breach by becoming the site of Israel’s desires, a place of security and comfort instead of a nightmare that Israel gladly escapes. 95

When memories are in competition for pride of place, not every memory can be preserved. Memory can never be completely whole or it is necessarily of limited use as metaphor, symbol, and agent of shaping a shared vision. Forgetting is a necessary part of remembering, either implicitly as a byproduct of or in tension with remembering, or explicitly as a conscious, intentional act.96 92. Ibid., 63. 93. Ibid., 2. 94. Ibid., 15: “a single memory of Egyptian delicacies, uttered aloud, impinges on the present in disturbing and unpredictable ways, nearly unraveling the future of an entire people.” 95. Ibid., 45, cf. 95–96. 96. Yerushalmi (Zakhor, 108), in exploring the biblical “uses of forgetting” notes that the forgetting is only negative, something to be feared as “the cardinal sin from which all others flow.” The place

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Leveen takes this a step further, suggesting that it is not just certain memories that must go but some of those who remember: That [Egyptian] past becomes an obstacle to a successful future. Only after the death of those seduced by the Egyptian past can the next generation proceed to fulfill a future in the promised land.97

The importance of the collective memory is as a corrective to competing memories. No doubt individuals [may] remember those shared events differently and through the lens of their own experiences, but they are in turn exposed to a public rendering of events that then corrupt and transform their individual recollections. Numbers is fascinated by, and depicts, that collective expression and corruption of memory.98

It is to meet this need, to prevent the corruption of memory or the usurpation of the correct memories by some other object of recollection, that Israel’s memory must be guided and fixed. Leveen summarizes the different ways in which memory, both the command to remember and specific memories, becomes fixed in different ways in the Torah. According to Leveen, in the book of Exodus this fixing occurs through ritual. Exodus fixes memory through the use of ritual objects and symbolic action—in the reenactment of the Passover, in the eating of unleavened bread, and tied (literally) to the physical act of ‫( זכרון‬remembrance), bound to the hand and the brow (Exod 13:9).99 In Deuteronomy it is through what amounts to a ritual of writing. Deuteronomy does not fix memory through ritual actions or objects other than the written word (cf. Deut 31:24–26, 28:58, 30:10).100 As Leveen notes, it is in Deuteronomy that the word torah comes to mean a specific written text, that text that fixes Israel’s consciousness (i.e., the book of Deuteronomy itself; cf. Deut 31:10–13).101 In Numbers, it is in the symbols, practices, and names of places that memory becomes fixed. Leveen’s basic assumption is that the colof forgetting vis-à-vis remembering is often emphasized. However, in the Psalms of Asaph, forgetting as “social amnesia,” or “acts of oblivion,” (Burke, “History as Social Memory,” 56–57) is rarely if ever addressed and so will not be a focus of this study. 97. Leveen, Memory and Tradition, 46. Cf. ibid., 13: “The editors of Numbers appear to have identified that resistance. Positive memories of Egypt have so many destructive repercussions among the people Israel that the only way to curtail the damage is to destroy those who hold them.” 98. Ibid., 14. 99. Ibid., 17, 20. 100. See also Deut 6:6–9, 20–25. 101. Leveen, Memory and Tradition, 18.

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lective memory lives not primarily as a mental act or in a generational memory but in the concrete, in symbol, action, place names, objects, and images.102 The biblical text, in particular the text of the book of Numbers, “embodies collective memory” for the reader. Fixation of memory in the written word (what with Assmann I have termed the “scripturalization of memory”) “bridges and resolves the tension” between the concepts of individual and collective memory. Individual and collective memory are not the same, nor are the memories of individuals within the community, the collective group, identical. But collective, or to use Leveen’s phrasing, “shared memories,” do not exist in isolation; rather, they are influenced by communities, relationships, and, of course, by history. So in writing, memory is not simply fixed, it is transformed; memory is moved beyond the province of the few or the individual to a shared enterprise or commodity.103 Leveen’s claim for her work is that she is rereading Numbers by highlighting the role of the editors in reshaping the memory of the wilderness period as one “not only of disaster but of renewed determination.”104 At this point, Leveen draws on the work of Maurice Halbwachs in characterizing the contentious, conflicting, tension-laden, and tendentious nature of a collective or shared memory: They [the editors of Numbers] envision a flourishing people securely in their own land under the guidance of priestly tradition and arrangements—but only if they succeed in discounting, or dismissing other alternatives, other memories, of the past.105

The ground at stake in the narrative of Israel’s past is the same ground at stake in a given “present.” This is particularly instructive in the postexilic setting of Numbers. Post-bondage, post-exodus, in a land new to the present generation, the concerns of the past are revisited because they provide a potent symbolic frame of reference—an almost perfect correlation—with the Sitz im Leben of the returning Israelites. Leveen’s claim for Numbers, that it represents a culmination of the fixation of tradition in a “compelling, authoritative, and, finally, binding” form,106 may be overstated—at least in terms of any overarching, “compelling” impact of the book. One is convinced that this is the goal, 102. Ibid., 14. On this point, Leveen footnotes Nora, “Between Memory and History,” 9. 103. Leveen, Memory and Tradition, 15. 104. Ibid., 6. 105. Ibid., 13. 106. Ibid., 3.

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but is it achieved? In Jeremiah 16:14–15 (cf. Jer 23:7–8), the prophet claims that after the return from exile the people will no longer cleave to the memory of the exodus because a new memory will replace it. While the restoration is certainly a significant historical referent, has it replaced the memory of the exodus? One wonders if Leveen’s claims are, like Jeremiah’s, a little strong. Still, her argument that the editing is purposeful, and that the redactional goal is measurable and identifiable, is convincing. Whether the form and content of mnemohistory achieves such an overarching authority remains debatable, but that the agent of mnemohistory is intended to become so would be difficult to deny. The Interplay, Nature, and Function of Mnemohistory in Cultic Historiography Funkenstein defines collective memory as “a system of signs, symbols, and practices: memorial dates, names of places, monuments and victory arches, museums and texts, customs and manners, stereotype images . . . and even language itself.”107 What is more, “memory is assisted by signs, symbols, and meanings, some of which have received public valorization,”108 all of which is suggestive for an understanding of the mnemohistorical material in the Asaphite Psalms. It is precisely in this sense that collective memory is shaped via the historical material in the cultic poetry. Building on the work of Yerushalmi, Jonker identifies the social reality of collective memory as one “maintained by institutions and kept alive by ritual actions.”109 It is through the repetition of ritual action and information that contact is maintained between the present and the past.110 Connerton puts it more strongly still, “A ritual is not a journal or memoir. Its master narrative is more than a story told and reflected on; it is cult enacted. An image of the past, even in the form of a master narrative, is conveyed and sustained by ritual performances.”111 Rites, liturgical performances, are repeatable. And in their repetition lies the intended continuity of present memory with past history.112 In 107. Funkenstein, Perceptions, 6. 108. Ibid., 7, emphasis added. 109. Jonker, Topography, 24. 110. Ibid. 111. Connerton, How Societies Remember, 70. 112. Ibid., 45.

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other words, it is in the cultus and its rituals, in its hymns, liturgies, and prayers (i.e., in the psalms), that the “acts of transfer,” of giving direction and structure to the formation of society by passing memories on from generation to generation, are both discernible and decipherable.113 “Public valorization” in the case of Asaph is of certain historical referents that are employed to a particular ritual and, of course, social end; in cultic historiography, memory and history are brought together, breaking into the natural cycles of human living and redefining the national identity. Thus the Asaphite Psalms establish a framework, in ritual space, in which the community remembers and is shaped. The Psalter contains other historical material aside from that in the Asaphite corpus. Psalms 105, 106, 135, and 136 (along with the Asaphite Psalm 78) have traditionally been labeled “historical” psalms. There are also several psalms that contain historical allusions or references borrowing historical imagery (e.g. Pss 66:6, 68:7, 99:6–7, 114:1). And then there are the psalms of Asaph, which both contain the great majority of the historical material in the Psalter and stand out as distinctive from the rest. These collections, which I will identify as cultic historiography, serve as the marshals of Israel’s intended historical memory and the “cultic framework” in which history is re-presented, memory formed, and identity shaped. Gowing, Jonker, and Leveen each describe ways in which collective memory becomes fixed and is employed thereafter to shape the memories of the people and culture. Pamela Stewart and Andrew Strathern, in the introduction to Landscape, Memory and History, draw similar conclusions about the structural function of memory. Place, memory, history, community, all are at work in the formation of identity: We see history as involved continuously in the making and remaking of ideas about place, realigning or differentiating place in relation to notions of community. The sense of place and embeddedness within local, mythical, and ritual landscapes is important. These senses of place serve as pegs on which people hang memories, construct meanings from events, and establish ritual and religious arenas of action.114

113. Ibid., 39. 114. Pamela J. Stewart and Andrew Strathern, eds. Landscape, Memory and History (London: Pluto Press, 2003), 2, 3.

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Similarly, Jack Goody describes the commemoration of the genealogies of the Bedouins, passed down through the generations in a chain of memory, as an act of societal construction. Neither these genealogies, nor the biblical lists of the descendants of Adam, were remembered purely as feats of memory. They served as mnemonics for systems of social relations.115

It is through the concretizing of memory—the scripturalizing of the remembered past116—through the ritual act of lament and the didactic thrust of certain psalms, that the memories of “Asaph” are intended to be made the memories of the people. Contrary to the conclusions of David Lowenthal,117 the memories set down in the Psalms of Asaph are intended to be “immutably fixed,” precisely to this end. One may, as with Leveen’s claims for Numbers, question the achievement of this intended fixation, but the intent is apparent. There is within this corpus a particular representation of the past—what happened, what it means, how and why it is applied in the present—that is part and parcel of the mnemohistorical material. A shifting understanding of the past is not only difficult to apply to a present or future generation but will have limited application. Once the view of the past has proven fluid or changeable, the present’s need for it will diminish. As Leveen has observed, communities often commemorate events that they have experienced collectively, and these commemorations will be available to the observer.118 What’s more, these commemorations make it possible for absentee members of the community and—more significantly—proceeding generations of the community to observe, and in essence experience anew, that which is commemorated. Asaphite mnemohistory, then, is the scripturalization, the written “material culture,” of a particular view of Israel’s past and its meaning for the present and presumably the future.119 As Ronald Hendel has 115. Goody and Watt, “Consequence of Literacy,” 31. 116. Leveen quotes Isaac Rabinowitz, A Witness Forever: Ancient Israel’s Perception of Literature and the Resultant Hebrew Bible, ed. Ross Brann and David I. Owen (Bethesda, MD: CDL Press, 1993), 40: “writing fixes, preserves, renders permanent what otherwise might be changeable, evanescent, impermanent.” 117. David Lowenthal, The Past Is a Foreign Country (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985), 206: “Contrary to the stereotype of the remembered past as immutably fixed, recollections are malleable and flexible; what seems to have happened undergoes continual change.” 118. Leveen, Memory and Tradition, 14. 119. Along similar lines, Hutton (History, 88) identifies “the archaeological character of the history of memory” as one of the areas necessarily in play for the modern historian, contra Halbwachs who surprisingly never made exploration of the interplay between memory and history, always main-

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observed, “The remembered past is the material with which biblical Israel constructed its identity as a people, a religion, and a culture.”120 In terms of vocabulary and definitions, the material in question in the Psalter is not history proper, neither is it mere nostalgia, nor is it memory as such. Rather, it is the re-presentation of events, memory recalling the past, past history shaping present memory; it is mnemohistory.121 Mnemohistory in this sense is, a la Connerton and Carol Newsome,122 a cognitive function that leads to knowledge of the past and the inculcating of memories—memories that are, in a real sense, the stump onto which the new generation is grafted and the means by which sense of the present is made.123 Ricoeur characterizes the commemoration of an individual by the historian in and after death as the construction of a “scriptural tomb.”124 But for Israel, for the congregation of the faithful hearing the psalms, the remembered past is less a tomb and more a gateway into the future. The past is made an entry point to a new “promised land.” A crucial question at this point is how this scripturalization, this resolution into symbolic form, is to be evaluated in terms of understanding its rhetorical function and theological perspective. As noted above, a given past event is remembered, and the mnemohistorical development of that event’s transmission follows two broadly observable stages: First, as an event (or individual) is remembered, recollected, and represented, the memory tends to resolve into a symbolic form. The exodus, for example, is not simply a reference to the putative historical event but is an event that may be received as symbolic in and of the present setting of the community or symbolic of the way in which God has been in relationship with the people in the past and so can be counted upon in the present situation. Second, the symbolic form is taining a sharp dichotomy between the two concepts. See also Mowinckel, Psalms in Israel’s Worship, Vol. 2, X:22; Brown, Seeing the Psalms, 4. 120. Hendel, Remembering Abraham, ix. 121. “There [in the ancient Near East] the various images do not—at least primarily—serve to explain what they portray, but to re-present it. . . . In the ancient Near East, the usual purpose in literature or visual representation of an event or object is to secure the existence of that event or object and to permit him who re-presents it to participate in it.” Othmar Keel, The Symbolism of the Biblical World: Ancient Near Eastern Iconography and the Book of Psalms (Winona Lakes, IN: Eisenbrauns, 1997), 10. 122. Connerton, How Societies Remember, 4; Carol Newsome, “Rhyme and Reason,” in Kelle and Moore, Israel’s Prophets, 294. 123. Jonker, Topography, 5–6: “The cognitive process makes ‘an interest in the past’ a compelling necessity, a conditio sine qua non for attaining perception in the present.” 124. Ricoeur, Memory, 384: “The historian does not only strive to resuscitate the living of the past who are no longer but who once were, but also attempts to re-present actions and passions.”

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“scripturalized” in the process—that is, it is retained and handed on as of vital importance via cultic observance as it is read, reexperienced, and assimilated in the context of the cultus. The scripturalized memory is a definitive happening that has implications for how the present community understands itself and how it responds both to its own Sitz im Leben and to its God. Like Assmann’s Erinnerungsfigur, Gowing’s “architectural mnemonic,” Jonker’s topographical mental geography, and above all Leveen’s embodied arena, the scripturalized mnemohistorical material—the symbol that both commends the past and reestablishes it—is that piece through which the psalms of Asaph make meaning and around which Israel is summoned to gather. “No collective memory can exist without reference to a socially specific spatial framework.”125 In the case of cultic historiography, this spatial framework is formed as it is performed, literally, in the ritual observances of the cultus, a discrete example of which we find in the Asaphite Psalter. The specifics of the mnemohistorical material in Asaph, just how these memories are re-presented in symbolic form (or in some cases a form that has not reached symbolic resolution) and the particulars of what is remembered are explored in detail in the chapters that follow. In those chapters, the particular function of the mnemohistorical material in relation to Asaph is evaluated in two contexts. First, within the context of the Asaphite material itself, comparative attention is given to how the historical referents are operative: (a) in explicitly cultic usage in ritual, festival, and worship; and (b) within different formcritical categories, primarily complaint (lament), which is empowered by wisdom/torah/instruction. Second, mnemohistorical function is evaluated in comparison (a) to other cultic historiography, particularly Psalms 105, 106, 135, and 136; and (b) in comparison to the psalms attributed to other Levitical guilds—the Korahites and Merarites. Through these comparisons, the basic function of Asaphite mnemohistory becomes evident. The historical referents in Asaph serve as points of reference around which the people are formed/re-formed. A given referent serves as a historical anchor within the larger landscape of the people’s story; it is a constitutive element of the people’s place (heritage, election) and an ensign around which the people may gather in times of danger or loss. Further, in each case where a historical reference is made or an event called to mind, there is theological ground at stake. Whether in a statement about the way that God acts in 125. Connerton, How Societies Remember, 37.

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THEORETICAL CONSIDERATIONS

the midst of or on behalf of God’s people or as a problem either feared or experienced, mnemohistory in Asaph is tied directly to reflection on the nature of the divine. The results in the Asaphite material are a combination of sociocultural and theological history. The impact of history and memory are intended to be felt in the daily lives of the people, presumably both as a nation (e.g., Psalms 74, 79) and as individuals (e.g. Psalm 77).126 Thus for both the individual and the nation, as past is recalled in service of present, the roles of God and nation are reconciled; in the cultic historiography of the Asaphite psalms, theological reflection and social orientation finds lasting and intentional function.

126. There does seem to be a movement from the historical event to the collective memory to the memory appropriated for the individual. As Othmar Keel observes of Psalm 23, “[Psalms typically] speak of Yahweh as the shepherd of his people. A shepherd tends his flock, not a solitary sheep. Nevertheless, the suppliant of Psalm 23 speaks of Yahweh as his personal shepherd. Here, as we have seen before, is an instance of individual appropriation of salvation history. In the case of the motifs of wing and shield, this process was accomplished by democratization . . . here it occurs through individualization. In Psalm 23 Yahweh no longer guides the flock, but the individual.” Keel, Symbolism, 229–30. This is a note that Brown repeatedly sounds in his analysis of metaphor in the psalms, that an “individual’s salvation and refuge are bound up with Israel’s historical deliverance and secure identity.” Brown, Seeing the Psalms, 46, see also 48, 213.

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3

Mnemohistory and the Asaphite Corpus

The Asaphite Psalms as a Collection Maurice Halbwachs recognized that any given community or nation typically consists of a collection of groups. In the case of ancient Israel, the socioreligious collective was complex, and the contributions of numerous individuals and groups can be discerned in the composition of the Hebrew Bible. In the Hebrew Bible at large, there are bodies of material that record, retell, and reshape the people’s past; from the Pentateuch through the prophets, the remembered past is an integral part of the biblical material.1 It is within the ranks of the keepers of Israel’s memory that Asaph finds his place. Yet within the Psalter itself, there are other historical referents both in individual psalms and in the collections of other Levitical guilds. Thus the Asaphites represent just one component of the larger Israelite-Judean social order and, indeed, only one group even within the ranks of the Levites. It is, however, a discrete group with a particular content that may be evaluated both on its own and comparatively—a task taken up in what follows. The psalms of Asaph serve as one particular expression of the remembered past, establishing bound-

1. See Ronald Hendel’s Remembering Abraham, a survey of memory in the Hebrew Bible.

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aries within which national identity, in relationship to God, is understood and shaped. There is also, within this particular collection, an ebb and flow to the scope of the mnemohistorical material. These psalms, which share a common titular attribution to Asaph and the Asaphite predilection of the remembered past, may be read as a collection in which the mnemohistorical material shows some interconnectedness in the formation of the individual psalms into the collection’s final form as we now find it in the Psalter, as well as in the shaping of the Psalter as a whole. I turn now to an evaluation of the Asaphite Psalms as a discrete collection and as a part of the larger Psalter. Asaph, Asaphites, and the Asaphite Collection The name Asaph and the designation “Asaphite” (‫בני אסף‬, sons of Asaph) occur twenty-nine times in the Hebrew Bible, not including the twelve psalms attributed ‫( לאסף‬to Asaph; cf. Psalms 50, 73–83).2 Outside of the superscriptions, Asaph the singer-psalmist is remembered entirely in later biblical tradition as a musician appointed by David to minister before the ark of the covenant, a musician in “the service of song in the house of the Lord” (1 Chr 6:31, 39; cf. 15:17, 19; 16:5, 7, 37; 25:6; 2 Chr 5:12; 29:30; Neh 12:46). In Chronicles, the appointment of Levitical singers was a pattern established by David and followed by other kings—those kings the Chronicler favors—who followed after him (Jehoshaphat, 2 Chr 20:21; Hezekiah, 2 Chr 29:30; and Josiah, 2 Chr 35:15). In 1 Chronicles 25:2, this appointment is described as “under the direction” of the king (lit. ‫[ על־ידי המלְך‬under the hand of the king]). So in the late tradition of the Chronicler, the role of the Asaphite group is represented as official or state sanctioned leadership in worship, which presumably included the content of the Asaphite service as authoritative as well. Unlike the other major Levitical collection in the Psalter, the Psalms of the Sons of Korah (Psalms 42, 44–49, 84, 85, 87, and 88), the Asaphite collection is attributed not to the group, or even to specific descendants of Asaph, but to Asaph himself. It seems likely that at this point at least the superscriptions are influenced by the books of Chronicles.3 2. Cf. also 1 Esdras 1:15; 5:27, 29. 3. The role of Asaph and his sons is specified repeatedly according to the Davidic exemplar in 1 Chronicles 16:4: “[David] appointed certain of the Levites as ministers before the ark of the Lord, to invoke, to thank, and to praise the Lord, the God of Israel.” This appointment took place, according to the Chronicler, at the time of the ark of the covenant’s placement in the tabernacle

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While Asaph is clearly an important Levitical figure in Chronicles, this is not supported in the Deuteronomistic History, which begs the question as to who Asaph really is.4 A search for the historical Asaph is not the purpose of the present study and so discussion of the identity of Asaph is not treated exhaustively, but a sense for the origins of the Asaphite traditions behind the Chronicler’s own mnemohistorical (and theological) reconstruction of “Asaph” is not unimportant. 5 Sigmund Mowinckel correctly concludes that the psalms themselves tell us nothing about the “individual authors of individual psalms.”6 What is clear, however, is that the later (postexilic) attribution of the Asaphite superscription is connected in some real way to older, Northern traditions. Harry Nasuti, working from references to the Asaphites in Ezra 2:41 and Nehemiah 7:44, identifies the group as “an integral part of the worship in the pre-exilic temple,”7 with roots in the Asaphite role in the temple at Shiloh in the North.8 The Asaphite material is rooted in preexilic Northern Israel but is not a closed collection until after the return from exile. Asaph, then, is the father of the traditum (tradition-stream), which employs and enables the historical memory of the people over numerous generations. As has often been noted, the Asaphite collection contains material that suggests a wide range of settings and times.9 The most likely and is most notably defined as “to invoke.” The Hebrew verb is ‫( להזכיר‬to cause to be remembered), which seems to be a primary concern of the Asaphite Psalter. Karl N. Jacobson, “Asaph/ Asaphites,” in Encyclopedia of the Bible and Its Reception, vol. 2, Anim–Atheism, ed. Hans-Josef Klauch (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2009), 880–81. 4. Goulder, Psalms of Asaph, 15. 5. Mowinckel, Psalms in Israel’s Worship, Vol. 2, X:96 6. Ibid., 95. 7. Nasuti, Tradition History, 164. 8. Ibid., 172. 9. See Buss, “Psalms of Asaph and Korah,” 384–85; Goulder, Psalms of Asaph, 24ff; Nasuti, Tradition History, 37; Mowinckel, Psalms in Israel’s Worship, Vol. 2, X:95–96. John Goldingay’s comments on the dating of Psalm 78 may serve both as an example of the breadth of possibilities in terms of dates of origin for the material itself and also to the multiplicity of dates in terms of influence on the use and form of the text as we have it: “The psalm’s ending with God’s choice of Judah, Jerusalem, and David might have various implications regarding its date. It might suggest that it comes from David or Solomon’s day. It might come from the period of the split between Ephraim and Judah, when Ephraim was usually the stronger of the two, and it might thus buttress Judah’s position. It might come from shortly after the fall of Ephraim and respond to that. It might come from the later pre-exilic period, when Judean kings such as Josiah again sought to exercise authority in the north. It might come from the exilic or Second Temple period with its rivalry between Judah and Samaria, when (we know from Chronicles) the election of David remained very important to the community. It might come from a messianically inclined Second Temple community. The question is complicated by the possibility that the psalm might have developed in stages to the form that we have.” John Goldingay, Psalms: Volume 2: Psalms 42–89, Baker Commentary on the Old Testament Wisdom and Psalms (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2007), 481, emphasis added. Goldingay cites the scholarship of Eissfeldt, Day, Clifford, Jonker, Gunkel, and Whybray among others as examples of the various possibilities.

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assessment of the Asaphite collection is that it is just that, a collection of psalms written at different times and by different authors.10 Likely the earliest of the Asaphite Psalms were written during the monarchic period (e.g., Psalms 78 and 8111 ), and the latest of these psalms were written post 587 BCE, after the temple was destroyed and the identity of the nation was in almost complete confusion (cf. Psalms 79, 83). Thus, an Asaphite psalm writer was operative in some form over an extended period, with roots in the Northern Kingdom, and a collection of their psalms was later appropriated for use in Judah, retaining some authority in the exilic community.12 The cultic historiography of Asaph’s Psalter presents memories of Israel’s past as formative, central for the identity of the people—as God’s people and as a nation—and theologically vital, shaping how God is understood and described. The Placement of the Asaphite Psalms in the Psalter The Asaphite collection includes twelve psalms, 50 and 73–83. The obvious question, begged by simple observation of the Psalter as it now stands, is why is Psalm 50, the “first” of the Asaphite Psalms, separated from the collection? As Shubert Spero puts it, “was Psalm 50 misplaced?” On the one hand, the answer appears to be “yes,” insofar as the superscription that unites Psalm 50 with Psalms 73–83 is to some degree disregarded; on the other hand, the answer is “no,” insofar as there is some agreement among scholars that Psalm 50 appears to be placed where it is in the Psalter to set brackets around the so-called second Davidic collection in the Psalter, Psalms 51–72.13 The question remains “why?” Psalm 50 does appear to be part of a larger redactional construction framing books 2 and 3 of the Psalter. Psalm 50 shows similarities to its

10. Mowinckel, Psalms in Israel’s Worship, Vol. 2, X:201. 11. Mowinckel, Psalms in Israel’s Worship, Vol. 2, X:95: “Ps. 81 is derived from the northern kingdom and can hardly be later than 722. . . . Pss. 74 and 79 were composed after the fall of Jerusalem in 587, whereas Pss 50 and 73 were composed somewhat later according to their theological attitude.” In sharp contrast to Mowinckel, Shubert Spero (“Was Psalm 50 Misplaced?,” Jewish Bible Quarterly 30, no. 1 [Winter 2002]: 31) sees Psalm 50 as the earliest and original to the actual Asaph, with the rest of the material written later by different authors. 12. Note that the Chronicler, while not employing one of the Asaphite Psalms (50, 73–83) in his additions to the story of David bringing the ark into Jerusalem, does mention Asaph, even giving him pride of place among the Levites (1 Chronicles 16). For a Northern tradition stream to find its way into the Chronicler’s narrative, and in a prominent way, suggests that the Asaphite Psalter and its school were not without influence. See Gunkel and Begrich, Introduction to the Psalms, 344. 13. Gunkel and Begrich, Introduction to the Psalms, 344.

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neighboring psalms,14 but several studies have suggested a more complex redactional agenda.15 Considering that the Asaphite Psalter as it now rests in the collection—divided—serves to bracket a larger “Davidic” corpus, the possibility that this larger grouping was edited by a Levitical group that self-identified as Asaphite is worth consideration.16 The collection of books 2 and 3 of the Psalter are organized by superscription as follows: Psalm 50

Asaph

Psalms 51–72 David17 Psalms 73–83 Asaph Psalms 84–85 Korahites Psalm 86

David

Psalms 87–88 Korahites Psalm 89

Ethan the Ezrahite

In the simplest sense, it may be observed that the Asaphite collection is divided, with its first psalm placed at some remove and in front of the second Davidic collection in the Psalter. The Asaphite Psalms thus form the covers within which the psalms of David are bound. But there is more at stake here. Psalm 50 is the first of the Psalms of Asaph (canonically). This psalm echoes the prophetic commitments to right relationship with God preferred over sacrifice or ritual observance, which is addressed in Psalm 50:12 -1518 and forms a bridge between the first Korah psalms (Psalms 42–49) and the second Davidic collection (Psalms 51–72).19 14. Richard J. Clifford, Psalms 1–72, Abingdon Old Testament Commentaries (Nashville: Abingdon, 2002), 243; Frank-Lothar Hossfeld and Erich Zenger, Psalms 2: A Commentary on Psalms 51–100, Hermeneia (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2005), 4; David C. Mitchell, The Message of the Psalter: An Eschatological Programme in the Book of Psalms, JSOTS 252 (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1997), 71; Jones, Psalms of Asaph, 136. 15. Spero, “Was Psalm 50 Misplaced?”; Mitchell, Message of the Psalter; Jones, Psalms of Asaph. 16. Hossfeld and Zenger, Psalms 2, 4: “The expansion of the exilic collection Psalms 52–68 to form the Davidic Psalter, Psalms 51–72, can be traced to the Asaphite theologians, whose proprium is first discernible in the ‘Asaph Psalms’ they created, Psalms 50, 73–83. . . . They are the most likely candidates when one searches for the beginnings of express ‘Davidizing’ of psalms.” 17. In the Masoretic Text, all but three of these psalms (66, 67, and 71) are attributed to David; furthermore, if one follows the Old Greek, only Psalm 66 is not Davidic. 18. It has been widely observed that there are prophetic tones in the Psalms of Asaph; see Peter C. Craigie, and Marvin E. Tate. Psalms 1-50. Word Biblical Commentary, vol. 19 (Nashville: Thomas Nelson, Inc., 2004), 364–65; Artur Weiser, The Psalms, Old Testament Library (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1962), 393–94; Goldingay (Psalms, 110) goes so far as to say, “If Ps. 50 came anywhere else, it would be one of the prophetic books.” 19. Clifford, Psalms 1–72, 243.

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Psalms 51–72: the majority of the “David Psalms,” with superscriptions placing them at some point in the life of David, are in this collection.20 These may trace the form of a kind of mnemohistory of the life of David. Psalms 73–83 make up the remainder of the Asaphite Psalms, with their emphasis on God’s action in Israel’s history, which is to be remembered in order both to shape and to understand the present. The Psalms of Asaph may be seen to exemplify the historical memory for the life of the nation, which the superscriptions of the Davidic psalms attempt for David’s life. While it does seem most likely that the psalm superscriptions are in many cases later additions to the poems proper, it is possible, perhaps even likely, that one of the latest redactional stages of these psalms grouped them together as a survey of Israelite history paired with the commemoration and valorization of the Davidic dynasty, a point to which the Asaphite Psalm 78 drives with vigor. The possibility of a Northern (Ephraimite/Asaphite) redaction is strongly implied by the content of the psalms, the Northern tendencies in the epithets for God, and the emphasis on story, history, and memory throughout the two books.21 One might suggest for this collection, then, a designation of an Asaphite as much as an Elohistic Psalter. The Compositional Structure of Psalms 73–83 Erich Zenger sees in the unified body of the Asaphite Psalms, 73–83, a “compositional arc,” which moves from community lament (Psalm 74) to divine declaration (Psalm 75) to “hymnic proclamation of the successful or hoped-for intervention of God” (Psalm 76). Zenger finds this arc repeated in Psalms 79–81.22 Christine Jones outlines a shifting understanding of God in the Asaphite material, with God as judge first of the wicked, then of the nation, and finally of the other divine beings. In the midst of this move20. The superscriptions read: 51 “when the prophet Nathan came to him, after he had gone in to Bathsheba”; 52 “when Doeg the Edomite came to Saul and said to him, ‘David has come to the house of Ahimelech’”; 54 “when the Ziphites went and told Saul, ‘David is in hiding among us’”; 56 “when the Philistines seized him in Gath”; 57 “when he fled from Saul, in the cave”; 59 “when Saul ordered his house to be watched in order to kill him”; 60 “when he struggled with Aram-naharaim and with Aram-zobah, and when Joab on his return killed twelve thousand Edomites in the Valley of Salt”; 63 “when he was in the Wilderness of Judah.” Outside of the eight here in Psalms 51–72, only Psalms 3, 18, 24, and 132 have such a superscription. 21. Hossfeld and Zenger, Psalms 2, 4–5. 22. Ibid., 250, 307.

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ment between God as judge, there is tension; God is judge, but God does not seem to be judging Israel’s enemies. Jones concludes: Judge is certainly a prominent role of God in the Asaphite collection as it both begins and ends with God in that role. . . . The reader of the Asaph collection gains the understanding that God alone is the righteous judge of all, a message communicated not only through the words of the psalms . . . but also through the overall message communicated. 23

And this message that runs through the Asaph collection is, at its core, mnemohistorical. From psalm to psalm in sequence, there is interplay based on the mnemohistorical record of these psalms.24 Psalm 73 starts the collection with a call to wisdom and blessing, which are found only in the sanctuaries of God (73:17). While this first psalm in the collection contains no explicit mnemohistorical referent, it struggles with the pressing theological question of why it appears that the wicked prosper while the faithful flag. The invitation of the psalm, its answer to this pressing question, is nearness to God in God’s holy places and in worship. Psalm 74 takes up the question of its predecessor as it laments the destruction of the meeting places of God (74:8). The saving acts of God in Israel’s past, as typified in the exodus, are then employed both as accusation against and confidence in God. Psalm 75 takes up this mnemohistorical theme, but not in accusation; the psalm sings thanks to God for the “wonders” God has done. It is as though the first psalms in the collection seek to move one between the disorientation/orientation extremes of human life—whether individual or national. The theological questions of “why” and “how long” are, it seems, answered in the presence of God and in mnemohistorical terms. Where Psalm 75 is relatively general in the praise of “wonders,” Psalm 76 gets explicit. The settling of Zion/Jerusalem is celebrated, and in figurative language the crossing of the Reed Sea is rehearsed (76:7-8). Psalm 77 takes up the recounting of “wonders” (77:12), articulating clearly the commemorative nature of worship in the Asaphite collection and at the same time yoking the redemptive acts of the exodus to 23. Jones, Psalms of Asaph, 150–51. 24. Cf. James Limburg, Psalms, Westminster Bible Companion (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox, 2000), 254–76.

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the creative acts of Yahweh’s victory over the waters (of both creation and exodus). The theological thrust of the collection encompasses not just the present moment but all of Israel’s (and the world’s) past, from creation to redemption. In Psalm 78, the mnemohistorical heart and soul of the collection, the wonders of God are enumerated and detailed. This recitation takes the worship agenda of Asaph and makes it the pedagogical imperative for generations to come. Psalm 79 entreats for separation of the present generation from the sins of past generations. Like Psalm 74, the destruction of God’s holy place, in this case the temple in Jerusalem, marks the occasion for recourse to the past. The psalm takes up the remembered past in figurative terms and begs God to have mercy on the “flock of your pasture.” In Psalm 80, it is again the flock imagery of the exodus that is employed and extended to the vine imagery of the exodus event. God is asked, in mnemohistorical terms, to restore Israel so that the people might call on God’s name once more. Psalm 81 returns to the theme of worship shaped by the statues and ordinances of God (Ps 78:5) and marks the new and full moon festal days by and around memory. Psalms 82 and 83 round out the Asaphite collection by building on the interplay of historical memory, worship, and theological education that have driven the collection. The closing psalms introduce (or at least endorse) a radical monotheism (82:6–7), asking God to show God’s singular greatness among the nations (83:19) by setting it within the context of the remembered past (83:10–18). The formation of the collection as a whole adds to the sense of the historical weight of the content of these psalms. Not only is mnemohistory the single most significant feature of almost all of these psalms individually, but it may be seen at work in a sort of ebb and flow of history and memory for the community with its past, for the individual with and within the community, and for God with God’s people. Taken together as the collection now stands, the interplay of recourse to the past between the verses and lines of adjacent poems works to move the reader/listener along through each successive psalm and along with the worshipping community. There can be little doubt that the collection works as a collection, each psalm in tandem with the next (and/ or previous) and in tandem with the reader/listener’s appropriation of the remembered past.

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The Cultic Sitz im Leben and the Historical Referents In his study of memory and tradition in the Hebrew Bible, Brevard Childs traced the occurrences of the phrase “God remembers” and attributed that phrase specifically to a cultic setting for memory.25 Turning to the parallel phrase “Israel remembers,” Childs concludes that in that usage, the verb had no roots in one specific area of Israel’s life, but arose out of the general sphere of human psychological behavior. In this general sense it was employed widely throughout all phases of Israel’s life. 26

For Childs, the setting of Israel’s collective remembrances is not at all cultic. The problem with Childs’s conclusion is that it simply misses the arch of the historical referents in the Psalms of Asaph. Mowinckel, on the other hand, argues that “the set formality of the psalms can only be explained on the basis they are not primarily meant to be personal effusions, but are, in accordance with their type and origin, ritual lyrics.”27 The cultic setting of these psalms is evident not only by reason of their attribution to a Levitical guild of singers but also by reason of the clear cultic language evident within them. The Place of History in the Cultus The cultic interpretation of the Asaphite Psalms and the role of mnemohistory in the cultus is an obvious and essential piece of the puzzle. While still not a prevalent feature of many studies, this relationship has been explored in some detail by Diedrik Nelson. In his 1964 dissertation, Nelson addresses the relationship between the historical psalms and the cultus.28 Nelson deals only with the five so-called historical psalms, 78, 105, 106, 135, and 136. Nelson takes as his focus two statements that he labels typical of scholarship: first, that the tradition of Israel’s early history was developed, preserved, and passed on primarily in cultic channels; second, that the primary function of 25. Brevard S. Childs, Memory and Tradition in Israel, Studies in Biblical Theology 37 (London: SCM Press, 1962) 31–44. 26. Ibid., 74. Ironically Childs uses language in his chapter entitled “Memory and History” that states unequivocally that it is precisely in the cultus that Israel’s history is “actualized” (ibid., 82). The contradiction is confusing. 27. Mowinckel, Psalms in Israel’s Worship, Vol. 2, X:31. 28. Diedrik A. Nelson, Cult and History: A Study of the Historical Psalms (ThD diss., Union Theological Seminary, Richmond, VA, 1964).

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the cult was the presentation of history. Nelson proceeds to argue that these assumptions are false. His conclusion is that history is not a primary concern of the cult and ought not to have an undue place in any understanding of the purpose and interests of the cult. Nelson is probably correct in stating that it is inappropriate to identify historiography as “the primary function” of the cult.29 However, his premise is flawed on two counts: first, in speaking of “the” cult; second, in stressing a “primary” function of the cult. To speak of “the” cult supposedly reflected in the Hebrew Bible is problematic because of the diverse sacral sites, liturgical occasions, and personnel actively engaged in cultic activities that are attested, particularly in Asaph. There was not one cult in ancient Israel and Judah, either when centralization was initially attempted under David and Solomon or even after the reforms of Hezekiah and Josiah made the move more strongly; there were many sites. Furthermore, no claim of absolute preeminence or pride of place is necessary for one to observe in the cultic usage of historical referents a significant element of cultic activity. This is particularly true of the psalms of Asaph. These psalms make explicit reference to cultic activities in general and in direct connection with the historical material in several places, including the lamentation over the loss of cultic prophets (Ps 74:9), the making and performance of vows—an explicitly worship-related, cult-centered activity—in response to God’s indwelling at Zion (Ps 76:12 ), and the call to worship on specific festival days, “the new moon, the full moon, our festal day,” in response to the decree to remember the exodus (Ps 81:1–4). As Hermann Gunkel concluded: The question of the purpose of the individual collections is easy to answer for the Korahite and Asaph psalter. It is apparent that the songbooks of the temple singers guilds were compiled for and determined by temple service.30

And in the case of Asaph, this particular songbook was compiled and determined in large part around the mnemohistorical material.

29. Indeed, of the five historical psalms, Nelson concludes that there is no evidence in any of them that requires one to assume them to be primarily cultic psalms. 30. Gunkel and Begrich, Introduction to the Psalms, 344.

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Cultic Language and the Historical Referent The psalms are worship material (most frequently), and so by simple dint of the presence of historical material, history has some part to play in the cult. Further, Mowinckel sees in the technical terms associated with two Asaphite Psalms clear indication of cultic use. Psalm 78 is called a ‫ מׂשכיל‬, which Mowinckel takes to mean “insight.”31 “A maskîl thus probably indicates the cultic poem as the outcome of a supra-normal ‘wisdom’ and ‘insight.’” Psalm 77, called ‫על־ידותון‬, is taken to be a cultic psalm having to do with confession.32 ‫על־ידותון‬, misunderstood by the Chronicler to be a personal name—Jeduthun—is probably a technical term as well, related to the root word ‫ידה‬. This technical term, then, suggests not authorship but intent, and ‫ ידה‬has to do with praise. Psalm 77, while not a praise psalm—it is rather an individual’s complaint—employs the mnemohistorical material as the bulk of its text. The psalm ends rather abruptly, leaving no conclusive statement or culminating expression of trust. What the complaint ‫ על־ידותון‬may do is indicate the manner in which the psalmist and the reader/ listener/ worshipper may yet express faith in God, hope in God, trust in God, in the one way possible in the face of days of trouble, that is, in complaint summarized by the disconnect between present reality and the remembered past. Indications such as the above support the idea that these psalms, with their particular interest in historical memory, are indeed cultic. The Asaphite material is essentially connected to the cultus as well. As has already been shown, the Asaphite corpus has a great deal to say about worship sites: what they are called, what is to take place there, establishing the theological significance of God’s presence at cultic sites, and so on. One other concrete example, an exemplar of the cultic historiography, will suffice. Psalm 81 is a liturgical psalm that defines the festal activity as essentially mnemohistorical. Frank-Lothar Hossfeld goes so far as to say that Psalm 81:5 “founds the cultic rule on tradition.”33 That is to say, Psalm 81:5 not only establishes the divine decree but makes sure the connection between the cult and history. In his definition of “cult,” Mowinckel says that the cult is where a particular system—rites, ceremonies, content—is observed.34 In the case of Asaph, that particular 31. Mowinckel, Psalms in Israel’s Worship, Vol. 2, X:209. 32. Ibid., Vol. 2, X:213. 33. Hossfeld and Zenger, Psalms 2, 323.

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system is defined by the mnemohistorical material.35 For Psalm 81, because of Psalm 81, history has an important role in the cultus, as it is related in and to the Asaphite tradition. Childs is correct in his critique of Mowinckel’s characterization of the cultus as primarily mythic in nature. As Childs observes, a distinctive element of the Israelite cultus against the backdrop of other ancient Near Eastern cultures is its additional focus on the historic. The cultus of the Asaphites is rooted in history—in the commemoration of events that are not cyclical or repeatable (as in the cycles of the seasons) but that must be reexperienced, reiterated, and remembered in order to be participated in and actualized in the present congregation.36 Asaph among the Levitical Guilds As I noted already, Asaph is not the only Levitical singer to have psalms named for him. Alongside Asaph, the Levitical groups that have psalms attributed to them in the Psalter are the Korahites (Psalms 42, 44–49, 84–85, 87–88) and the so-called Merarites, usually including Ethan (Psalm 89), Heman (Psalm 88), and the misnomer “Jeduthun” (Psalms 39, 62, 77). In addition, Psalms 105, 106, 135, and 136, none of which bear a superscription but all of which contain significant historical reflection in liturgical form, are relevant as well. Comparison first of representation outside the Psalter and then of both content and function within the Psalter shows that the Asaphite material is markedly different from the other Levitical material in the Psalter. Asaph in 1 Chronicles While it may seem fitting to begin with a close evaluation of the Levitical genealogies and the comparative lineages of the various guilds, this 34. Mowinckel, Psalms in Israel’s Worship, Vol. 2, X:31. 35. Exactly what happened at each of the major agricultural festivals, and what theological or socioreligious emphases were observed—whether covenant renewal at Sukkot, reenactment of the enthronement of Yahweh at the New Year, thanksgiving and/or thanks offering at another, as Mowinckel notes, “the picture which the priestly source gives us of the cult is both one-sided and fragmentary. . . . We hear practically nothing about the part played by the congregation. . . . Nor do they say anything about the words which belonged to the cult, the prayers which were prayed, and the psalms which were sung.” Ibid., 35. 36. Childs, Memory and Tradition, 82. At this point, Assmann may oversimplify the differentiation between cyclical (mythical) and historical time. His claim that “mythical time is a time of becoming, while historical time is seen as the continuation of what has already happened” (Assmann, “Guilt and Remembrance,” 9–10) is overly simplistic.

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work has been outlined thoroughly by both Nasuti and Goulder and need not be repeated here.37 Further, I am chiefly interested here not in the genealogical place of Asaph within the Levitical lines but with the particular role that is assigned the Asaphites and the characterization of Asaphite psalmody in the later tradition. The name “Asaph” or “Asaphites” (literally “sons of Asaph”) occurs in some twenty places in the Hebrew Bible, not counting some parallel or duplicate passages and not including the twelve psalms attributed to Asaph. These occurrences include references to Asaph himself (1 Chr 6:31–43; 15:17–19; 16:5, 7, 37 ; 25:2, 6; 2 Chr 5:12; 29:30; 35:15; Neh 12:46), references to specific “sons of Asaph” (1 Chr 9:14–16 / / Neh 11:17; 1 Chr 25:1–2, 7–12; 2 Chr 20:13–17; 29:12–19 ; Neh 11:22–23; 12:31–35), references to the Asaphites in general (1 Chr 25:1–6; 2 Chr 5:11–13; 35:15; Ezra 2:41 / / Neh 7:44; Ezra 3:10–13), and sometimes to two of the three (note the repeated references above).38 There are also three references to Asaph in the apocryphal book 1 Esdras (1:15; 5:27, 29). This collection of varied references—to the individual, to individuals, and to the group—provides a healthy cross-section of the role that Asaph and/or the Asaphites were understood to have had by the time of the Chronicler’s writing. Mention of the individual Asaph, the figure standing at the head of the Asaphite tradition, is found in eight places in Chronicles-Nehemiah and once in 1 Esdras. One of the more striking features of the tradition around Asaph here is the pride of place that he is accorded alongside David. Asaph stands not as an obscure Levitical singer but as a figure worthy of mention in the same breath with Israel’s paradigm of kingship and servanthood before Yahweh. This occurs in two places. First, in the account of Hezekiah’s reform, Asaph is remembered in the king’s decree: “King Hezekiah and the officials commanded the Levites to sing praises to the Lord with the words of David and of the seer Asaph” (2 Chr 29:30). The Levites are to sing their praises with a specific song (or perhaps style of song) that is “with the words” not just of David but of Asaph as well. Similarly, in Nehemiah (12:46), following the dedication of the newly rebuilt Jerusalem wall, the memory is presented of times 37. See Nasuti, Tradition History, 161–91; Goulder, Psalms of Asaph, 312–27. 38. There are, in addition, several other references to an “Asaph” not noted here. One is a set of references to an individual in Hezekiah’s court, in 2 Kgs 18:18, 37, and Isa 36:3, 22, which will be addressed below. A second reference is to a postexilic court official, Neh 2:8. Lastly is the apparent reference in 1 Chr 26:1, naming Meshelemiah a son both of Korah and of Asaph, an unlikely Levitical hybrid; this is probably a lexical error, and it seems best to follow the Old Greek and read υἱοὶ Κορεΐμ Μοσελλεμία υἱὸς Κωρὴ ἐκ τῶν υἱῶν ᾿Ασάφ (of the Korahites, Meshelemiah son of Kore, son of Abiasaph).

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past when there was a leader of the Levitical singers and the singing of praise and thanksgiving to the Lord; these times are described as “the days of David and Asaph.”39 Praise and instruction are given with the words of David and of the seer Asaph, and in the days of David and Asaph. The place that is attributed to Asaph here is significant.40 Asaph stands alongside David (himself remembered as a great musician and composer of psalms) as the chief singer. This pride of place afforded to Asaph is also remembered as instituted by David himself. When the ark is brought to Jerusalem (1 Chronicles 15–16), certain Levites are appointed “as ministers before the ark of the Lord.”41 Most telling is 1 Chronicles 16:7, “Then on that day David first appointed the singing of praises to the Lord by Asaph and his kindred.” The appointment to the ark and to praise of the Lord is of Asaph and Asaph’s brethren. No other specific Levitical guilds are mentioned.42 One notes further that in 1 Chronicles 25:1 it is Asaph who comes first, “David and the officers of the army also set apart for the service the sons of Asaph, and of Heman, and of Jeduthun.” And finally, when lots are cast for the duties of the respective sons of Asaph, Heman, and Jeduthun, it is an Asaphite who falls in first place (Joseph); what’s more, of the twenty-four lots that are cast, all four of the sons of Asaph fall in the “top seven.”43 Asaph is represented as the chief of the Levitical singers and is explicitly called ‫( הראׁש‬the chief; 1 Chr 16:5).44 To be sure, there are points in the Chronicles account where Asaph does not seem to be preeminent or “chief” of the Levitical singers. In 1 39. The Old Greek represents a slightly different version of the text here, ὅτι ἐν ἡμέραις Δαυὶδ ᾿Ασὰφ ἀπ ἀρχῆς πρῶτος τῶν ἆδόντων καὶ ὕμνον καὶ αἴνεσιν τῷ Θεῷ (For in the days of David, Asaph was originally chief of the singers, and there were hymns and praise of God); there is certainly a difference here, but the position of Asaph is still represented as significant. 40. See also the parallel passages 2 Chr 35:15: “The singers, the descendants of Asaph, were in their place according to the command of David, and Asaph, and Heman, and the king's seer Jeduthun.”; and 1 Esd 1:15 “The temple singers, the sons of Asaph, were in their place according to the arrangement made by David, and also Asaph, Zechariah, and Eddinus, who represented the king.” 41. There is also an interesting parallel to this in Sirach, in the “Hymn to the Ancestors,” 47:9: “He [David] placed psalm-singers before the altar, to make sweet melody with their voices.” While Asaph is not mentioned specifically, the general appointing of singers reflects the same tradition of David’s appointment of cultic officials; in the Greek the same word is used here as in 2 Chr 5:12, ψαλτῳδοὶ (psalm-singer), an intriguing connection. It is noteworthy that the parallel passage in 2 Samuel 6 makes no specific references at all to an appointment of ministers before the ark. This is one of the points at which the Chronicler seems to be moving well beyond his Vorlage. 42. The term here is ‫( אחיו‬brethren), not ‫( בני‬sons), which would seem to suggest the primacy or preference for Asaph and not the exclusion of the others families. For similar usage of “brethren,” see 1 Chr 6:24, 44, 48; 9:13, 17, 19, 25, 32; 15:17. 43. For an analysis of the lot-casting and its role, see Ralph W. Klein, 1 Chronicles, Hermeneia (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2006), 478. 44. Steven L. McKenzie. 1–2 Chronicles, Abingdon Old Testament Commentaries (Nashville: Abingdon, 2004), 147. As Martin Brenner (Song of the Sea, 182) notes, the Asaphites are also “chief” in 2 Chronicles 5, 1 Chronicles 20, and Nehemiah 11:17.

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Chronicles 6:18–33, it is the descendants of Kohath, Levi’s secondborn, who come first, while the Gershomites (the line of Asaph) come second. Again in 1 Chronicles 15:17 and 19, Heman is listed ahead of Asaph.45 It also may be observed that in 1 Chronicles 6:18, Heman is called “the singer” while his cousin Asaph is said to stand “on his right.” Regardless, however the appointments may have originally fallen out, it is Asaph alone who is remembered in the same breath as David. And as Asaph is seen to be appointed by David to high office, it may be construed from this appointment that, at least according to Chronicles, the Asaphite role is the one primarily sanctioned by the king. The memory of this appointment, therefore, serves to legitimate the Asaphite role, influence, and place in the worship life of returned Israel. We can take from these two passages two further insights into the nature of the Asaphite school. The first stands in implicit agreement with the Asaphite Psalter, while the second represents the Asaphite traditum in a somewhat different form-critical direction. First, in 2 Chronicles 29:30 Asaph is called ‫( החזה‬the seer). And in 1 Chronicles 25:1: “David and the officers of the army also set apart for the service the sons of Asaph, and of Heman, and of Jeduthun, who should prophesy with lyres, harps, and cymbals.” The title “seer” should tell us something about the nature of the Asaphite content. At the same time, it should be noted that the title of “seer” and the activity of prophesying are not unique to the tradition around Asaph. In the above passage, the office or characterization of seer or prophet is shared by Heman, Jeduthun, and their descendants. And in 1 Chronicles 25:5, Heman is called “the king’s seer.”46 This prophetic identity, shared by all three branches of Levitical singers in Chronicles, is not, however, reflected in the psalms that bear their respective names, at least in two cases. Psalm 88, in the midst of an overwhelming superscription, is described as ‫( להימן מׂשכיל‬a maskil of Heman). This psalm is a classic example of the prayer of complaint, containing nothing of the prophetic. And in none of Psalms 39, 62, or 77, all inaccurately attributed to a Jeduthun, can prophetic elements be found. The same is not true for the psalms attributed to Asaph. Each of Psalms 50, 75, 81, and 83 contain clearly prophetic elements.47 This is not necessarily to sug45. 1 Chr 15:17: “So the Levites appointed Heman son of Joel; and of his kindred Asaph son of Berechiah; and of the sons of Merari, their kindred, Ethan son of Kushaiah.” See Nasuti, Tradition History, 186. For a slightly fuller exploration of this issue, see Goulder, Psalms of Asaph, 321–22. 46. Klein (1 Chronicles, 477) suggests that verse 5 is an insertion by the editor, but his reasoning is unclear. 47. So McKenzie, 1–2 Chronicles, 54: “Uniquely in Chronicles, a prophetic role is ascribed to the Levit-

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gest that the Chronicler is incorrect in assigning a common characteristic to each of these Levitical lines. It may well be that the tradition of Heman, at least, and perhaps even of Jeduthun (whomever this “name” may actually refer to) contains some historical kernel and is not a fabrication. What is clear, however, is that the Asaphite Psalms provide support for the Chronicler’s mnemohistorical reflection on this particular facet of its role/function, while the others do not. Apropos at this point is a comparison of the Asaphite cultic historiography and the psalms attributed to other Levitical families or guilds, with an eye to identifying what is distinctive about the Asaphite Psalter. The Korahites Although the psalms attributed to the Sons of Korah share some general similarities with the Asaphite material—both are attributed to Levitical guilds, both employ the appellation ‫( אלהי יעקב‬God of Jacob; in the Korahite Pss 46:8, 12; 84:9), and both share proximity within the overall redactional picture of the second and third books in the Psalter—the similarities end there. Nowhere in any of the Korahite Psalms is there explicit mention of the exodus; even the uses of ‫( פלא‬wonder; Pss 40:6; 86:10; 88:11, 13; 89:6) are so far removed from the exodus that an implicit connection can only tentatively be maintained. What we have here is perhaps best characterized as the step beyond the resolution of the mnemohistorical referent to symbol. For Korah, the language once associated with the exodus has become so removed from its antecedent that the word’s power is no longer tied intimately and always to that event. Finally, for the Korahite psalms, “wonders” are not necessarily the plagues wrought in Egypt but simply the wondrous way in which God works. As will be demonstrated in greater detail in chapter 6, in a comparison of the vocabulary of memory in the Korahite Psalms and the Psalms of Asaph, only Psalm 44 bears any significant volume of memory-language that can be tied to a historical referent; in this it is closest to the Asaphite material. But there remain significant distinctions and ical singers (1 Chr 25; 2 Chr 20; 29; 34:30; 35:15).” What McKenzie fails to mention is that unique among the psalms attributed to specific Levitical singers is the attribution of a prophetic role to the Asaphites. See also the treatment of the prophetic elements in the Asaphite Psalter in Delitzsch, Biblical Commentary on the Psalms, 142 Nasuti, Tradition History, 127–36; Goulder, Psalms of Asaph, 19–22; and of particular value in terms of rhetorical function, see R. Jacobson, Many Are Saying, 92–93.

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differences. Psalm 44 does not make use of the base word for memory in the Hebrew Bible, ‫( זכר‬remember); remembering is not the goal of the psalm. Nor does Psalm 44 speak of wonders (‫[ נפלאותיו אׁשר עׂשה‬the wonders he has done]; Ps 78:4), but instead of deeds that God has performed (‫[ פעל פעלת‬deed you have done]). And while Psalm 44:21 does claim innocence regarding the presence of any “strange God” (‫ ;אל זר‬a prohibition made in Ps 81:10: ‫[ לא־יהי בך אל זר‬there shall be no strange god among you]), in Psalm 81 that prohibition is justified and buttressed by the mnemohistorical referent of the exodus, while in Psalm 44 it is not tied explicitly to any reason—historical or otherwise. Another point of comparison comes in the use of the word ‫ מׁשל‬in both the Korahite Psalm 49 and the Asaphite Psalm 78. A ‫ מׁשל‬is a “parable,” a wisdom feature. Both Psalms 49 and 78 use the word, but the way the word is used is different, both syntactically and in terms of content. In Psalm 49:5 the psalmist declares, ‫( אטה למׁשל אזני‬I will incline my ear to a parable). In Psalm 78:2 the psalmist declares, ‫אפתחה‬ ‫( במׁשל פי‬I will open my mouth in a parable). The relationship of the psalmist, the reader/listener of the psalm, and the parable are different. In Psalm 78 the parable is the psalm itself; the psalm bears its meaning in the form of wisdom, which is the mnemohistory of Israel. Here the psalmist is the instructor/purveyor of wisdom. In Psalm 49 it is wisdom that is attended to; the psalm directs one to reflective wisdom. Here the psalmist is student/partaker of wisdom. Another key difference is the content of the parable. In Psalm 49 that content seems to be the standard stuff of wisdom literature; the fate of the wise and the fool are compared, and from that comparison the psalmist learns. In Psalm 78 that content is the mnemohistorical material; the remembered story of God’s dealings with Israel in the past is served up for memory, and through it the psalmist teaches not wisdom but Davidic theology. While both psalms employ the ‫ מׁשל‬and both are exhortations in poetic form, the ‫ מׁשל‬of Psalm 49 does not contain narrative, while the ‫ מׁשל‬of Psalm 78 does. The only historical referent in the Korahite collection is to the settlement (Ps 44:3–4). Here the references to planting and the use of hand/ arm language as representative of God’s power seem distant from the Asaphite material. In comparison to the Korahite Psalter, the Asaphite corpus is distinctive in its primary feature, that is, in its particular use of the vocabulary of memory, calling to recollection the historiography of the cultus—in particular the exodus tradition.

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The Merarites The “Merarites” are the putative descendants of Merari, descending from Levi. Altogether, five psalms seem to belong to this tradition. Jeduthun, Psalms 39, 62, 77 “Jeduthun” as a personal name is difficult to maintain (see p. 57). Each of these psalms is attributed to another named “author”; David in the case of Psalms 39 and 62, and Asaph in Psalm 77. Furthermore, the use of the preposition ‫( על‬on/upon) in Psalms 62 and 77 does not necessarily work in the same way ‫( ל‬to) seems to in the superscriptions. John Goldingay concludes that ‫“ על‬suggests a way of singing associated with Jeduthun,”48 but the suggestion is unconvincing. In the psalm superscriptions, ‫ על‬generally has to do with the tune or instrumentation to which the psalm is to be performed. Finally, even if one were to accept Jeduthun as a Merarite psalmist, the differences still remain. Neither Psalm 39 nor Psalm 62 make any reference to the exodus or to historical matters of any kind. Even the use of simple metaphors is different, God is like a moth (Ps 39:12), not a shepherd (Ps 80:2), a warrior (Ps 78:65), or a judge (Ps 75:3, 8). Heman, Psalm 88 Psalm 88, attributed to Heman, is also a Korahite psalm. There is no need to reiterate the lack of comparative historical memories on this front. However, there is one point of comparison worth mentioning. Like Psalm 77, this psalm begins with complaint probably due to illness. But unlike Psalm 77, this psalm does not turn to the mnemohistory of Israel’s sacred history to find an answer to suffering and despair. Here there seems to be little, if any, hope. Perhaps had the psalmist been able to make the move to the remembered past, some cause to trust might have been found, but this is not the case. Ethan, Psalm 89 Finally, in Psalm 89, there are several comparisons to the Asaphite collection that are worth noting. The God of Psalm 89 is, like the God of 48. Goldingay, Psalms, 245.

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the Asaphites, ‫( יהוה אלהי צבאות‬Yahweh, God of Hosts; Ps 89:9). And like Psalm 82, this psalm uses the divine assembly—‫( בבני אלים‬among the sons of god)—to address the incomparability of God (Ps 89:7). The God who makes covenant with David is the God whose mighty arm (‫בזרוע‬ [with a mighty arm]; Ps 89:11, cf. v. 14) crushed Rahab in a cosmogonic theological image. In the end, though, it is David who drives this psalm. The psalm begins with the Davidic covenant (vv. 4–5) and ends with the call to remember that covenant (vv. 50–52). While certain elements are shared with the Asaphite material (it is indeed typical to see the correlations with the psalms of both Asaph and the Korahites49), the distinctive elements of the Asaphite collection remain. In comparison to the other Levitical guilds, the distinctiveness of the Asaphite collection stands out. It is mnemohistory that, both explicitly and implicitly, calls to mind the exodus that is at the heart of Asaph, with an eye to directly addressing a present situation or need. Other Minor “Collections” Psalms 105, 106 Both Psalms 105 and 106 deal extensively with Israel’s history. Stylistically, Psalm 106 compares more favorably to the Asaphite material, both in tone and function. Psalm 105 is what one might have expected an Asaphite song of thanksgiving to sound like, praising God for, in, and with the mnemohistorical record. Psalms 105 opens with a call to thanksgiving and to “remember [God’s] wonders” (‫ ;זכרו נפלאותיו‬v. 5). The bulk of the psalm, verses 23–45, is the recital of the exodus. While Psalm 105 shares the basic elements of Psalm 78’s mnemohistorical recital, there are several key differences. First, formally, Psalm 105 is a hymn of praise, while Psalm 78 is a didactic psalm; by definition and in practice the tone is different. Second, Psalm 78 begins its recital by referencing the Ephraimites. Psalm 105 begins by setting the stage in a manner much closer to the Pentateuchal narrative: there is famine in the land (Ps 105:16), Joseph is sent ahead of the Israelites (v. 17), Joseph does well in Egypt (v. 20–22), and the arrival of “Jacob” in Egypt (vv. 23–25) rounds out the introduction. In this sense, Psalm 105 is smoother, better developed “narra49. Hossfeld and Zenger, Psalms 2, 404–5.

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tively” than Psalm 78. A final difference is in the enumeration of the signs and wonders between the two psalms. Comparing the wonders catalogued in Psalm 78 with those in both Exodus and Psalm 105 is instructive: Psalm 78

Exodus 7–12

Psalm 105

1. rivers to blood (44)

1. rivers to blood (7:14–25)

1. darkness (28)

2. flies (45)

2. frogs (7:26–8:11)

2. waters to blood (29)

3. frogs (45)

3. gnats (8:12–15)

3. frogs (30)

4. caterpillars (46)

4. flies (8:16–28)

4. flies (31)

5. locusts (46)

5. death of cattle (9:1–7)

5. hail, lightning (32)

6. hail, frost, and lightning; crops and cattle (47–49)

6. boils (9:8–12)

6. Vines/trees struck (33)

7. death of the firstborn.(51)

7. hail (9:13–35)

7. locusts (34)

8.locusts (10:1–20)

8. death of the firstborn.(36)

9. darkness (10:21–29) 10. death of the firstborn (11:1–12:36)

The differences in the plague accounts in Psalms 78 and 105 suggest that the mnemohistorical framework is not rigid. Both the number of signs and the order vary. One final, but significant difference in Psalm 105 is its ending. It would seem that the observance of divine decree is informed in Psalm 105 by the mnemohistorical recitation, while in Psalm 78 (and, for that matter, Psalm 81 as well) it is the divine decree that informs the recitation of the mnemohistory. For the hymn of praise, the reasons for obedience are laid out in terms of the remembered past. For the didactic psalm, the decree is the reason for the recitation. Psalm 106 does much the same thing as Psalm 78 and, in a way, does so much more plainly. Psalm 106 begins with a call to thanks and praise in verses 1–3. The body of the psalm, verses 8–46, is the recital of Israel’s history: the exodus (Ps 106:9–12), the testing and idolatry in the wilderness (Ps 106:16–23), the failure to “clear” the promised land of “foreign” peoples (Ps 106:34–39), and so on. As with Psalm 78, this historical recitation is set within the framework of memory; however,

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in this case it is not so much a call not to forget (Ps 78:7) as it is the reality of the results of forgetting: “But they soon forgot [God’s] works.” “They forgot God, their Savior who had done great things in Egypt” (Ps 106:13, 21). Israel’s sinfulness is precisely its forgetfulness; the results of which are that the Lord “gives them into the hands of the nations” (Ps 106:41). Psalm 78 employs this material to a different end, namely the theological legitimation of the house of David. Here again, as with Psalm 78, the use of pronouns is striking. Both before the lengthy historical recitation in Psalm 106:4–7 and after it in verse 47, the relationship between what is remembered and who is remembering is salient: Remember me, O LORD, when you show favor to your people; help me when you deliver them; that I may see the prosperity of your chosen ones, that I may rejoice in the gladness of your nation, that I may glory in your heritage. Both we and our ancestors have sinned; we have committed iniquity, have done wickedly. Our ancestors, when they were in Egypt, did not consider your wonderful works; They did not remember the abundance of your steadfast love, but rebelled against the Most High at the Red Sea. Save us, O LORD our God, and gather us from among the nations, that we may give thanks to your holy name and glory in your praise. (Ps 106:4–7, 47)

The psalm has the marks of an individual giving thanks and inviting others to join her. “Remember me . . . help me . . . that I may rejoice in gladness.” But the praying individual also attaches herself to the fate of the nation as a whole: remember me “when you show favor to your people . . . when you deliver them” (presumably from exile or diaspora). In fact, this connection of the individual praying with the nation is taken to the extreme when the psalmist says, “Both we and our ancestors have sinned; we have committed iniquity, have done wickedly.” What is significant here is that neither the sins of the individual nor of the “present” people are specified. Often in the psalm of thanksgiving, when sin and forgiveness are at issue, the individual’s sin is acknowledged. Take Psalm 32 as an example. The psalmist writes: While I kept silence, my body wasted away through my groaning all day long.

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MEMORIES OF ASAPH

For day and night your hand was heavy upon me; my strength was dried up as by the heat of summer. Selah Then I acknowledged my sin to you, and I did not hide my iniquity; I said, “I will confess my transgressions to the LORD,” and you forgave the guilt of my sin. (Ps 32:3–5)

Here the psalmist’s sin has been his refusal to confess his sins. The confession of sin in Psalm 106 is remarkably general. The implication of the pronominal connections and this tacit confession is that the sin of both the individual and the people is exactly the same as that of the ancestors—the sin of forgetting, forgetting what God has done: God’s works (Ps 106:9–11), God’s life-giving counsel (Ps 106:12–13), and God’s salvation of God’s people (Ps 106:22–23). The confession that like the ancestors we have sinned and done wickedly (read: forgotten God) leads then into the body of the psalm and its remembered history. The antidote to forgetting, to the sin of which “both we and our ancestors” are guilty, is remembering—recounting the story of God’s wondrous works, remembering God’s words and counsels. Remembered history becomes the “connective tissue” between the individual and the people as a whole—both in terms of sin and the prayer for deliverance that, in the final verses of the psalm, is unified and corporate prayer: Save us, O LORD our God, and gather us from among the nations, that we may give thanks to your holy name and glory in your praise. Blessed be the LORD, the God of Israel, from everlasting to everlasting. And let all the people say, “Amen.” Praise the LORD! (Ps 106:47–48)

There can be no question that Psalms 105 and 106 form a tradition stream parallel to the Asaphite material. In fact, it is possible that, given the similarities in content and even more so the function to which that content is put, Psalms 105 and 106 are later expressions of the Asaphite guild, a point reinforced by the Chronicler in 1 Chronicles 16. Psalms 135, 136 The last of the so-called “historical psalms,” Psalms 135 and 136 display 68

MNEMOHISTORY AND THE ASAPHITE CORPUS

an application of the historical material that stands at something of a remove from the Asaphite Psalter. Psalm 135 is a psalm of praise that calls the congregation to worship, to remember, and to celebrate the historical record of Israel’s God. The psalm introduces successive divine action in nature and history by declaring, For I know that Yahweh is great, our Lord is greater than all gods. (Ps 135:5)

For our purposes, the key comparative piece is the explicit reference to the exodus in verses 8–9: He struck down the firstborn of Egypt, both human and animal. He sent signs and wonders into your midst, O Egypt, against Pharaoh and all his servants.

The psalm says nothing else about the exodus; these two verse are all there is. The death of the firstborn, the climactic “wonder,” is the extent of the mnemohistorical referent here. This is a spare memory, reduced to just a few details. This is essentially a metonymy, where “firstborn” and “signs and wonders” represent the whole of the exodus event. The function here is striking and not altogether different from similar metonymies in the Asaphite material. It suggests a well-developed understanding of the range of metaphor and employs the mnemohistory in just such a manner. Psalm 136 is largely the same as Psalm 135 in terms of the historical events and figures remembered; these are reset in a rigid liturgical form in which the second colon of each verse repeats an antiphonal response to a historical/theological statement. Give thanks to the Lord of lords, for his steadfast love endures forever who alone does great wonders, for his steadfast love endures forever; who struck Egypt in their firstborn, for his steadfast love endures forever; and brought out Israel from among them, for his steadfast love endures forever; (Ps 136:3–4, 10–11)

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The difference in Psalm 136 is that the exodus story gets more attention. In addition to the death of the firstborn, the division of the Reed Sea into parts, ‫( לגזר ים־סוף לגזרים‬v. 13), is lauded, as is God’s action with a “strong hand and an outstretched arm” (‫ ;ביד חזקה ובזרוע נטויה‬v. 12) a more well developed expression of ‫זרוע‬. This again is metonymy, wherein the power of God to deliver has become stock terminology or expression used when describing the exodus event and applying it to a new setting. Other Occurrences of a Resolved Mnemohistorical Reference In four other places outside the Asaphite collection, some part of the exodus story is employed to some purpose. Psalm 66:5–6 In Psalm 66 (vv. 5–6), an individual psalm of thanksgiving, the exodus is employed as the reason for praising God before all the earth: Come and see the wonders of God, his awesome deeds among mortals. He turned the sea to dry land, they passed through on foot. There we rejoiced in him.

This is parallel to the resultant invitation to “Come and hear . . . I will tell what God has done for me” (v. 16). The reference is used in a manner similar to that of Asaph. In Psalm 75, Asaph’s communal thanksgiving, the reference to the exodus is more symbolic, relying entirely on the “wonders” language in verse 2. Another suggestive parallel is with the individual complaint psalm in Asaph, Psalm 77. In both psalms, the individual makes recourse to the remembered past and applies it to the present. In both psalms, the individual appropriates the community’s shared past and applies it to their individual Sitz im Leben. The difference is in the purpose. In Psalm 66, the opening of the psalm is an invitation to joyful praise, the reason for which is the psalmist’s personal deliverance: Make a joyful noise to God all the earth, sing the glory of his name, give him glorious praise! Say to God, “How awesome are your deeds!

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MNEMOHISTORY AND THE ASAPHITE CORPUS

so great is your power. Blessed be God who has not rejected my prayer, or removed his steadfast love from me. (Ps 66:1–3, 20)

In Psalm 77, the opening of the psalm is the individual’s cry, which turns to the remembered past and ends there, almost plaintively: I cry aloud to God, aloud to God, that he might hear me. In the day of my trouble I seek the Lord. I will meditate on all your work, and muse on your mighty deeds. You led your people like a flock by the hand of Moses and Aaron. (Ps 77: 2–3a, 13, 21)

The use of the mnemohistorical material, while similar in scope, is markedly different in application. Psalm 66, in the manner typical of extra-Asaphite use of the exodus referent, does so in praise and thanks for God’s present action in terms of God’s past action, while Psalm 77 does so in complaint, seeking to make sense of God’s perceived inactivity. Psalm 68:8–11 In Psalm 68, a hymn of praise, God is praised for his victories over Israel’s enemies. A reference to the post-exodus leading of the people in the wilderness, these verses also evoke the cosmogonic power of God and celebrate the pasture that God has provided for the Israelite “flock”: O God, when you went out before your people, When you marched through the wilderness. Then earth quaked, the heavens poured down rain at the presence of God, the God of Sinai at the presence of God, the God of Israel Rain in abundance, O God you poured out, upon the land of your inheritance, when it languished; because you founded it.

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Your animals found a dwelling in it, in your goodness, O God, you provided for the needy.

The reference to the occupation of the promised land is clear, but notice the difference in language. The “flock” is not ‫צאן‬, it is ‫( חיתך‬your animals; lit. “your living things”). In Psalm 68, the same event is referenced, but the source or tradition behind this mnemohistorical referent seems to be different than that of Asaph. Where Psalm 66 uses similar language and imagery but turns the mnemohistorical referent to the support of a different task, Psalm 68 seems to be referencing the exodus event from a different perspective, one not related directly to the Asaphite tradents. And again, the application of the mnemohistory is different, put to the task of praise and thanks, which by and large the Asaphite Psalms do not represent. Psalm 99:6–7 Another hymn of praise, Psalm 99 praises God in part for the leaders God has given to Israel. The statement that God spoke to Moses, Aaron, and Samuel “in a pillar of cloud” (‫בעמוד ענן‬, v. 7) is obviously evocative of the exodus story, but the exodus itself does not seem to be in play. What we have here is generalized theophany, the appearance of the Divine in smoke and fire to God’s servants Moses, Aaron, and Samuel (Samuel, whose addition is key to understanding the more general sense of the reference here); this is God’s appearance. The psalm praises God not so much for deliverance from bondage and suffering as for the deliverance of divine decrees. The call to worship on God’s holy mountain that closes the psalm may, in the context of this study, seem redolent of the decrees and statutes of Psalm 81, but the unambiguous relationship of mnemohistory with festal observance central to the Asaphite Psalm is not present in Psalm 99. Psalm 114 In still another hymn of praise, the exodus is explicitly referenced as the reason for praise. Strikingly, Psalm 114 moves directly from the statement “When Israel went up from Egypt” to “Judah became God’s sanctuary.” Here, the indwelling of God on Zion is effected through the delivery of the Israelites from slavery. The rest of the psalm uses figu-

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rative language to describe the crossing of both the Reed Sea and the Jordan (v. 3), both of which are derided for fleeing in fear from God (v. 5). The comparisons to the Asaphite material are not obvious, except for the use of ‫( קדׁש‬holy place), which matches the absolute form of “temple,” or “sanctuary,” in Psalm 74:3. Conclusions Attention to the question of the origins and scope of the Asaphite traditum, the compositional structure and placement of the collection, and a comparison of the Asaphite mnemohistory to that of the other Levitical collections, individual Levitical psalms, smaller collections, and “lay” psalms is revealing in several regards. First, it is clear that the Asaphite tradition stream is operative over a relatively long period of time, roughly from the eighth to the fifth centuries BCE. Second, the structure of the Asaphite collection, placed as it is as brackets or bookends to the “story” of David in the Davidic psalms of books 2 and 3 of the Psalter, builds the historic weight behind the establishment of David’s house at the height of the Asaphite collection in Psalm 78, which worshippers are called to remember. Furthermore, the interplay of the mnemohistorical material works, as the collection is employed by itself, to incorporate the individual into the corporate memory, to share that national history first as a means of shaping corporate identity, and second as a means of making sense of the disorientation felt after the house of David is itself no more and the house of God is abandoned and destroyed (Psalm 79). Finally, the other Levitical psalms simply do not bear the same content, either in terms of volume—in scope, vocabulary, frequency, and the use of particular images—or in terms of application of that material. Among the Levitical singers, it would seem, history and memory are primarily Asaph’s province. And in comparison with the other collections and individual psalms, it is in service of thanksgiving and praise that the exodus recitation or symbol is employed. This is not the case in Asaph, where the mnemohistorical referents are used to instruct, to encourage, and to complain—that is, above all else, to address the present reality of community (and individuals) in need of recourse to the past. In this regard, the Asaphite material is distinctive.

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4

How Asaph Remembers

To reiterate one of the tenets of this study, when historical references are employed in and with the language of memory, there is a rhetorical function and impact of the psalm that is different than it would otherwise be if the mnemohistorical referent were either absent or if some other Erinnerungsfigur were employed. Within the Asaphite corpus of the Psalter, there are two forms in which a historical referent is found.1 The Psalms of Asaph offer both clear, intentional historical referents (explicit mnemohistory) and unintentional holdovers or reflections of older traditions and practices (residual mnemohistory). Explicit mnemohistory is marked by the vocabulary of memory: the base terms employed are ‫( זכר‬remember), its antonym ‫( ׁשכח‬forget), and several synonyms for remembering, ‫( ׂשיח‬muse, complain), ‫חׁשב‬ (consider, reckon), ‫( הגה‬meditate, mutter), and ‫( ספר‬number, recount). A particular object of these various terms functions within the psalm both as remembrance of the past and as symbol. The remembered event (or, more rarely, person) has relevance for the present selfunderstanding of the community or individual and implications for the future. The symbol—the historical referent that the psalm invokes—recalls an event (or individual) that has been (and remains) 1. By “form” I do not intend to make any sort of form-critical observation, I simply mean the way in which the material is present within the psalms—rhetorically and poetically—not as a matter of type of psalm within the Psalter.

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definitive for the community or serves to illustrate a theological issue at stake. To borrow from William P. Brown, a symbol, much like a metaphor, has constitutive, definitive power.2 The symbol, the historical referent, allows the hearer/reader of the psalm to view the present situation differently. But a mnemohistorical referent ought not to be confused with simple metaphor. Metaphor is essentially comparative: object A is expressed through or even likened to object B in ways that are sometimes concrete but more often abstract.3 The historical referent, preserved and reexperienced in remembrance, is less abstract. The symbol is both recourse to the past and a concrete happening in itself; it both preserves the past and creates, or better, re-creates, the experience of that past in a new time and place.4 Residual mnemohistory is something altogether different. The implicit memory is not consciously or explicitly remembered. The residual mnemohistorical reference may be characterized as the embryonic stage of the resolution to symbol. Whether or not that resolution continues or is stillborn is essentially beside the point. The memory of the historical situation, individual, or event is present largely as a part of the context for the explicit mnemohistorical symbol. In addition, the Asaphite Psalms retain anachronisms and holdovers that afford a glimpse of older, perhaps outdated traditions. The residual memory is, then, an unintended holdover, a historical kernel or anachronism that is preserved in the text—a result of the often conservative nature of cultic poetry. Asaphite mnemohistory is primarily concerned with re-presenting a particular view of historical events in Israel; on the one hand, this serves to preserve historical memory and awareness, and on the other, it addresses, informs, and shapes the present community. The purpose of the remembered past is to shape Israelite identity, society, and theology.5 This is neither neutral, objective recording of history nor nos-

2. “Broadly put, metaphors do something to enable the reader to perceive something differently....... Metaphors serve as ‘grids’ or ‘filters’ through which reality is viewed and reconfigured.” Brown, Seeing the Psalms, 6. 3. For a discussion of the differences and similarities of simile and metaphor in the biblical Psalms see Brown, Seeing the Psalms, 7–8. 4. Keel, Symbolism, 10. 5. See Assmann, “Guilt and Remembrance,” 26: “What is remembered?—that which binds together and is binding, that which must not be forgotten. Remembering of the past does not follow any human drive or innate interest, but rather adheres to a duty which is a component of constructing human culture.”

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talgic reflection, but rather purposeful recollection, both performed and prescribed. The Psalms of Asaph then may be characterized as appearing in one of two forms, either as an explicitly referenced event (and, more rarely, an individual or group) or as a residual, implicit “leftover” that preserves but does not necessarily intend to inculcate a specific memory. There are also two basic ways in which explicit mnemohistory in particular may be characterized in terms of its extent, or appearance, within a given psalm. First, mnemohistory is explicitly made, where past events are more or less detailed. Second, the antecedent historical event is referred to in symbolic language and imagery. Explicit Mnemohistory in the Psalms of Asaph Explicit mnemohistory is marked by the vocabulary of memory: pleas for remembrance and not forgetting (Pss 74:2, 18–19, 22–23; 79:8; 80:15), the stated intention that memory be established or forgetting staved off (cf. Pss 77:4, 7, 12–13; 79:13 ), or response to the statute and decree that the people remember (Ps 78:5; and similarly 81:5–6). In every Asaphite psalm in which such vocabulary of memory is attested, some historical referent is employed as well. Explicit mnemohistory is marked by references to specific events from the past, events that serve as instruction applicable to the present age or contemporary situation (see Psalm 78 in particular; see also Ps 77:14–21). The explicit mnemohistorical referent may appear as part of a plea for the Lord to deliver the people (e.g. Psalms 74, 79, 83) or as a call to or reason for praise and worship (cf. Ps 81:4–5). Explicit referents include: the exodus (Pss 77:17–21; 78:10–14, 44–52; 80:9; 81:5–10), the wilderness wandering (Pss 78:15–43, 52–53; 81:7), the “conquest” and residence in the promised land (Ps 78:54–55), the abandonment of Shiloh (Ps 78:60), and the Babylonian conquest of Jerusalem (Pss 74:3–9, 79:1–4). There are also two referents that do not fit neatly into the larger historical picture of Israel’s formative experiences: God’s establishment of his abode in Salem through victory over the nations (Ps 76:3–10)6 and an otherwise uncertain assertion in Psalm 78 (vv. 9–10) of a betrayal and flight from battle by the Ephraimites. Though we do not know much if anything about these particular 6. Which may be a reference to David’s victories over the Philistines (see 2 Samuel 2–8), or perhaps, a la Zenger, the rescue of Jerusalem from the Assyrians (see 2 Kings 18); see Hossfeld and Zenger, Psalms 2, 263; a final determination may be impossible.

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events—other than what we learn from the Asaphite material—they are, nevertheless, explicit, and their function can be discerned. The Rhetoric of Explicit Mnemohistory in the Asaphite Psalms As Jan Assmann noted regarding Moses and Pharaoh in the memory of Egypt, historical events, as they are remembered, tend to resolve into a symbolic function. In these psalms, the one historical event (or complex of events) that has most clearly achieved this resolution into symbol is the exodus. The exodus stands as the vehicle of theological knowledge and spiritual hope for both the individual and the nation of Israel. In the symbolic resolution of the mnemohistorical material, referents may thus function didactically (e.g., Psalms 78, 81) or provide the context or setting out of which a particular psalm arises (e.g., Psalms 80, 83). Other events, even those that it may not be possible to identify historically, function both as a point of reference around which the people may rally (i.e., from which they may take an important element of their identity) and a point of theological instruction. The events in question are re-presented, speaking directly to the present situation of the reader or audience. The issue of forgetting is not central to the Asaphite Psalter. What is clear is that memory is selective—what is deemed important or meaningful is preserved, “scripturalized,” and passed on as important. Further, memory in the written cortex of the Asaphite Psalms is not perfect or “on demand,” meaning that there are both memories that are intentional, meant for inculcation, and memories that are not. The former is the written, preserved cultural memory, the latter is the residue that is preserved incidentally. The Vocabulary of Remembrance Explicit mnemohistory is introduced by the vocabulary of memory. There are a variety of terms employed, sometimes as either synonym or antonym, sometimes in parallel or hendiadys with the base term ‫זכר‬. Other significant vocabulary of remembrance in the Asaphite Psalms includes: ‫( ׁשכח‬forget), ‫( ׂשיח‬muse, complain), ‫( חׁשב‬consider, reckon), ‫( הגה‬meditate, mutter), and ‫( ספר‬number, recount).

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‫זכר‬ The base term for memory in all the Hebrew Bible is ‫זכר‬. The root ‫זכר‬ occurs either as a verb or a noun some sixty-one times in the Psalter. The hiphil infinitive construct ‫( להזכיר‬make remember) appears twice in the superscription of a psalm meant for the liturgical observance of the memorial offering (Psalms 387 and 70). But ‫ זכר‬also bears the sense of the memory of people—either a group (Ps 9:7: ‫[ זכרם‬memory of them]) or an individual (109:15: ‫—)זכרם‬and of the “renown” of God (Pss 111:4: ‫ ;זכרך‬135:13: ‫)זכר‬. Similarly, the verb’s subject may be either human beings (Ps 106:7: ‫[ זכרו לא‬they did not remember]) or God (Ps 8:5: ‫[ תזכרנו‬you remember them]). In the Psalter as a whole, there are eight examples of ‫ זכר‬in the masculine singular imperative, ‫זכר‬, three of which are Asaphite, all occurring in the same psalm;8 in every case the imperative is directed to God. In one case, a masculine plural imperative form of ‫ זכר‬is directed to human beings (Ps 105:5: ‫זכרו‬ [remember!]), an innovation peculiar to that psalm. In these regards, the use of ‫ זכר‬in the Psalms of Asaph is consistent with its general use both in Psalms and in the rest of the Hebrew Bible.9 Nominal forms are not attested in the Asaphite material, a point that does not seem to be of any great significance, but there are two verbal forms of ‫ זכר‬that are striking in Asaph. Both occur in a single Psalm (77) but are suggestive of the ways in which Asaphite tradition understands the practice of memory. In Psalm 77, ‫ זכר‬occurs in the cohortative form three times. This particular verbal form—‫—אזכרה‬is unique to the Psalter, occurring in only two psalms, 77 (vv. 4, 7, 12) and 42 (v. 5), and the use in the Asaphite Psalm is distinctive. The most common function of this particular form of the verb is a reflexive injunctive (essentially an imperative) with which the speaker exhorts the self to the act of remembering. This is a difficult concept to translate into English, and the NRSV (among others) tends to represent the verbal action as statically indicative (rather than injunctive or subjunctive): “I remember” (Ps 42:5), “I think,” “I 7. Compare the Old Greek of Ps 38:1, ἀνάμνησιν περὶ σαββάτου (remembrance upon the Sabbath). 8. Pss 25:6, 7; 74:2, 18, 22; 89:48; 119:49; 137:7. 9. The basic meaning of ‫ זכר‬as described by R. Laird Harris, Gleason L. Archer Jr., and Bruce K. Waltke (Theological Wordbook of the Old Testament [Chicago: Moody Press, 1980], 241–42), is inward mental acts accompanied or followed by external actions, audible acts of recitation or invocation. Childs (Memory and Tradition, 10) identifies nuances of meaning depending on the object of remembering, with past events being either called to mind or considered and people typically involving some “quality of action” (i.e., a person is remembered for good or ill).

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commune,” and “I remember” (Ps 77:4, 7, 12). The simple qal imperfect, ‫( אזכר‬I remember), would be completely appropriate for an indicative sense if there were not a more nuanced meaning at stake.10 It is, perhaps, possible that at the time Psalm 77 was written, the sense of the cohortative had shifted some and that the form, meaning essentially the same thing as the simple imperfect, is employed because of its length to fit some metrical pattern in the psalm. Such a suggestion, however, does not seem to fit the psalm in its present form, which shows little metrical particularity, nor does it account for the dearth of examples of the cohortative in the Psalter as a whole. So the cohortative force of the verb does suggest the possibility that something more than simple indication is taking place.11 In Psalm 42:5, ‫( אזכרה‬I will remember) is used in the context of an individual’s personal reflection in the midst of an unspecified trial. The psalmist laments the loss of community and struggles in the face of the accusation of the enemy, “My tears have been my food day and night, while people say to me continually, ‘Where is your God?’” (Ps 42:4).12 In this particular psalm, what is remembered is the familiarity and comfort of cultic place and practice, apparently as experienced in festal worship. Nothing more concrete than this general sense of disorientation, abandonment, and sorrow adorns the psalm, a sentiment that mirrors Psalm 137 but that is essentially ahistorical, no specific, detailed context being evident. Psalm 77:4 and 7, the first two of three instances of ‫אזכרה‬, may well be read in a general sense as well—that is, as disconnected from any overarching historical memory. General terms for the past are used as the object of the psalmist’s descriptive self-command to remember in verse 6; “the days of old” and “the years of long ago” are what are recalled in the day (and night) of the psalmist’s trouble. The critical shift comes in verse 12, in which the psalmist begins a set of explicit references to Israel’s salvation history—the “wonders of old” (v. 12). Throughout the rest of the psalm, symbolic language specific to the exodus event is employed: wonders (‫פלא‬, v. 15), with a “strong arm” (‫בזרוע‬, v. 16), flock (‫צאן‬, v. 21), paths through the sea (‫בים דרכך‬, v. 20), 10. See for example Lev 26:42, Isa 43:25, and Jer 31:34. 11. Based on his evaluation of the verbal forms, John Goldingay (Psalms, 467–68) suggests that there is more than simple commemorating going on here and that this is wistful, meditative, murmuring; the sense of the cohortative “talk” bearing this out. 12. Based on the place names in Ps 42:7, particularly Herman and Mount Mizar, this loss of community is most likely some sort of forced exile, perhaps to the north of Palestine. See James Luther Mays, Psalms (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox, 1994), 174; R. Jacobson, Many Are Saying, 45.

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and culminating in a remembrance of divine guidance through the agency of the leadership of Moses and Aaron (v. 21). The psalmist is reorienting herself through the resolve to remember; this takes place in the psalm right after the wrenching distress of verse 11, “I say it is my grief that the right hand of the Most High has changed,” and moves to a specific, explicit, and detailed remembering of the nation’s past. In both psalms, the past, the way things have been (that time of comfortable orientation), is missed. In Psalm 42, it is the life of the faithful in worship that is called to mind, but in Psalm 77, it is the past deeds, the “wonders of old” that God has performed, that are commanded by and for the self to be remembered. This particular usage of ‫זכר‬, albeit in a single psalm, is suggestive of the larger emphasis in Asaph on remembrance not of one’s personal past but of the national history. Again in Psalm 77 there is another instance of a rare form of the verb ‫זכר‬. In general, the hiphil of ‫ זכר‬is quite common. Frequently this causal remembrance takes on a ritual, even liturgical flavor as it is connected to the invocation of the name of God/god—positively in the case of Yahweh (cf. Exod 20:24 ; Isa 12:4, 26:13; Amos 6:10) or negatively in that of other gods (cf. Exod 23:13; Josh 23:7). This invocation—literally the “causing to be remembered,” memorializing (i.e., the verbal or ritual action of memory)—of the divine name is common enough that it becomes a titular label for an office of the Levitical guilds (1 Chr 16:4 ) and, more broadly, as a designation for one who records events (2 Kgs 18:18; 1 Chr 18:15). ‫ זכר‬in the hiphil takes numerous forms—participles, simple verbs, infinitives, and so on—but the imperfect first person singular is quite rare, occurring only in Exodus 20:24 ; Psalms 45:18, 71:16, 87:4; Isaiah 63:7; and perhaps here in Psalm 77:12. In the Masoretic text of Psalm 77:12, the kethib-qere’ of the first word of the verse is ‫אזכור‬/‫אזכיר‬, either the hiphil imperfect first person singular (‫[ אזכיר‬I will make known; lit. “I will cause to remember”]) or the qal imperfect first person singular (‫[ אזכור‬I will remember]). The graphic closeness of yod and waw in Hebrew is well-known and makes a decision as to the more likely reading difficult. As noted, the use of the hiphil ‫ אזכיר‬is relatively rare and this might seem to support a change to the qere’, preferring the more common verbal form, but within Ps 77:12 it seems more likely that the verb, if it is not in the hiphil, would have been in the cohortative as are all of the occurrences of ‫ זכר‬in Psalm 77, including the one in this same verse. Further, there are other examples—within the Psalter and

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without—of the hiphil imperfect first person singular being employed in tandem with a recitation of Yahweh’s saving acts in Israel’s history: I will come praising the mighty deeds of the Lord God, I will make known [‫ ]אזכיר‬your righteousness, yours alone. O God, from my youth you have taught me, and I still proclaim your wondrous deeds [‫]פלא‬. (Ps 71:16–17)

And, Among those who know me I make known [‫ ]אזכיר‬Rahab and Babylon; Philistia too, and Tyre, with Ethiopia—“This one was born there,” they say. (Ps 87:4)

And it seems useful to quote from Isaiah 63 at greater length to get to the specifics of the exodus event as they are made known in verse 7, I will make known [‫ ]אזכיר‬the gracious deeds of the Lord, the praiseworthy acts of the Lord, because of all that the Lord has done for us, and the great favor to the house of Israel that he has shown them according to his mercy, according to the abundance of his steadfast love. 8 For he said, “Surely they are my people, children who will not deal falsely”; and he became their savior 9 in all their distress. It was no messenger or angel but his presence that saved them; in his love and in his pity he redeemed them; he lifted them up and carried them all the days of old. 10 But they rebelled and grieved his holy spirit; therefore he became their enemy; he himself fought against them. 11 Then they remembered the days of old, of Moses his servant. Where is the one who brought them up out of the sea with the shepherds of his flock? Where is the one who put within them his holy spirit, 12 who caused his glorious arm

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to march at the right hand of Moses, who divided the waters before them to make for himself an everlasting name, 13 who led them through the depths? Like a horse in the desert, they did not stumble. 14 Like cattle that go down into the valley, the spirit of the Lord gave them rest. Thus you led your people, to make for yourself a glorious name. (Isa 63:7–14)

In Psalm 71, what was first taught to the psalmist—the wonders that God performed—is now called to remembrance. It bears repeating that the word “wonders” (‫ )פלא‬is the word used for the plagues or signs of the exodus and, as such, is a loaded term in the realm of poetic memory. While Psalm 71 does not enter into detailed mnemohistorical recitation, it does employ the base terminology common (as is often the case of Asaph) to the remembering and retelling of that constitutive event in Israel’s national history. In comparison, Isaiah 63 looks more the like Psalm 77. Language resonant with the exodus—out of distress, divided the waters, through the depths, all wrought through Moses by the power of God’s glorious arm (‫—)זרוע‬is called to remembrance. In each case, the remembered past is being restated, re-presented, caused to be remembered; this is precisely how Psalm 77 is at work as well and why the causative action for remembering is most fitting. While this use of ‫ זכר‬in the hiphil is not unique to the Asaphite material, what is distinctive is the content of what is to be remembered over against the one comparative example from the cultic guild of the Sons of Korah, which employs this same verbal form. I will cause your name to be remembered in every generation; therefore peoples will praise you forever and ever. (Ps 45:18)

Plucked out of context, this sounds very much like something one might say to God. This verse, were it addressed to God and accompanied by a detailed account of salvation history, would be in keeping or at least in comparable harmony with the Asaphite tradition, but it is not. Psalm 45 is a royal psalm dedicated to the human king, most likely upon his wedding. Verse 18, the last verse of the psalm, is the culmina-

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tion of a commemoration of the royal person. Psalm 77, in contrast, is about Yahweh and Yahweh’s incomparability, O God, your way is holy, What god is as great as God? (Ps 77:14)

In the sense in which the Asaphite Psalm 77 employs the verb ‫ זכר‬in the hiphil with a relatively detailed recounting of Israel’s salvation history following, and more broadly as the Asaphite Psalter has scripturalized the remembered past in this particular way, there is both an actualization of the remembered past, making it present and significant visà-vis the present situation, and a reimagination of the individual’s (or the group’s) present in terms of that remembered past. In Asaph, then, ‫—זכר‬the act of remembering—is intimately and always tied to the past as it impinges on the present; this is an integral part of the distinctive form, content, and function of the Asaphite corpus.13 The Antonym, ‫ׁשכח‬ As with ‫זכר‬, ‫ ׁשכח‬can have both God and human beings as its subject. In the Psalter, where God is the subject, the object of forgetting is typically the poor (Ps 74:19) or the afflicted (Ps 44:25), with the psalm calling on God not to forget. Where human beings are the subject, the object tends to be the covenant or God’s commandments/instruction, with the psalm expressing either a plea of innocence (Ps 44:18, 21)14 or describing the problem experienced by those who have disregarded the covenant (Ps 78:10–11). In these regards, there is nothing whatsoever unique in the Asaphite use of the term; the Asaphite Psalter attests both (of God: Pss 74:19, 77:10; of human beings: Pss 50:22, 78:11). Psalm 78 employs ‫ ׁשכח‬twice, once as a statement of the purpose for the historical recitation of the psalm and once as an indictment of the Ephraimites. Those who hear the psalm as it is read or who read it for themselves are told that they will be reminded of what God has done,

13. This function of the hiphil form of the verb is identified by Childs as peculiar to the cultic setting. See Memory and Tradition, 11–14. 14. In Psalm 119, ‫ ׁשכח‬is used nine times (vv. 16, 61, 83, 93, 109, 139, 141, 153, and 176), and in every case but one (v. 139) the claim is that the psalmist has not forgotten the statutes, precepts, law, etc.

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so that they should set their confidence in God, and not forget the works of God, but guard his commandments. (Ps 78:7)

The purpose of mnemohistory as it is expressed here is that the people will not forget and that they will set their hope in God and obey God’s law. The problem that has beset the Northern Kingdom (the Ephraimites), according to the psalm, is that it has done just this, forgotten the covenant: They did not keep the covenant of God, but refused to walk according to his law. They forgot what he had done, And the wonders he had shown them. (Ps 78:10–11)

One other noteworthy example comes from the first (canonically) of the Asaphite Psalms. Psalm 50 strikes a tone not unlike the eighth-century prophets, describing the desire of the Lord for not sacrifice or burnt offerings but a people who will call on their God and sing their thanks (Ps 50:7–15; cf. Amos 5:21–24; Hos 6:6; Mic 6:6–8). The final two verses of the psalm strike the same tone that Psalm 78:7 and 10 do together, warning those who “forget God” (‫[ ׁשכחי אלוה‬you who forget God]; Ps 50:22) and calling for a sacrifice of thanksgiving. What we have in the Asaphite use of ‫ ׁשכח‬is much like the rest of the Psalter. But it still may be observed that when human beings are the subjects of the vocabulary of memory (with the exception of Ps 106:13, 21), it is the Asaphite collection’s provenance to associate memory—in this case in the negative sense of forgetting—with a specific subject matter, the mnemohistorical referents. The Synonyms, ‫הגה‬, ‫חׁשב‬, ‫ׂשיח‬, and ‫ספר‬ As Adriane Leveen has noted, the key terms in the Torah having to do with memory are ‫זכר‬, ‫( ׁשמר‬observe), and ‫( פקד‬take notice).15 The synonyms in the Asaphite material are, for the most part, different, or if not different, then at least more varied. ‫ ׁשמר‬does occur twice in Psalm 78, in both cases having to do with observing the covenant 15. Leveen, Memory and Tradition, 196n38.

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and/or covenant stipulations (Ps 78:10, 56). ‫ פקד‬occurs only once, in Psalm 80:15 where God is the subject and the metaphorical “vine” that is Israel is the object. There is in the Asaphite material a slightly larger vocabulary of memory, a vocabulary that employs terms that are multivalent but that find a specialized meaning in tandem with ‫זכר‬. The terms evaluated below are studied primarily in the Psalter, with reference to other biblical usage where appropriate. ‫ׂשיח‬ The verb ‫ ׂשיח‬means “muse” or “complain,” and the nominal form (‫)ׂשיח‬ is a “complaint” (Ps 55:3). Psalm 55 employs the root in both ways, Attend to me, and answer me; I am troubled in my complaint [‫]בׂשיחי‬. Evening and morning and at noon I complain [‫ ]אׂשיחה‬and moan, and he will hear my voice. (Ps 55:3, 18)16

But by far the most common sense in the Psalter is of musing or reflection, sometimes as a musing on God’s law, sometimes (in the nominal form) as a meditative rumination, and often as a reflection on God’s deeds: I will muse [‫ ]אׂשיחה‬on your precepts, and fix my eyes on your ways. (Ps 119:15) May my meditation [‫ ]ׂשיחי‬be pleasing to him, for I rejoice in the Lord. (Ps 104:34) On the glorious splendor of your majesty, and on your wondrous works, I will muse [‫]אׂשיחה‬. (Ps 145:5)

The sense of the verb in Psalm 77:4, 7, and 13 is the same:

16. For the nominal use, see also Pss 64:21, 102:1, 142:2. In Ps 69:13, the verb seems to mean something along the lines of gossip or perhaps slander.

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I remember God, and I moan; I muse [‫]אׂשיחה‬, and my spirit faints. (Ps 77:4) I remember (with) my music,17 with my heart in the night; I muse [‫ ]אׂשיחה‬and search my spirit. (Ps 77:7) I will meditate on all your work, and muse [‫ ]אׂשיחה‬on your mighty deeds. (Ps 77:13)

In the Asaphite material, the usage, bolstered by parallelism with ‫זכר‬, is always one of reflection and remembering. In Psalm 77, which is an individual lament or complaint, the plaintive nature of the musing is retained, while the emphasis on remembering takes central position. Here again it is the mnemohistorical material of Asaph that is distinctive. ‫חׁשב‬ ‫ חׁשב‬means “consider” or “reckon.” In some cases, ‫ חׁשב‬has to do with attributing or reckoning: Because of you we are being killed all day, and considered [‫ ]נחׁשבנו‬like sheep for the slaughter. (Ps 44:23) I am considered [‫ ]נחׁשבתי‬among those who go down to the Pit; I am like those who have no help. (Ps 88:5)

Both of these psalms employ the niphal. In the qal, the sense is of either plotting or imputing, In arrogance the wicked persecute the poor let them be caught in the schemes they have devised [‫]חׁשבו‬. (Ps 10:2) 17. This translation of ‫ אזכרה נגינתי‬gets at the psalmist’s practice of his craft; he reflects, through the medium of singing and psalm writing: “with stringed instrument, a psalm of Asaph” is composed; cf. Ps 76:1, ‫בנגינת מזמור לאסף ׁשיר‬. An alternative reading in the Old Greek of καὶ ἐμελέτησα (i.e., of ‫ הגינתי‬instead of ‫ )נגינתי‬is also possible; the sense there is of musing and muttering reflectively (a hendiadys). Cf. Ps 143:4, which contains all three of these same verbs: ‫ זכר‬,‫ׂשיח‬, and ‫הגה‬.

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Happy is the one to whom the Lord imputes [‫ ]יחׁשב‬no iniquity, and in whose spirit there is no deceit. (Ps 32:2)

Or with the Lord’s consideration for the one in need, I am poor and needy, yet the Lord considers [‫ ]יחׁשב‬for me. You are my help and my deliverer; O my God do not delay. (Ps 40:18)18

In both examples of ‫ חׁשב‬in the Asaphite material, the verbal form is piel. But when I considered [‫ ]אחׁשבה‬how to understand this, it seemed to me a wearisome task. (Ps 73:16)

Psalm 73 does not contain any explicit mnemohistorical referent. It does, however, convey the struggle between the righteous and the wicked in terms of God’s power. In the midst of personal struggle, the wicked torment the righteous with the challenging question, “How can God know, is there knowledge with the Most High?” (Ps 73:11). There seems to be a sense that the psalmist is not only attacked and tormented by this accusation but tempted by it. He asks, “Have I kept my heart clean in vain? And washed my hands in innocence?” (73:13). It is this struggle that the psalmist considers in 73:16. The answers to these questions and the fruit of this consideration are found in the sanctuary of God (‫)מקדׁשי־אל‬. As an introduction to the main body of the Asaphite collection, it may at least be suggested that the role of the Asaphite Psalms, with their emphasis on the remembered past, is anticipated in this psalm. What is more, Psalm 73 ends with the declaration that the one who takes the Lord as refuge then declares (‫ ;ספר‬another of the words related frequently to the recounting of the remembered past) “all God’s work” (‫)כל־מלאכותיך‬.19 As with ‫ ׂשיח‬in Psalm 77:7, here again in Psalm 77:6 ‫ חׁשב‬may be 18. See also the reckoning of righteousness to Phineas in Ps 106:31, “And it was reckoned [‫ ]ותחׁשב‬to him as righteousness from generation to generation forever.” 19. “Works” is a hapax legomenon in the Psalter, and there is no compelling reason to alter the reading. It is worth noting, however, that the Syriac of Psalm 73 reads tdmrtk, that is ‫( נפלאותיָך‬your wonders), a word resonant with the exodus tradition and common to the Asaphite material.

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understood as in tandem with ‫זכר‬, which follows immediately at the head of the next verse. Deep consideration or reflection is a part of memory in this psalm, I consider [‫ ]חׁשבתי‬the days of old, the years of long ago. I remember with my music [‫]אזכרה נגינתי‬, my heart in the night; I muse [‫ ]אׂשיחה‬and search my spirit. (Ps 77:6–7)

‫ חׁשב‬is used in these verses together with ‫ זכר‬and with ‫ׂשיח‬, another of the memory vocabulary words, establishing a firm foundation for understanding ‫ חׁשב‬in Asaph primarily in relation to the action of remembering.20 The sense in both of these cases above is of an intensified wrestling with the object of memory that is either looming out of the background or following quickly on the heels of this studied reflection. ‫חׁשב‬, then, is used in Asaph as a synonymous parallel with ‫זכר‬. ‫הגה‬ ‫ הגה‬means “meditate” or “mutter.” The segholate nominal form of the root means “rumbling” (Ps 90:9; cf. Job 37:2). In most cases, the root word has something to do with a guttural rumbling that is plotting (Ps 2:1) or deceitful speech (Ps 38:13). In at least one case, the verb simply summarizes the act of meditation or reflection (Ps 1:2). ‫ הגה‬is frequently found expressed through the organs of speech—“they do not mutter in their throats” (‫ ;לא־יהגו בגרונם‬Ps 115:7), “the mouth of the righteous mutters wisdom” (‫ ;פי־צדיק יהגה חכמה‬Ps 37:30),21 “my tongue shall mutter your righteousness” (‫ ;ולׁשוני תהגה צדקך‬Ps 35:28, see also 71:24). In each of these cases here, the “meditation” is not a silent mental act but a vocal one. One can conclude from these examples that ‫הגה‬ expresses a reflective mental act that is simultaneous with some sort of utterance. ‫ הגה‬is also employed in two cases in parallel with the verb ‫זכר‬, not

20. Cf. Jer 23:27, “those who scheme [‫ ]החׁשבים‬to make my people forget [‫ ]להׁשכיח‬my name by their dreams that they recount [‫ ]יספרו‬to one another, just as their ancestors forgot [‫ ]ׁשכחו‬my name for Baal.” Although in this case the sense of ‫ חׁשב‬seems clearly to be one of plotting or scheming against memory. 21. Cf. Josh 1:8: “This book of law shall not depart from your mouth and you shall mutter [‫ ]והגית‬it day and night.”

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only casting the verbal action as vocalized meditation but defining this vocalized meditation as mnemonic as well: I remember you [‫ ]זכרתיך‬upon my bed, and meditate [‫ ]אהגה‬on you in the watches of the night (Ps 63:7) I remember [‫ ]זכרתי‬the days of old, I meditate [‫ ]הגיתי‬on all your deeds, I muse [‫ ]אׂשוחח‬on the works of your hands. (Ps 143:5)

In both of these applications of the verb, the synonymous meaning of the word is clear. ‫ הגה‬is understood as a nuanced, vocal element of the act of remembering. This same verbal parallelism is evident in Psalm 77:13 and its surrounding verses. I will make known [‫ ]אזכיר‬the deeds of the Lord; I will remember [‫ ]אזכרה‬your wonders of old. I will meditate [‫ ]הגיתי‬on all your work, and muse [‫ ]אׂשיחה‬on your mighty deeds. (Ps 77:12–13)

‫ הגה‬in Asaph, then, is the vocalization of the act of remembering, working in tandem with ‫ זכר‬to convey the sounding out of the memory of God’s actions in Israel’s past, a sense of the verb characteristic of mnemohistory in the cultic setting. ‫ספר‬ While not a direct synonym for ‫זכר‬, following the discussion of ‫הגה‬ above, the function of ‫ ספר‬in the Asaphite Psalter merits brief consideration. The root of this word (which means “inscription,” “scroll,” “book,” etc.) is, when it appears in the piel, the act of “announcing,” “reporting,” or “making known”; within the Psalter, this is the overwhelming sense of the verb.22 ‫ ספר‬is often specifically of the “wonders” (‫ )פלא‬of God, a word that is employed both by the Asaphite material of 22. Of the forty occurrences of ‫ ספר‬in the Psalter, thirty are piel and two are pual—with essentially the same sense as the piel (Pss 88:12, 22:31). Four others are in the qal (Pss 48:13, 56:9, 87:6, 139:18), and four are nominal forms, referring to the book of the living (Pss 40:8, 69:29, 139:16) or, in the case of Ps 45:2, to the writings of a “ready scribe.”

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the exodus event itself and by several other psalms in the same way (cf. Pss 9:2, 26:7, 40:6, 96:3). In the Asaphite Psalms, this is the standard way in which the word is employed. The deeds of the Lord in the exodus will be recounted generation to generation (Ps 78:3, 4, 6). More generally, people declare the wonders (‫ )פלא‬of God (Ps 75:2). And in tandem with language and phrasing borrowed from the exodus story, the praises of God are recounted (Ps 79:11–13). ‫ספר‬, then, is indicative of the scripturalizing role of memory; what is written is the vehicle of declaration, from praise to accusation to thanks to petition, which in the case of Asaph is, first and foremost, the objects of mnemohistory. What is to be remembered is written down so that successive generations might remember. This assorted vocabulary of memory in the Asaphite material, when taken as a whole, is in service of the particular function of history in these psalms. There is in and through this vocabulary an actualization of the past offered in the present; it is remembered in/by specific psalms, caused to be remembered among those who read or perform it, making that history present and significant. Each of these terms has a specialized meaning in tandem with ‫ זכר‬and the remembered past—shaped into the musing, reckoning, and even muttering nuances of remembrance, and finally inscribed as cultic rubric for the collective memorial practice of worship. Each of these terms then informs and shapes the way memory is performed by the Asaphite mnemohistory in the cultic setting. Comparative Vocabularies: Remembrance among the Korahites and the Merarites A comparative word study of the vocabulary of memory with the Asaphite material and the other Levitical Psalms is revealing of the special place that mnemohistory has in the Asaphite material. In comparison, in the larger collection attributed to the sons of Korah and to the other, less prolific singer-psalmists, memory has virtually no specialized place. As will be shown, only one of these psalms employs the vocabulary of memory to any relevant degree, and that focuses on a different element of Israel’s past and in a different manner.

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‫זכר‬ Among the psalms of other Levitical guilds, ‫ זכר‬is employed in the usual sense. In Psalm 42:5, 7, what is recalled is the joy associated with worship, with festal community, which the psalmist “led . . . in procession to the house of God.” What is remembered is the joy that once was felt, which is in sharp contrast to the accusation of the psalmist’s enemies who claim that God is powerless or absent (v. 3 ). There is nothing content-wise that is specifically called to mind, only the time and comfort of worship itself. ‫ זכר‬in Ps 45:18 is about the human king and the glory of his name and reign. In Ps 87:4, ‫ זכר‬has to do with nations from around the ancient Near Eastern world, from Egypt (Rahab), Babylon, Philistia, Tyre, and Ethiopia, all of which are remembered by God (lit. “caused to be remembered” [‫ )]אזכיר‬as having their origin and proper place in Zion (cf. 87:6).23 Two other applications of ‫ זכר‬have to do with the length and purpose of human life. Psalm 89:48 calls to remembrance—God’s remembrance—the brevity of a human life and asks God “How long?” while Ps 88:6 states that there is no remembrance of God among the dead. There is no mnemohistorical material associated with ‫ זכר‬whatsoever in the Psalms of Korah or of the Merarites. The verb ‫זכר‬ is not employed in any special way, nor is it associated with any particular content. The Antonym, ‫ׁשכח‬ ‫’זכר‬s antonym ‫ ׁשכח‬is rarely used in the other Levitical psalms. In this sense, they are resonant with the Asaphite material, which by and large prefers a particular kind of remembering to forgetting. In Psalm 44, it is primarily the covenant that is related to forgetting (vv. 18, 21), and the issue of forgetting is accompanied by the profession of innocence. In contrast, both Psalm 44:25 and Psalm 42:10 lament the painful reverse of this, that God has forgotten the psalmist’s people or the psalmist himself. Finally, in Psalm 45:11, the admonition to forget is directed at the earthly king’s new wife, who is encouraged to forget her people. Where ‫ ׁשכח‬is employed in the Asaphite material—even when, like the Korahite Psalm 44, it is explicitly related to the covenant (cf. Ps 78:10–11)—the forgetting is associated specifically with the exodus 23. Goldingay, Psalms, 636; Hossfeld and Zenger, Psalms 2, 383.

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event and God’s actions in it. As with ‫זכר‬, the object of ‫ ׁשכח‬in the Levitical Psalms outside of Asaph is not the same. The Synonyms, ‫הגה‬, ‫חׁשב‬, ‫ׂשיח‬, and ‫ספר‬ Neither ‫ ׂשיח‬nor ‫ הגה‬occurs in the psalms attributed to Korah or the Merarites. Where ‫ חׁשב‬appears, it has to do with being considered or reckoned. In Psalm 44:23, the people are considered, perhaps “recalled as,” sheep for the slaughter. And in Psalm 88:5, the psalmist is counted or reckoned among the dead, perhaps “recalled as” the dead, by the dead who do not in fact remember (v. 6). In both of these Korahite Psalms, the verb ‫ חׁשב‬has, again, nothing to do with mnemohistorical content, unlike the Asaphite Psalms 73:16 and 77:7, where ‫חׁשב‬, employed in tandem with ‫זכר‬, has as its object the remembered past. Where one finds ‫ ספר‬the usage is varied. In Psalm 45:2, ‫ ספר‬works as part of a simile: the psalmist’s tongue is like the pen of ready scribe. In Psalm 48:13–14, ‫ ספר‬works to support the Zion theology of the psalm, calling for a numbering and recounting of Zion’s towers, beauty, and glory. In Psalm 87:6, it is God who counts and records the peoples, and in Psalm 88:11-12, the silence of the dead who are not able to recount God’s steadfast love is used to urge God to attend and preserve the psalmist, so that the psalmist may sing God’s praise among the living. Only in Psalm 44 does ‫ ספר‬have anything to do with historical remembrance. Verses 2–3 read, O God, we have heard with our ears what our ancestors made known [‫ ]ספרו‬to us, what deeds you performed in their days, in days of old. With your own hand you drove out nations, and you planted them, you afflicted peoples, and cast them out.24

In a pattern similar to Psalm 78 (cf. Ps 79:11–13), an ancestral memory is passed on, recounted to the next generation. In this, the use of ‫ספר‬ corresponds quite well to its usage in Asaph. However, the emphasis is entirely on the conquest of the promised land, which is in parallel with 24. The NRSV translation of ‫ ותׁשלחם‬in verse 3 as “but them you set free” serves to make of the apparently parallel phrase an oblique reference to the exodus. This use of the verb typically has to do with vanquishing enemies (see Exod 15:7), not with provision for or leading of God’s people.

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the current reality the psalm addresses, namely the scattering of the people among the nations (Ps 44:10–17). Nothing other than the settlement of the nation in the promised land is brought to bear. Even the hand/arm language is employed in a way that dispels any redolence of the exodus. In the Masoretic Text, the sense of the passage is borne in part by the intensifying second person pronoun ‫( אתה ידך‬you . . . your hand), which emphasizes that it was God’s activity that won Israel’s victories. This is the clear aim of these verses, as verse 4 shows: For not by their sword did they win the land, and their arm did not give them victory but your right hand and your arm and the light of your countenance for you delighted in them.

In the other Levitical psalms, the vocabulary of memory is employed, by and large, in the simplest sense and does not generally suggest an interest in the yoking of the present people to the memories of the past generations of Israel. And even in Psalm 44, with its use of ‫ספר‬, the connection of present to past is only in the narrowest sense. Explicit Mnemohistory in Symbolic Reference The resolution to symbol is a distinctive element of the mnemohistorical material. Much like metaphor, the mnemohistorical material (as symbol) functions to convey a great deal of information and meaning in a relatively compact semantic unit or field. But unlike metaphor, which offers a basic semantic comparison of A expressed by B wherein B cannot literally be the A it represents, the mnemohistorical symbol re-presents past events in a way that seeks to establish a more static, more pressing relationship between past and present. As the Asaphite Psalms do, in fact, employ simple metaphor in addition to the deeper mnemohistorical symbols, I turn now to a summary of the Asaphite metaphorical catalog as a starting point before moving on to the mnemohistorical symbol and its particular function. Simple Metaphor in Asaph There are a number of simple metaphors employed in the Asaphite material, images borrowed from the realms of the natural world and from the lives of human beings. A few examples: Psalm 75:4 talks about the pillars of the earth being shaken and 94

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the earth tottering. God responds to the opening thanksgiving of the psalm: When the earth melts, and all its inhabitants, I, I establish its pillars.

One might, of course, interpret this as a literal description of an earthquake or of volcanic activity, but in the context of the psalm’s attention to the dangers of envy and pride, and the promise of judgment, the image is actually using the physical realms shaking to express the uncertainty and upset in a person’s life. This is metaphor at its basic semantic level. Here the disorientation of human life is characterized figuratively in terms borrowed from the natural world where the earth literally shakes. Again in Psalm 75, the pride of human beings is pictured in pastoral terms as the raising up of the horn, like a proud bull (75:5–6). This prideful self-effected horn raising is seen in the psalm as problematic. The close of the psalm claims that it is God who exalts one horn and cuts off another (75:11). Psalm 78 is replete with metaphorical expression. God’s anger appears as burning fire (78:21; cf. 79:5), which finds its outlet or “path” via the wonders God performs in Egypt (78:50). In the wilderness where God provides for his hungering people both bread and quails, the psalm recounts mortals eating the “bread of angels” (78:25) and experiencing a “rain of flesh” (78:27). The fleeting span of human life is “a breath” (78:33) or wind that passes (78:39). Sinful Israel is pictured as a “deceitful bow” (78:57), while God is a drunken, slumbering warrior (78:65). So too, Psalm 73 employs a series of metaphors to describe the relationship of the human being—either the would-be righteous or the wicked—with God. When the psalmist is indulging in envy, he describes his situation in terms of perilous footing and stumbling steps (73:2; see also v. 18). This picks up, in an implicit way, on the metaphor of life with God as a path. When one strays into sin, and thus off the straight and narrow of God’s path, the footing is unsure. In a striking contrast, the pride and arrogance of the wicked are pictured as garments: pride is a necklace and violence a cloak (73:6). These same wicked ones last only as long as a dream, cleared away with the morning’s first blinking of the eye (73:20). In Asaphite imagery, blood is water poured out on the ground (79:3), sleeplessness is God holding open the psalmist’s eyelids (77:5), the envy of the psalmist is beastly behavior (lit. “Behemoth,”25 73:22 ), the

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psalmist self-identifies as a “dove” in danger of being devoured by the “wild beasts” who are her enemies (74:19), and Sisera’s and Jabin’s bodies are “dung for the ground” (83:11). The Asaphite material employs metaphor quite liberally, and in each of these examples, we find metaphor in its most common sense, operable at its basic semantic level. There are two major exceptions to the metaphorical rule that have not been listed above. First is the frequently employed language of sheep, flock, and pasture, which appears in one way or another in Psalms 74:1, 77:21, 78:52, 78:71, 79:13, 80:2, and 83:13. At first blush, these references appear to be simple metaphor, employed variously to described the relationship of God and people or to validate the role of the king as “shepherd” of the nation—and elsewhere do function in just such a way (e.g., Psalms 23, 95, and 100).26 But in every case where the sheep/shepherd/flock/pasture language is used in Asaph, it is in connection to the exodus event. Thus, in Asaph the metaphor is isolated; it is not free to be used in any way other than as descriptive and evocative of the memory of exodus. This, then, is no simple metaphor but something more. The second exception is the image of the vine and the extended metaphor of the garden in Psalm 80:9–17. In the Psalter, the vine image is unique to Asaph and is paired with the power of God’s right hand. The right hand is directly associated with exodus in Asaph, as Psalm 77 clearly shows, defining the power of God’s right hand in terms of the deeds and wonders God performed there.27 In the planting of the vine in the promised land, the divine sword is turned to the work of the plowshare as the vine that is Israel is transplanted.28 “Vine,” then, while potentially a simple metaphor from the horticultural realm in other places, is also only connected, only sensible, in terms of the exodus tradition as it is employed in Asaph; this is more than metaphor. So, while the Asaphite psalmists did employ metaphor in the standard sense, and did so with some frequency, they also employed certain images in a different sense. I turn next to a brief summary of this.

25. Brown, Seeing the Psalms, 148. 26. Indeed, Brown seems to see this as the primary function of the sheep/shepherd metaphor in the Psalter, pushing quickly to the role of king as shepherd. While Psalm 78 does this as well, the primary function of this language in Asaph is of God’s guidance of and provision for Israel, associated with the exodus, which Brown appears to overlook in favor of monarchical connections supported by Assyrian parallels; see Brown, Seeing the Psalms, 151. 27. Goldingay, Psalms, 467. 28. Cf. Brown, Seeing the Psalms, 177.

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Diaphor: The Mnemohistorical Symbol in Asaph Unlike metaphor, which is essentially representative in nature, mnemohistory as symbol seeks to be constitutive in nature. The mnemohistorical referent serves as a comparative image or picture not to enable sense to be made of a situation or event but to bridge the gap between that past and the present, to make an immediate connection between them. The dialectic of metaphor and symbol may be clarified if a sense for the semantic depth of metaphor itself is considered. Echoing Aristotle, Philip Wheelwright identifies two kinds of semantic movement in metaphor: epiphor and diaphor. Epiphor is the transference of a name to some other object.29 This is probably the most familiar and certainly the most common usage of metaphor. Consider Psalm 18:3: The Lord is my rock, my fortress, and my deliverer, my God, my rock in whom I take refuge, my shield, and the horn of my salvation, my stronghold.

In a series of theological epiphors, God is “named” rock, fortress, shield, horn, and stronghold. These borrowed names serve to describe God and, by comparison with familiar objects, to communicate some sense of the character of God. Diaphor works differently, creating meaning by juxtaposing “certain particulars of experience” with new experiences.30 As will be seen below, there are a number of ways in which the mnemohistorical material of the Asaphite Psalter is diaphoric. For the present, Psalm 79 will suffice as an illustration. Psalm 79 laments the destruction of Jerusalem and the temple, most likely at the hands of the Babylonians in 587 BCE.31 Following complaint about the temple, Jerusalem, and the deaths of God’s servants, the psalm closes with three verses that use language intentionally evocative of the national history; this language serves as a hopeful appeal: Let the groan of the prisoner come before you; according to your great strong arm spare these children of death. Return to the bosom of our neighbors seven times the taunts with which they taunted you, O Lord! 29. Philip Ellis Wheelwright, Metaphor and Reality (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1962), 72. 30. Ibid., 78. 31. See Hossfeld and Zenger, Psalms 2, 243; Goldingay, Psalms, 519; Limburg, Psalms, 270; Weiser, Psalms, 544.

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Then we your people and the flock of your pasture, will give thanks to you forever; from generation to generation we will recount your praise. (Ps 79:11–13)

The “groans of the prisoners,” the appeal to the “strong arm,” and the image of Israel as flock, common in the Asaphite material (cf. 74:1; 78:52, 70; 79:13; 80:2) and always redolent of the exodus, all function diaphorically, evoking the exodus event when God heard the plaintive bleating of God’s flock and, with a strong arm, led them to freedom and green pastures.32 The nation’s history, in this case a select set of the particulars of its collective past experiences, are juxtaposed with its present experiences in order to transform despair to hope, lament to praise, complaint to trust. The symbolic nature of the mnemohistorical material is, then, in several cases best understood not so much simply as metaphor but as the more nuanced depth of metaphorical meaning that is diaphor.33 To be sure, not every moment or event of the remembered past is capable of exerting this profound symbolic effect; not all memories are established as equal. But there are certain events and individuals that bear this constitutive, definitive power. In the case of the Asaphite Psalter, it is the exodus event that most clearly exerts this level of influence as symbol.34 Form Criticism and the Historical Referents The study of the mnemohistorical referents in Asaph would be incomplete without an examination of the relationship of this material to the 32. See Exod 2:23–24, 6:6; Mic 2:12, for other examples of this terminology. 33. In his otherwise excellent treatment of metaphor in the Psalms, William Brown tends to lump a great many different, subtle semantic functions under the heading of “metaphor.” For the present examples, his treatment of the historical material in the Psalms is apropos. Charting the “landscape of history,” Brown (Seeing the Psalms, 46–53) describes the historical material as a metaphorical “path” or “way” that fits the individual’s life and helps the individual to make sense of life. While this is a part of the function of the historical material in the Psalms, it does not do to limit the way in which the historical referents make meaning. There is more depth of meaning and nature to the historical referent, understood as diaphor, than simple or simplistic ideogrammatic comparison. 34. The symbolic effect of the exodus in Asaph is similar to what Masako Hiraga describes as a “purely” iconic text. Certain texts or phrases, by virtue of their visual and auditory force, signal meaning in an absolute, concrete sense, almost “mimetically.” Other texts are more subtly iconic. Masako K. Hiraga, Metaphor and Iconicity (New York: Palgrave MacMillan, 2005), 17. Cf. Charles S. Pierce, “Logic as Semiotic: The Theory of Signs,” in Philosophical Writings of Pierce, ed. Justus Buchler (New York: Dover, 1955), 105. Pierce identified three iconic types: metaphor, which is representative of character; diagram, which is a representation of relationships; and image, which is descriptive of “simple qualities.”

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varied formal categories that bear it. I turn now to the contexts of the explicit mnemohistorical referents that form the significant body of the Asaphite Psalter. Form-critical observations on the Psalms of Asaph have sought to classify and interpret the psalms by literary genre or type along the traditional lines. The typical conclusion is that the historical referents in these psalms are found predominantly in communal laments, psalms that arise out of times of national tribulation.35 In one respect this is true. As will be seen, however, there is more to be said about the mnemohistory of the Asaphite Psalms than this simple observation allows. One of the advantages of the form-critical approach to the psalms is that it establishes clear guidelines for understanding the literary features of the poetry. A familiarity with the different genres of psalm helps the reader to identify typical features of a given type, and these typical features then allow the reader to note how a given psalm functions according to the typical, expected fashion of a given genre and where it is divergent or distinctive. One of the difficulties with the form-critical approach is that at certain points the attempt to find a clear category for every psalm is simply not possible. Nor is it always possible to isolate a single type for every psalm, some of which may be categorized as two or more types of psalm. This is not to suggest that the approach itself is flawed, but care is needed in its application. One of the issues is that while there may be features typical to a given genre of a psalm, a given psalm may exhibit features typical to more than one type of psalm. In other words, there are different ways of thinking about psalm types. On the one hand, there is the shape of the psalm and its more or less fixed features. So when reading a psalm of complaint, one would expect to find most, if not all, of the following: address, complaint (in “I”, “you,” and/ or “they” forms), petition, trust. Observing those elements in a poem would lead one to make some initial conclusions about its content and function. On the other hand, there are themes, vocabulary, ideas, and so on that occur in more than one formal or structural type of psalm. The following is an admittedly simple visual illustration of the different ways categorization might take place:

35. Limburg, Psalms, 250.

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Image 1

If, presented with this image, one was asked to group the nine different pieces of the picture into smaller groups of three, the question would be what criterion to employ? Does one group by shape (Group A: 1, 4, 7; Group B: 2, 5, 8; Group C: 3, 6, 9), by shade (Group A: 1, 5, 9; Group B: 2, 6, 7; Group C: 3, 4, 8), or by content (Group A: 1, 6, 8; Group B: 2, 4, 9; Group C: 3, 5, 7)? Similarly, in the Psalms both shape and content are ways of categorizing or typing a psalm. As a category, the so-called historical psalms (Gunkel’s “legends”) typically include Psalms 78, 105, and 106.36 Even if the clearly liturgical Psalms 135 and 136 are excluded from the grouping, the genre question 36. Gunkel and Begrich, Introduction to the Psalms, 247; Rolf Jacobson, “Introduction and Study Notes for the Book of Psalms,” in The Lutheran Study Bible (Minneapolis: Augsburg Fortress, 2009), 850.

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is complicated. Konrad Schaefer writes, “A historical psalm may take any of various forms,” and “Psalm 78 begins like a wisdom poem.” In a footnote, he illustrates the variety, citing Psalm 105 as a thanksgiving psalm and Psalm 106 as a lament.37 So is Psalm 78 a wisdom psalm because it begins like one? Is it a historical psalm because of the content of its wisdom? Or is it something else altogether because of its theological/political conclusion? Or is the answer simply “Yes”? The issue is complicated. At this point, Gunkel’s description of this “smaller genre” of the historical psalm is worth quoting at length, The legend appears to be related to Israel’s thanksgiving songs by material. It does not appear independently in the preserved examples. Rather, it only occurs as a component of a very few psalms. The psalms into which the legend entered, and to which the breadth of its material provided a particular expression, belong to various genres. Ps 78, like Deut 32, is a wisdom poem which presents the material of the legend from the vantage point of the admonition and indoctrination of Israel. Ps 105 is a hymn by form, although the appearance of warnings indicates it was a later pattern. Ps 106 is a communal complaint with a hymnic entry.38

Notice that Gunkel, committed to the form-critical issues that were the focus of his study, highlights the differences in the formal elements of Psalms 105 and 106. What he seems to miss is that it is the common element of the historical recital that affects the shift in the expected formal elements of these psalms. Furthermore, he attends only to the psalms that contain some “breadth of material,” ignoring the roles of smaller references and the symbolic language that are more common and more widely dispersed among various psalm types. All of this is suggestive of the need for closer attention to the function of the mnemohistorical material that is typical of the Asaphite collection. Attention is needed to how the mnemohistorical referents function within different types of psalms—that is, to the way they affect meaning in the poetry of the psalms. William Brown puts the matter succinctly: “If genres function to create expectations in the reader that help determine the meaning of the text, then so does the text’s deployment of imagery.”39 Imagery, in the case of the Asaphite Psalms, is

37. Konrad Schaefer, Psalms, Berit Olam (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 2001), 191. 38. Gunkel and Begrich, Introduction to the Psalms, 247. 39. Brown, Seeing the Psalms, 11.

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driven in a fundamental way by the mnemohistorical recitation and reflection. Historical Referents by Genre The Communal Complaints/Laments The Psalms of Asaph are predominantly communal in form. The individual lament is not the chosen vehicle for shared memories of the nation’s past; rather, it is the communal lament that bears memory, the prescribed communal memory. The observation made by Brevard Childs, that ‫ זכר‬is operative primarily in the individual lament,40 is accurate in terms of a wider comparison of both the Psalter itself and of the Hebrew Bible as a whole, but in the case of the Asaphite material the reverse is true. While ‫ זכר‬is employed in the individual’s complaint of Psalm 77, it is employed in the communal psalms as well, and there are more of those types of psalm in the Asaphite collection. Each of Psalms 74, 80, and 83 is a communal lament, and while Psalm 78 is not a lament per se, it is intrinsically communal. In her study of memory in the book of Numbers, Leveen notes that Numbers relies on the primary function of narrative, which is “its ability to make sense of breakdown and disorder.”41 Referencing a personal conversation around Steven Cornell’s “That’s the Story of Our Life,” she continues, “In search of meaning, [a narrator may] narrate the unexpected or disturbing, creating a sense of order.” 42 The poetics of the psalms do something similar, but while the narrative may introduce discord, the psalmist typically does not need to, precisely because the psalmist is employing the remembered past in order to address discord. What is more, the psalms do so with, on the one hand, a more immediate, more visceral struggle with the breakdown and disorder that is experienced and, on the other hand, a more readily appropriated point of reference around which to attempt to reorient oneself and/or one’s fellows—the symbol of the event or figure that is purposefully remembered in the midst of the present chaos. This is effected, first and foremost, through the communal complaint.

40. Childs, Memory and Tradition, 60, emphasis added: “The Psalter offers the largest occurrence of the verb zkr. While it appears in various types of psalms, the overwhelming majority of cases occur in the individual complaint psalms.” 41. Leveen, Memory and Tradition, 5. 42. Ibid.

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Psalm 74 This psalm begins as a communal lamentation over the fall of Jerusalem and the destruction of the temple and Yahweh’s meeting places (vv. 1–11), and ends as a plea for God to remember and keep the covenant (vv. 18–23). In the middle of the communal prayer for help is the mnemohistorical material, and in the context of the communal lament, mnemohistory works as the element of trust that drives the prayer from complaint to hope (vv. 12–17).43 In the face of the present (or recent) destruction of the temple, the community gathered by and around this psalm recalls the creative, cosmogonic power of God that was at work in the beginning and in the early days of the nation: Yet God is my king from of old, working salvation in the midst of the land. You divided the sea in your might, you shattered the heads of the serpents upon the waters, You crushed the heads of Leviathan, you gave him as food for the beast of the wilderness. You cut openings for spring and brook, you dried up ever-flowing streams. Yours is the day, yours also the night, you established the moon and sun. You have fixed all the boundaries of the earth, summer and winter, you made them. (vv. 12–17)

The function of the mnemohistorical referent, the recollection of the power of God both in creation and history, enables hope in the face of catastrophe. As Zenger summarizes, The psalm gives no explanation of the catastrophe, but attempts, in the mode of lament, indeed of accusation, to invoke the tie to God in the interpretive figure of a common fate linking God and his people, in such a way that strength can be derived from this to enable the people to withstand their suffering.44

The “interpretive figure” is the mnemohistorical symbol that is 43. “Noteworthy in Psalm 74 is the hymnic middle section (vv. 12–17), which celebrates the salvific deeds of Yahweh (v. 12). The reconsideration of the earlier salvific activity of Yahweh among his people is carried out as a ‘report in hymnic address.’” Hans-Joachim Kraus, Psalms 60–150 (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1993), 96. 44. Hossfeld and Zenger, Psalms 2, 251.

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employed as the proper recourse of the complaining/hoping community. Psalm 79 While Psalm 79 seems to arise from a similar Sitz im Leben as Psalm 74, its recourse to the past is subtler. Like Psalm 74, Psalm 79 begins with a community lamentation over the destruction of the temple and Jerusalem, We have become a taunt to our neighbors an object of mockery and derision to those around us. (Ps 79:4)

The plaintive “how long” (v. 5) is followed by the jussive urging that God not remember the sins of the people. While there is no explicit move to the typical Asaphite mnemohistory, two particular words are employed that point to the exodus tradition. First, in verse 11 as a response to the groaning of the prisoners (which might also echo Exod 3:7) God’s power is called upon, “according to your great arm [‫]זרֹועך‬ preserve the children of death.”45 The great or strong arm is a standard agent of Israel’s redemption, which cannot help but evoke the historical memory of the exodus.46 Second is the use of‫( צאן‬flock), which is a typical Asaphite designation for the nation as it relates to the exodus event—see Psalms 77:21, 78:52, and 80:2. And again in Psalm 79:8 the sinful misdeeds of generations past—connected once again by the earlier imagery to the exodus—are prayerfully pushed aside. And finally Psalm 79:13 resonates with the explicit claim of Psalm 78:6–8; God’s flock will proclaim to succeeding generations what God has done.47 Resolution of Israel’s mnemohistory to symbol in Psalm 79 seems to be completed, with no explicit recitation of anything like a detailed salvation history, through the use of key language and stock imagery—the stuff of the exodus—the constitutive proto-Israelite historical moment is called to mind.

45. Though John Goldingay (Psalms, 527–28) may be correct that these are not exiles but prisoners, the rhetorical force of the move to the exodus still stands. 46. E.g., Exod 6:6, 15:16. This is particularly true in Deuteronomy; see Deut 4:34 and 5:15 to list but a few examples. 47. “Once that deliverance has been experienced, there will be no stopping the telling of the story, throughout all generations.” Limburg, Psalms, 271.

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Psalm 80 No other Asaphite psalm employs diaphor (images that create an experiential reality by juxtaposition—in the case of Asaph, a connection between past and present) more effectively than Psalm 80. Unlike Psalms 74 and 79, this psalm begins with the statement of trust and hope, which is communicated through the diaphoric image of the ‫רעה‬ ‫( יׂשראל‬shepherd of Israel) who leads “Joseph” like a flock. As was already shown in Psalm 79, Israel as flock is an image that moves one to the exodus memory. As Brown puts it, “This eminently domestic image highlights God’s guidance and sustaining care of Israel, whether through the hostile wilderness (78:52) or at God’s dwelling place.”48 One might state this more forcefully and say that in the Asaphite material the image of the flock is essentially a link to God’s guidance and deliverance from Egypt, which is brought to bear in and for the present moment. And it is this fundamental image that opens the psalm. As God has been the Shepherd of Israel—an appellation for God that is unique to Asaph as well—so God is called upon to shepherd his wandering, suffering people again. It is this image that makes the psalm work and drives its meaning.49 The psalm continues with the complaint that God’s flock is sated with tears (80:5–7) because of the destruction of the pasture (vv. 13–14), and then mixes diaphors, calling Israel the ‫( גפן‬vine) that God transplanted from Egypt (vv. 9–12). Israel as vine is unique in the Psalter to Psalm 80.50 The use of these images—which work as metaphors to present a comparative image to the “present day,” but more deeply as diaphors to draw one back to the mnemohistory of the exodus, actualizing it for this present day—provides the foundation upon which meaning in the psalm is made. The vine diaphor sums up the historical narrative from exodus to Israel, from Joshua to David. This singular image, explicated briefly in six verses, carries the poetic narrative of the entirety of Psalm 78.51 Striking, here, is the Ephraimite perspective, which stands in stark contrast to the Southern perspective in the final form of Psalm 78. God is entreated, in this community 48. Brown, Seeing the Psalms, 151. 49. While Brown (Seeing the Psalms, 86) is certainly correct that the solar imagery of verses 2, 4, and 8 is suggestive of a solar theology implicit here, it ought not to outshine the seminal image pair of shepherd and flock. 50. ‫ גפן‬appears in Psalm 105:33 referring to the actual (not metaphorical) vines of the Egyptians that God struck with plague and in Psalm 128:3 where it is employed as a metaphor for the blessings of family that come from a “fruitful” wife whose children sprout up around the dinner table. 51. Goldingay, Psalms, 539, 573.

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prayer for help, to help the community as God has in the past—like a shepherd tending his flock and as a gardener lovingly tends her plants. Psalm 83 In this last of the communal prayers for help, the recourse to the remembered past reaches a new height. The psalm has no real detail about the dangers that the community’s enemies present. There is no actual context given. The enemies are “in tumult” and they hate Yahweh (v. 3), they scheme against God’s people (v. 4) and form an anticovenant against Israel and Yahweh (vv. 5–6), but again there are no specifics, unlike Palms 74 and 79. What we find in Psalm 83 is the history of Israel’s struggles summarized through a geographical circuit of Israel’s neighbors.52 Ten nations are ranged against Israel and Yahweh. As is often noted, there is no historically plausible time when all of these nations could have formed a league against Israel. The psalmist employs these ten nations, spanning both time and space, as figures that characterize Israel’s struggles with her neighbors, both historically and presently, through a subtle mnemohistorical image of Israel’s “situ.”53 The prayer request that fearful Israel makes is also explicitly mnemohistorical, calling for God to do to these enemies as God did to Sisera and Jabin (Judg 4:13-16) and to Oreb, Zeeb, Zebah, and Zalmunna (Judg 7:22–25, 8:4–21). All of this is done, once again, in service of the implicit mnemohistorical allusion to God’s victories over the Egyptians, which made God’s name known to all.54 This general, even generic communal prayer for help is, in effect, an opportunity to rehearse the mnemohistorical realities that Israel faced, and faces. This is done in such general terms that it may apply to virtually any new or imaginable Sitz im Leben. The communal complaint/lament is typically made up of complaint about trials and tribulations, a petition to God to address the situation, and reflection on guilt or innocence accompanied by pleas for God to hear.55 What is unique in the Asaphite material is the role that the mnemohistorical recital plays within the genre. The mnemohistory of God’s actions on Israel’s behalf and the current reality of the people are brought together in direct equation. Sense is made of the present 52. As Goldingay (ibid., 573) notes this is an unparalleled list of Israel’s enemies. 53. Hossfeld and Zenger, Psalms 2, 342; cf. Patrick D. Miller, “Psalms,” in The Harper Collins Study Bible, ed. Wayne A. Meeks (San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 2006), 800. 54. As discussed in chapter 3. 55. Gunkel and Begrich, Introduction to the Psalms, 88.

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and hope/confidence/possibility for the future is realized by means of the past. Nowhere else in the communal, cultic lamentation of other psalms is this element of the communal complaint carried out by means of the mnemohistorical referent so fully or singularly as in Asaph. The Individual Complaint/Lament, Psalm 77 Like its communal counterpart, Psalm 74, Psalm 77 begins with an extended prayer for help. The psalmist is so troubled she cannot sleep (v. 3); with the threefold act of remembrance (vv. 4, 7, 12) she thinks, meditates (v. 4), and considers “the days of old” (v. 6) but finds no comfort. The typical questions of “How long? Forever?” rise to the conclusion, And I say, “My lamentation is this: The right hand of the Most High is changed.

Following this note of despair, which seems to have arisen from contemplation of days gone by, the psalmist returns to her contemplation, and there is a sharp shift between the two parts of the psalm, verses 1–11 and 12–21: I will make known the deeds of the Lord; I will remember your wonders of old. I will meditate on all your work, and muse on your mighty deeds. (Ps 77:12–13)

Contemplation turns from ‫( ימים מקדם‬the days of old) in 77:6 to ‫מקדם‬ ‫( פלאך‬God’s wonders of old) in 77:12. These wonders (‫)פלא‬, wrought by the strong arm (‫ )זרוע‬of God (Ps 77:16), are the wonders of the exodus. At the risk of over-interpretation, it may also be tentatively suggested that the musing/remembering shifts from generic to specific, from days in general to wonders (i.e., exodus) specifically. The psalmist moves from this summary, symbolic language to an explicit recitation of the cosmogonic action of God in creation (vv. 17–19), to the cosmogonic action of God in the parting of the Reed Sea (v. 20), back to the summary diaphoric description of God leading the people ‫כצאן‬ (like a flock; v. 21). In Psalm 77, the individual takes up the mnemohistorical tools (both explicit and implicit) of the community and makes

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them her own. She bends the mnemohistory that is re-presented for the community to her own personal, individual need and so moves the mnemohistory of Israel to a new level of actualization through communal mnemohistory to individual actualization. This is the innovation of the mnemohistory not only in terms of the construal and construction of cultural identity from the communal to the individual, but also in terms of the genre of the individual complaint/lament. As James Limburg puts it, “The Psalm reports that remembering the Lord’s works in the past aided in the struggle of trying to understand God’s apparent lack of action in the present.”56 The plea or petition that is an expected part of the lament takes on a particular form in Psalm 77. Instead of a true petition, the mnemohistorical reflection takes central place. Both God and petitioner are brought into remembrance as a part of the complaint and, perhaps, of confidence and hope as well.57 The Song of Zion, Psalm 76 Like its counterparts, Psalms 46 and 48, this Psalm of Zion revels in the victory of God at Zion; this is the mount where the divine lion makes his home (v. 3). The celebration of Yahweh’s victory is, by itself, a mnemohistorical referent, celebrating the capture of Jerusalem.58 The memory of the event is sparsely kept, but God’s victories are so complete that the weapons of war are rendered useless. This explicit reference to victory at Zion is supported by an implicit reference to the victory at the Reed Sea, carried in verse 7: At your rebuke, O God of Jacob, both chariots and horses [‫ ]ורכב וסוס‬lay stunned.

A similar phrasing of the destruction of horse and chariot opens the Song of the Sea in Exodus 15:1: I will sing to the Lord, for he has triumphed gloriously; 56. Limburg, Psalms, 261. 57. Goldingay (Psalms, 460) summarizes the role of the mnemohistorical recitation nicely, “In the context of the opening lines, vv. 13–20 do not represent a move from gloom to confidence, from protest to praise, as if the suppliant’s questions are resolved by the recollection of the Red Sea story. Rather, their distinctive effect is to leave God and suppliant with the acts of the past that contrast with the present. . . . In a sense, then, vv. 13–20 function in the place of the actual plea in the psalm, which is otherwise missing.” 58. Or perhaps, a la Limburg (Psalms, 257), the defeat of the Assyrians in 701 BCE; compare Goldingay, Psalms, 450.

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horse and rider [‫ ]סוס ורכבֹו‬he has thrown into the sea.

Here too, as with Psalm 83, the mnemohistorical setting is brought to bear upon a new context through appeal to symbolic language into which the historical event has resolved. This Song of Zion is sung, in part, in the language of the Song of the Sea.59 As Hossfeld and Zenger have shown, there is great similarity in the hymnic elements, syntax, structure, and vocabulary of Psalms 76, 46, and 48, all of which are typically classified as Zion songs.60 A key difference, among others, is the implicit appeal to the mnemohistory of the exodus already mentioned. The Asaphite Song of Zion looks to the actions of God in history and, indeed, expresses the establishment of Zion in terms of the Reed Sea victory. Psalm 76 “has been connected historically with the time of David as well as the Assyrian crisis, but it also looks behind these to the Reed Sea even (see esp. vv. 6–7).”61 In this, the particular interests of the Asaphite mnemohistory are again apparent. The Liturgy, Psalm 81 Psalm 81 is the most obviously cultic, or liturgical, of the Asaphite Psalms. The psalm begins like a praise song with a call to worship, summoning Israel to worship in song, sounding the shofar at the new moon festival (v. 4). This summons is not just in accordance with but actually called statute (‫)חק‬, ordinance (‫)מׁשפט‬, and decree (‫ ;עדות‬vv. 5–6, echoing Ps 78:5). In addressing the parallel pattern in Psalm 78, John Goldingay asks whether the ‫ עדות‬is the bulk of the psalm itself, the requirement to teach God’s past acts and ongoing expectations of the people, or a particular occasion for celebration and worship in these terms.62 It seems likely, based on Psalm 81, that it is all of these. The specific occasion of this festal worship is debated, but if it is meant for more than the regular first-of-the-month feast days,63 it seems most likely that it is intended for Sukkot, based on similarities to the expectations described in Leviticus 23:42–43.64 59. For an in-depth analysis of the relationship of the Song of the Sea to the Asaphite material, see Brenner, Song of the Sea. Brenner argues convincingly that the authors of Exodus 15 are Asaphite. 60. Hossfeld and Zenger, Psalm 2, 261. 61. Goldingay, Psalms, 450. 62. Ibid., 486. 63. Harris, Archer, and Waltke, Theological Wordbook, 266. 64. Goldingay, Psalms, 549; Limburg, Psalms, 276.

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The content of new moon festal worship (Ps 81:4) is a recitation of Israel’s deliverance from Egypt, placed on the lips of Yahweh: I relieved your shoulder of the burden; your hands were freed from the basket. In distress you called, and I rescued you; I answered you in the secret place of thunder; I tested you at the waters of Meribah. Hear, O my people, while I admonish you; O Israel, if you would but listen to me! There shall be no strange god among you; you shall not bow down to a foreign god. I am Yahweh your God, who brought you up out of the land of Egypt. Open your mouth wide and I will fill it. (Ps 81:7–11)

The psalm then closes with exhortations for the people to learn the lesson their ancestors did not and for God’s present people to listen and walk in Yahweh’s way (v. 14). Here the explicit mnemohistorical referent is employed as a means to call Israel to worship, to repentance, and to right relationship with God. There is one phrase that is particularly striking as it introduces the first person discourse attributed to Yahweh: ‫( ׂשפת לא־ידעתי אׁשמע‬I hear a voice I do not know; v. 6b). This phrase is often taken to mean the mysterious voice of God, uttered by the cultic prophet, and this is certainly the case, at least in part.65 But the function of this phrase, when taken both as a part of the Asaphite collection and as an introduction to explicit mnemohistorical reflection, introducing as it does the recitation of Israel’s salvation history, serves to emphasize the obedience of the liturgy to the divine statute, ordinance, and decree, and effectively makes familiar both this voice and the content of its mnemohistorical recitation to a new audience and a new generation. Mnemohistory is thus the content and the intended effect of cultic, festal worship as it is employed in this liturgical psalm. Mnemohistory in this particular liturgical psalm is not unique per se. Psalm 135 addresses those who stand in God’s courts and house (v. 2) and recite the remembered past from Egypt to conquest, calling upon the Levitical guilds (“O House of Aaron . . . O House of Levi bless the Lord!” vv. 19–20) to carry out this task. What is unique about 65. See Patrick Miller, “Psalms Annotations,” in The Harper Collins Study Bible (San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 2006), 877.

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the mnemohistorical referent in Psalm 81 is its place in the liturgy. The very content, the command, is that worship be reminiscent, with an eye toward continued and/or new obedience. The words of the mnemohistorical material (vv. 6b–11) are placed in the mouth of God. The liturgical action then is not praise of God but admonition from God. As the worshipping community listens, they obey. In the liturgy of Asaph, this is the clear rhetorical force and goal of the mnemohistorical material.66 The Communal Thanksgiving, Psalm 75 In the one thanksgiving psalm in the Asaphite corpus, there is no specific historical event that is explicitly praised, rather it is God’s judgment in equity (‫ ;מיׁשרים‬v. 3) that is praised as that which settles the shaking foundations of the earth (cf. Ps 82:5). This judgment, however, is couched in the celebration of the close proximity of the divine name (Ps 75:2), which inspires the people to “recount your wonders,” (‫ ;ספרו נפלאותיך‬cf. v. 10). This word “wonders” is not uncommon in the Psalter. It is used to describe how the human being is made (Ps 139:14), the character and quality of the torah (Ps 119:18, 129), and the general manner in which God is steadfast in love of God’s people (Ps 31:22). But it bears repeating that ‫ פלא‬also occurs elsewhere in the Asaphite Psalms (Ps 77:12, 15; 78:4, 11, 12, 32), and it is always associated with the “plagues” and acts of power in the exodus. As, of course, it is in the exodus narrative as well.67 It is telling that people give thanks for and tell of God’s wonders in the context of the judgments of God. While “wonders” does encompass a great many possibilities outside of the Asaphite material (including the plagues, see Ps 105:5, 23–45) here it cannot be read as anything other than reference to the Asaphite mnemohistorical crux—the exodus. And within the bounds of the Asaphite collection, the closing verses of the psalm are crucial to a proper understanding of just what is happening here. The foundation of Israel’s thanksgiving is the relationship of the past to the present. “The psalm implies a different relationship between past and future. Past wonders are not continued in present acts of God, but God promises they will be.”68 The basis for its confidence in God’s judg66. Goldingay, Psalms, 556: “The psalm is about listening; ‫ ׁשמע‬comes five times. That verb is often translated ‘hear,’ but that underplays the intentionality it implies. We can hear and take no notice; if we listen, it implies we heed. Thus ‫ ׁשמע‬often suggests ‘obey’ and not merely ‘listen.’” 67. Exod 3:20: “So I will stretch out my hand and strike Egypt with all my wonders that I will perform in it; after that he will let you go.”

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MEMORIES OF ASAPH

ments is recounted; subtly, implicitly, the resolved symbolic summary of God’s salvific actions in the exodus are reengaged here in a reference to God’s ‫נפלאות‬. Conclusions Some conclusions may be drawn vis-à-vis form criticism and explicit Asaphite mnemohistory. To return to Gunkel, the observation that the “legend”—that is, the mnemohistorical referent—is found at the heart of thanksgiving and praise, is disproven by the Asaphite collection. What is striking is that the later biblical material in ChroniclesNehemiah seems to form a new mnemohistorical stratum that offers support for Gunkel’s form-critical premise but that does not reflect accurately the content of the Psalms of Asaph. In Nehemiah 12:46, one reads that “there were songs of praise and thanksgiving to God” in the days gone by. In the Chronicler’s account, there are several points at which the content of Asaphite worship is summarized in just this manner, including what may be considered the centerpiece of the Chronicler’s mnemohistory of Asaph, 1 Chronicles 16. Here, in verse 4, David appoints “certain of the Levites as ministers before the ark of the Lord, to invoke, to thank, and to praise the Lord, the God of Israel.” To “thank and to praise” becomes the standard summary of the content of Asaphite worship. The occasions for which Asaphite or Levitical service is established/reestablished bear this out: the Feast of Tabernacles in 2 Chronicles 5:13, “It was the duty of the trumpeters and singers to make themselves heard in unison in praise and thanksgiving to the Lord”; the temple dedication in 2 Chronicles 7:6, “The priests stood at their posts; the Levites also, with the instruments for music to the Lord that King David had made for giving thanks to the Lord”; Jehoshaphat’s battle with Ammon and Moab in 2 Chronicles 20:21, “When he had taken counsel with the people, he appointed those who were to sing to the Lord and praise him in holy splendor, as they went before the army, saying, ‘Give thanks to the Lord, for his steadfast love endures forever’”; and the Second Temple dedication in Ezra 3:10–11, “the sons of Asaph, with cymbals, according to the directions of King David of Israel; and they sang responsively, praising and giving thanks to the Lord.” And in 1 Chronicles 16, three psalms form a composite exemplar of Asaphite praise and thanksgiving. Twice, once in the psalm and once as summary of 68. Goldingay, Psalms, 440.

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the role of those appointed, we encounter a common phrase: 1 Chronicles 16:34, “O give thanks to the Lord, for he is good; for his steadfast love endures forever”; 16:41, “With them were Heman and Jeduthun, and the rest of those chosen and expressly named to render thanks to the Lord, for his steadfast love endures forever.” Praise and thanksgiving in general, and as summarized by a particular phrase, “for his steadfast love endures forever,” are central to the service of Asaph as it is re-presented in Chronicles. One might well expect that this phrase, “for his steadfast love endures forever,” so central to the Chronicler’s descriptions, would be found in the Asaphite Psalter, perhaps even frequently. Yet it occurs nowhere in the psalms bearing the superscription‫לאסף‬ (to Asaph). Perhaps the phrase is best understood not as a quotation or a phrase shared with specific psalms but as a paradigmatic summary of the Asaphite corpus as a whole. One might then expect that from a form-critical standpoint the Asaphite Psalms would be predominantly psalms of praise and thanksgiving, but again such expectations are disappointed. The Asaphite collection is predominantly complaint (74, 77, 79, 80, 83), with wisdom/instruction (73, 76, 78) and prophetic material (within various genre categories) rounding out the group (50, 75, 81, 83). There is a pointed disconnect here between the Asaphite Psalter and the Asaphite traditum as it is characterized or re-presented by the Chronicler. Four of the Asaphite Psalms are prayers of communal trouble or complaint (74, 79, 80, and 83); this is clearly the primary form in this collection of psalms and employs the mnemohistorical material the most consistently. As both Beat Weber and Hermann Gunkel observed, the relationship of the Asaphite material to complaint is significant. One third of the Asaphite collection is communal complaint, while half of all of the communal laments are Asaphite.69 This certainly suggests some significant relationship between lamentation and Asaphite mnemohistory. Problematic, however, is the fact that each of these psalms contains a reference to a current national reality—the “meeting places” of God having been defiled (Psalm 74), the temple and Jerusalem having been destroyed (Psalm 79), the nation having been uprooted (Psalm 80), and the enemies of the people laying plans and plotting the destruction of Israel (Psalm 83). It is important to note that the communal laments contain only a certain kind of historical infor69. Beat Weber, “Der Asaph-Psalter, eine Skizze,” in Prophetie und Psalmen: Festschrift für Klaus Seybold zum 65, ed. Beat Huwyler, Hans-Peter Mathys, and Beat Weber (Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2001), 119; Gunkel and Begrich, Introduction to the Psalms, 117.

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mation, reference to a current situation. With two exceptions—Psalms 80:9 and 83:9–11—the past is not called upon at all; rather, the present historical situation is the setting out of which national lamentation arises. In the case of Psalm 80:9, the image of Israel as the vine that the Lord brought out of Egypt and planted in the promised land serves primarily to intensify the “disorientation” felt by the troubled people. Of the communal laments, only Psalm 83 reflects on the past explicitly and seeks to make some connection with the present. “As God did to Sisera and Jabin, as God did to Oreb and Zeeb, Zebah and Zalmunna, may God do again now to our enemies.” For the most part, the communal laments contain mnemohistory only insofar as they are read after the fact. Other psalm types, however, employ different historical referents and in different ways. The exodus is remembered in four Asaphite Psalms. Psalm 78, the Asaphite magnum opus of historical remembrance, is primarily didactic, setting its mnemohistorical reflection in the context of obedience to divine statute and ordinance (78:5) for the good order of future generations; however, it also makes a connection with the kingship of David, articulating a case for the election of the Davidic dynasty against the backdrop of history (78:67–72). Similarly, Psalm 80, the one Asaphite communal lament that explicitly employs the memory of the exodus, contrasts the past and its promise with the current reality. The desperate hope of this psalm is that the mnemohistorical recollection, held up as an inverse metaphor, offers the true reality, over-against the present situation. Psalm 77, an individual lament, remembers God’s saving acts, the “wonders of old” for the people, and the psalmist appropriates them as hopeful for her own situation. And Psalm 81, a liturgy that shows signs of wisdom or torah influence, sees worship (as opposed to instruction) as what has been commanded and admonishes appropriate response because of what God has done. One conclusion is that mnemohistory, functioning as it does within several different psalm types, cannot be fully understood through type or form analysis. Interpretation of these psalms cannot be limited to the question of form-critical type (particularly as it has been classically employed by Gunkel), although to be sure neither can form criticism be ignored. The rhetorical function of the mnemohistorical referent stands on par with form-critical concerns in terms of its significance for and importance in understanding the way in which a psalm creates and orders meaning.70 Another conclusion is that the analysis of formcritical types must be shaped, to some degree, by a study of these

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psalms; the particular “form of the forms”—of lament, thanksgiving, and Zion song—is distinctive in Asaph, emphasizing as it does the congregation’s and the individual’s needs for the past in making sense of the present. On the one hand, this is how Asaph remembers (in lamentation, in thanksgiving, etc.), and on another hand, this is how Asaph laments, gives thanks, and reflects theologically about Zion—through mnemohistory. A final conclusion is that there is, in the diverse forms in which the mnemohistorical material is employed, an overarching “architectural mnemonic” through which the Asaphite collection addresses the tension of the individual/communal and the personalmemory/collective-memory dialectic.

70. As William Brown (Seeing the Psalms, 3) has argued, “theology cannot afford to abandon its poetic roots in the name of scientific accuracy or dialectical precision. Needed in the art of exegesis, particularly in interpreting the psalms, are ways of investigating the most basic building block[s] of poetry.”

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5

Psalm 78: The Heart of What Asaph Remembers

Psalm 78 is the longest, by far, of the so-called historical psalms (cf. Psalms 105, 106, 135, 136), and the second longest of all the psalms (cf. Psalm 119). Psalm 78 is also the core of the Asaphite mnemohistory, the heart of what Asaph remembers, not only in terms of its relative length and scope and its physical location in the midst of the collection, but in terms of its relative date and influence.1 What we have represented in Psalm 78 is, in one sense, the better part of Israel’s national history as a united monarchy, from its beginning to a particular stopping point, the establishment of the house of David. While this presentation does provide a sort of temporal landscape or topography of Israel’s history, it cannot be taken as a complete picture.2 It is only when each mnemohistorical referent is lifted from the various psalms of the Asaphite collection as a whole and strung together that one can see the overall picture preserved in this collection of psalms as a group, and even that picture is far from a complete version of Israel’s history. The historical material in the Asaphite Psalms simply is not systematic or comprehensive, nor is it even par1. Of the 11 Asaphite Psalms that remain together at the beginning of book 3 of the Psalter, Psalm 78 stands at the center: 5 psalms (73–77), Psalm 78, 5 psalms (79–83). 2. Weiser, Psalms, 538.

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ticularly detailed. This historical record is somewhat episodic, due in large part to the cultic character of the mnemohistorical material, which is neither narrative nor “critical,” but hymnic, social, and theological in nature. Psalm 78 stands as the primary piece of the theological-mnemohistorical recital and the origin of the Asaphite mnemohistorical material as it is employed in the rest of the collection. This is the case both in terms of the content that makes up that history and the theological use to which it is put. Mnemohistory and Psalm 78: Provenance, Dating, and Influence Psalm 78 calls its own mnemohistorical recital a ‫( מׁשל‬parable). The poem recites a version of the exodus event, from the performance of God’s wonders or plagues in the vicinity of Tanis,3 to the parting of the Reed Sea, and finally to the settlement of the promised land. The psalm has clear affinities not only to the Song of the Sea in Exodus 154 but to the prose narrative of Exodus as well. At the same time, there are distinctive aspects of the psalm that suggest that it cannot be wholly dependent on Exodus. The relationship of poem to narrative is its own parable. Psalm 78 is sometimes characterized as presupposing the Pentateuchal narrative or as needing the backdrop of those traditions in order to be fully understood.5 This is not necessarily the case, however, and in fact Psalm 78 may be the precursor to the prose narratives of the Pentateuch.6 As John Goldingay notes: Perhaps the psalm is dependent on that narrative as we know it (or, for instance, on the J version of the narrative of the plagues) and expands on it with the help of other traditions or Scriptures or simply the author’s creativity, in midrashic fashion. Or perhaps the narrative is later than the psalm and expands on it. The detailed nature of the verbal links makes it less likely that the two are independent versions of the story. But we do not know how far the psalm’s distinctive motifs reflect independent traditions and how far they come from the writer’s imagination, nor do

3. “Zoan” (‫)צען‬, which the Old Greek reads as Τάνεως (Tanis); vv. 12, 43. 4. See Brenner, Song of the Sea, 152–60. 5. Kraus, Psalms 60–150, 127-130; Weiser, Psalms, 538; Mays, Psalms, 254; Robert Alter, The Art of Biblical Poetry (New York: Basic Books, 1985), 27; Jones, Psalms of Asaph, 83. 6. Walter Brueggemann, Abiding Astonishment: Psalms, Modernity, and the Making of History (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox, 1991), 52.

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we know when Exodus-Joshua was written or the nature and date of the sources used.7

One of the dangers inherent in trying to answer this question is the tendency to assume the direction of influence. In comparing this psalm with the Deuteronomistic material, there may be a tendency to assume that anything that sounds Deuteronomistic must, therefore, originate with the Deuteronomists. An example of such assumptions is the work of Martin Brenner in his study of the Song of the Sea. Brenner makes note of several phrases that occur in Psalm 78 that he refers to as “Deuteronomistic clichés that do not appear in pre-Deuteronomistic material.”8 The assumption (one that is all too common in Brenner’s study) is that the psalm must be later and derivative. Brenner therefore finds, not surprisingly, evidence he reads as proving his argument; his argumentation is, at best, circular at this point. Brenner is not alone in this,9 nor are the presumptions confined to the Deuteronomistic material. In arguing for a middling date (neither too early nor postexilic) for the psalm, Philip Stern claims that where there is intersection between Psalm 78 and two eighth-century prophets, Hosea and Amos, these prophets influence the psalmist because, “It is highly unlikely that a major prophet like Amos conceptualized his treatment of vital religious matters under the tutelage of the relatively obscure psalmist.”10 While Stern may well be correct in his claim that these prophets did have an impact on the writing of the psalm, his argumentation is weak and his reasoning strange. Something more cautious and based more carefully on the text itself is required. In seeking to establish some sense of the relationship between the poetic recourse to the past of Psalm 78 and other prose narratives of the exodus, I offer now an estimation of the date of the psalm’s primary composition by examining its distinctive elements.

7. Goldingay, Psalms, 483. 8. Brenner, Song of the Sea, 154. 9. John Day notes a similar weakness in the arguments of Perlitt, which is “to assume that the Deuteronomic theology evolved out of nothing. It has a built-in bias towards assuming that anything reminiscent of Deuteronomic language or thought must be the result of Deuteronomic redaction and fails to allow sufficiently for the sources of his theology.” John Day, “The PreDeuteronomic Allusions to the Covenant in Hosea and Psalm LXXVII,” Vetus Testamentum 36, no. 1 (1986): 7. 10. Philip D. Stern, “The Eighth Century Dating of Psalm 78 Re-Argued,” Hebrew Union College Annual 66 (1995): 51.

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The Dating of Psalm 78 While dating a psalm is typically difficult, and ought to be hazarded carefully and with some reservation, the most likely time frame for Psalm 78 is in the early preexilic period, located somewhere in the ninth or eighth century BCE, but certainly not later than the reign of Hezekiah or Josiah. It must be acknowledged that, as with many of the psalms, dating Psalm 78 with absolute certainty is difficult. Again, Goldingay summarizes the varying possibilities well: The Psalm’s ending with God’s choice of Judah, Jerusalem, and David might have various implications regarding its date. It might suggest that it comes from David or Solomon’s day. It might come from the period after the split between Ephraim and Judah, when Ephraim was usually the stronger of the two, and it might thus buttress Judah’s position. It might come from shortly after the fall of Ephraim and respond to that. It might come from the later preexilic period, when Judean kings such as Josiah again sought to exercise authority in the north. It might come from the exilic or Second Temple period with its rivalry between Judah and Samaria, when (we know from Chronicles) the election of David remained very important to the community. It might come from a messianically inclined Second Temple community. The question is complicated by the possibility that the psalm might have developed in stages to the form that we have.11

There has been little or no consensus on the dating of this psalm. A general impression left by a survey of several studies of Psalm 78 seems to suggest that this psalm must be relatively late.12 But such a conclusion is far from certain, and the content of the psalm itself militates against this. As Richard Clifford has noted, “A post-exilic date suggested by Gunkel for stylistic reasons, and by other scholars for historical reasons, seems excluded by the lively role of the Davidic shepherd as the unifying agent in vv 70–72.”13 11. Goldingay, Psalms, 481. On the last possibility, see Anthony F. Campbell, “Psalm 78: A Contribution to the Theology of Tenth Century Israel,” Catholic Biblical Quarterly 41, no. 1 (1979): 51–79, in which he argues for a complex matrix of reinterpretation and redaction. Hossfeld and Zenger (Psalms 2, 290–93) survey a similar breadth of possibilities in terms of dating. 12. For examples of such an assumption, see Jones, Psalms of Asaph, 89; Adele Berlin, “Psalms and the Literature of the Exile: Psalms 137, 44, 69, and 78,” in The Book of Psalms: Composition and Reception, ed. Peter W. Flint and Patrick D. Miller Jr. (Leiden: Brill, 2005), 78; Brenner, Song of the Sea, 153. 13. Richard J. Clifford, “An Interpretation of Psalm 78,” in Traditions in Transformation: Turning Points in Biblical Faith, ed. Baruch Halpern and Jon D. Levenson (Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 1981), 138. Campbell (“Psalm 78,” 65) also notes that there is a great deal of independence to Psalm 78 and no reason to justify a late date or dependence on the Pentateuch.

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The metaphor of the Davidic shepherd is not the only mitigating factor however. It has been frequently noted that the language of the psalm does not appear to be at all late, and the influence of an assumed Deuteronomistic redactor is far from sure. The pairing of the terms ‫( עדות‬statute) and ‫( תורה‬law; Ps 78:5) is unique to the psalm, attested nowhere in the Deuteronomistic material, or elsewhere for that matter.14 In its use of the plagues, Psalm 78 also displays only a partial relation to the traditions of the Pentateuch.15 In addition, the psalm exhibits frequent novelty, the use of original words (e.g., ‫[ חנמל‬frost]) and turns of phrase: God gave them “manna to eat, and gave them the grain of heaven. Men ate the bread of the strong” (‫ ;וימטר עליהם מן לאכל ודגן־ׁשמים נתן למו לחם אבירים אכל איׁש‬vv. 24–25). As Philip Stern has argued, these linguistic features suggest, at the very least, that the psalm employed sources other than the book of Exodus, sources that are now unknown to us, as it was being written.16 If there is dependence on Exodus, one would expect a good deal more affinity and evidence of that dependence, and so, indeed, the psalm may well represent a discreet source all its own. What is more, as David Noel Freedman has argued, the use of the varied epithets and titles for God exhibited in Psalm 78 (as well as in the rest of the Asaphite material) militate against a later date for the psalm: During the latter part of Phase III [ninth to tenth centuries BCE], there was a significant development in the use of equivalent or substitute terms for the principal name, Yahweh, along with the general proliferation of divine names and epithets already described. It would be entirely reasonable to associate this development with the worship at the temple and the adaptation of the rich Canaanite musical and poetic traditions for liturgical use there.17

On these grounds, Freedman locates the psalm’s origins in the period of the early monarchy.18 Finally, there is the noteworthy use of the waw-consecutive in Psalm 78. As Mark Smith has shown, the use of the waw-consecutive decreases dramatically in later biblical Hebrew (see Ezra, Nehemiah, Esther).19 14. See Day, “Pre-Deuteronomic Allusions,” 11. 15. Ibid., 9: “Ps. 78 shows no knowledge of . . . the P and E sources in its account of the plagues (contrast 105:28–36).” 16. Stern, “Eighth Century Dating,” 45–46. 17. David Noel Freedman, Pottery, Poetry, and Prophecy: Studies in Early Hebrew poetry (Winona Lakes, IN: Eisenbrauns, 1980), 116. Cf. Stern, “Eighth Century Dating,” 43–44, 64. 18. Freedman, Pottery, 103. 19. For a full discussion of the origins and shifting usage of the waw-consecutive, see Mark S. Smith,

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This typically Canaanite (Ugaritic) poetic feature is well represented in Psalm 78, where it is employed no less than fifty-seven times. While by itself this is no guarantee of an early date, the evidence does suggest that one might expect later material to exhibit much less use of this particular form. Each of these linguistic insights urges an earlier rather than a later dating of the psalm. In addition to the basic linguistic evidence of a relatively early date for the psalm, the internal reference to (or silence on) certain events suggests a similarly early dating. In Psalm 78:69, the description of the temple is of its being “founded forever” (‫)יסדה לעולם‬. If the psalmist had been aware that Solomon’s Temple did not, in fact, last forever but was defiled and destroyed in 587 BCE, this would almost certainly have been reflected in the psalm. The emphasis on the destruction of Shiloh and the reference to the establishment of the temple suggest that Psalm 78 was written sometime after 960 BCE and, at the very least, predates the fall of Jerusalem in 587 BCE.20 Another critical aspect of the psalm is that it never makes a clear, unequivocal reference to the fall of the Northern Kingdom. The destruction of Shiloh, one of the climactic moments to which the psalm drives, is a reference not to the fall of the North but to the battle of Aphek, ca. 1050 BCE, in which Israel is defeated and the ark of the covenant is captured by the Philistines (1 Samuel 4). At this point, the destruction of the Northern Kingdom is not at issue; rather, it is the election of Jerusalem over the Northern shrines as the place wherein God’s name will dwell that motivates the mnemohistorical reflection. The capture of Israel in 722 BCE is not in evidence yet. And, again, there is no reference to the fall of Judah. As noted above, the temple is established and the assumption is that it will endure. Nowhere in Psalm 78 is there any use of language that is typical of postexilic hymnody (of remnants, of return, etc.) from either a Northern or a Southern perspective.21 As such, it seems reasonable to conclude that the psalm has its origin after 960 BCE (the construction of Solomon’s Temple) and before 722 BCE (the Assyrian conquest of Israel). Finally, in addition to these specific elements of the psalm’s content, Clifford has argued convincingly that the psalm exhibits language that calls the North into judgment. With the poem’s terminus with the The Origins and Development of the Waw-Consecutive: Northwest Semitic Evidence from Ugarit to Qumran, Harvard Semitic Studies 39 (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1991), esp. 57–59. 20. See Day, “Pre-Deuteronomic Allusions,” 9; Stern, “Eighth Century Dating,” 45. 21. Stern, “Eighth Century Dating,” 44.

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Davidic line, this suggests a motivation toward lionization and invitation. The house of David is propped up by the concluding cola of the psalm, and the Northern tribes, far from being rejected, are invited into a reorientation of their identity and political and theological loyalty, centered in Jerusalem, which again suggests an earlier date. 22 The Influence of Psalm 78 The locating of Psalm 78 in the eighth century BCE, if correct, would mean that it is unlikely that the traditions of the Pentateuch are the Vorlage of the psalm and would in fact suggest that, if anything, influence runs in the other direction. Walter Brueggemann has suggested just such a relationship of psalm to prose: In the Old Testament itself, it is clear that the Psalter is completely embedded in Israel’s larger narrative construal of faith, so that its songs and prayers are connected to the Torah and to the historical narratives. It is possible, then, that the Psalter was an initial articulation of Israel’s memory, cast from the first as prayer and poem, from which the other narratives subsequently emerged.23

If Brueggemann is correct, and I would suggest that in the case of Psalm 78 he is, then it may be maintained that Psalm 78 stands, if not in isolation from other biblical material that relates the exodus events, then at least on its own merits and in its own way. The Asaphite magnum opus is its own more or less discrete account of the exodus, commending its commemoration, offering reflection on its importance, and applying it as background for the immanence of Yahweh and the election of the Davidic dynasty. This sheds light on another critical aspect of the study of Psalm 78: what to make of its type. How Psalm 78 Remembers The dating of Psalm 78 is not the only “parable” or “dark saying” that arises in regards to its provenance. As Antony Campbell notes, “Psalm 78 has long been one of the puzzles of the Psalter; its literary genre is supposedly difficult to discern, since history, hymn, and wisdom can all establish a claim to it.”24 The conundrum is amplified by the fact that 22. Ibid. 23. Walter Brueggemann, foreword to Psalms for Preaching and Worship: A Lectionary Commentary, ed. Roger Van Harn and Brent A. Strawn (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2009), xv.

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the biblical material many take to be the closest relative to Psalm 78, the Song of the Sea, is of a completely different type. Exodus 15 exhibits the characteristics of the victory song.25 Psalm 78, whatever it may be, is no victory song. As was noted above, Psalm 78 self-identifies as a ‫( מׁשל‬parable). The ‫ מׁשל‬is a feature typically associated with wisdom literature, although in the prophets and elsewhere in the psalms it has more to do with taunting or ridicule.26 As noted in chapter 3,27 Psalms 49 and 78 both use the word ‫מׁשל‬, but the way the word is used is different. In Psalm 49:5 the psalmist declares, ‫( אטה למׁשל אזני‬I will incline my ear to a parable). The psalm then illustrates that parable, employing traditional wisdom features. In Psalm 78:2 the psalmist declares, ‫( אפתחה במׁשל פי‬I will open my mouth in a parable). The psalm then recites Israel’s remembered past, recounting the people’s story beginning with the exodus. In Psalm 78 the content of the ‫ מׁשל‬is the mnemohistorical material; the remembered story of God’s dealings with Israel in the past is served up, via the parable, for the memory of the people. Another technical term that may lend some insight to the genre of Psalm 78 comes from its superscription. Psalm 78 is called a ‫מׂשכיל‬, which Sigmund Mowinckel takes to mean “insight.”28 “A maskîl thus probably indicates the cultic poem as the outcome of a supra-normal ‘wisdom’ and ‘insight.’”29 It is not entirely certain what Mowinckel means by “supra-normal.” Perhaps he is suggesting normativity or revelation, or some combination thereof. What does seem clear is that ‫מׁשל‬ and ‫ מׂשכיל‬are held together in the case of Psalm 78 by the shared content of the mnemohistorical recital. The genre of Psalm 78, then, may best be described by the very term I have used to describe its content. Psalm 78 is a mnemohistorical psalm. This mnemohistorical psalm is inherently communal as it addresses 24. Campbell, “Psalm 78,” 51. Hans-Joachim Kraus (Psalms 60–150, 122) summarized this struggle with the question of genre in a similar way, calling Psalm 78 hymnic, historical, and didactic, “in many respects a unique piece in the OT. The category of this extensive song is already very hard to determine.” Scholars differ in their understandings of the genre and function of Psalms 78. Some identify the psalm primarily as historical; see Schaefer, Psalms, 191. Another option is to characterize the psalm as an “answer to lament” (specifically a response to the lament in Psalm 77), which implies trust; see Richard J. Clifford, Psalms 73–150, Abingdon Old Testament Commentaries (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 2003), 42. Still another option is to emphasize the didactic, instructional nature of the material; see Limburg, Psalms, 266. Goldingay (Psalms, 479) himself finally settles on “exhortation,” after describing the apologetic and praising elements of the psalm. 25. Freedman, Pottery, 132–33. 26. See Pss 44:15, 69:11; Isa 14:4; Hab 2:6; Mic 2:4. 27. P. 63. 28. Mowinckel, Psalms in Israel’s Worship, Vol. 2, X:209. 29. Ibid., 213.

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the need for the mnemohistorical enterprise—in worship and in education. Psalm 78 essentially does three things. First, and at its most basic, Psalm 78 preserves history—those events, primarily in terms of God’s action, that gave rise to and defined the nation. The stories of the exodus (Ps 78:10–14, 44–52), the wilderness years (Ps 78:15–43, 52–53), and the conquest of Canaan (Ps 78:54–55) are recounted (‫[ מספרים‬we will recount]; Ps 78:4) for the “present” people—and by “present” I mean the people for whom the psalm was written and to whom the psalm is read/performed in worship. This recounting takes place with the specific intention that “they not forget” (‫ ;לא יׁשכחו‬Ps 78:7). Second, the psalm presents this history and employs it to make a political/theological move. Northern Israel—called “the Ephraimites” (Ps 78:9, 67) and the “tent of Joseph” (Ps 78:67), and identified by its ancient cultic site at Shiloh (Ps 78:60)—is rejected, perhaps in part because it has forgotten its history, forgotten which particular events are tied to covenantal obligations and expectations of the people. The tribe of Judah, Mount Zion (Ps 78:68), and the people “Jacob” (Ps 78:71), the Southern kingdom, are chosen instead, under the aegis of the line of David (Ps 78:70–72). In a sense, the line of historical memory is extended here: David, his house and line, are joined to the links of Israel’s collective “chain of memory,”30 marking the next epoch and Erinnerungsfigur in remembered history. Finally, through a clustering of personal pronouns in the opening verses of the psalm—which invite the people to listen and attend to remembered history—this history, these memories, are re-presented , personalized and contemporized as “ours.” Psalm 78:1–4, 7 1

Give ear, O my people, to my teaching; incline your ears to the words of my mouth. 2 I will open my mouth in a parable; I will utter dark sayings from of old, 3 things that we have heard and known, that our ancestors have told us. 4 We will not hide them from their children; we will tell to the coming generation the glorious deeds of the Lord, and his might, and the wonders that he has done. ...

30. As Limburg (Psalms, 268) shows, the conclusion of the psalm functions much like a royal psalm, establishing that God has chosen Zion and that God has chosen David for Zion.

125

MEMORIES OF ASAPH 7

so that they [i.e., “their children,” the “present” and coming generation] should set their hope in God, and not forget the works of God, but keep his commandments.

In the “my,” “your,” and “I” of verses 1–2, the psalmist is addressing her present day audience. Psalm 78 in its final form was appropriated for use in worship in the Jerusalem cultus, or perhaps for educational use in the temple’s torah school. The “I” here, then, is one of Israel’s religious leaders, most likely a temple official from one of the Levitical guilds (Asaph), who presents the psalm’s content and, presumably, interprets and/or applies it.31 The “you/r” are the worshippers or studious believers in the temple; these are the present day descendants for whom the history of Israel—the parable and dark sayings of old—are recounted. In verse 3, the psalmist moves on to “we” and “our.” The move may seem a minor one, but the shift from “I” to “we,” from the Levitical educator delivering a message to some “other” in a shared experience of memory, is a deft rhetorical move that places the emphasis on the community of believers. This is no top-down recitation but an effort to establish a continuity of identity among the people. In verse 4, the tension lies between “we” and “their.” According to the psalmist there is an important relationship between the past generation—those (the reader/listener of the psalm will shortly be reminded) who were lead forth from Israel, who vexed God with their murmuring rebellions, who tested God with their disobedience, and whom God still and repeatedly delivered—and the “present” generation. What “they” have done and experienced God doing for “them” is what “we” will preserve for “their” children—that is, for ourselves. “We” and “our” is rhetorically equivalent to “you” and “their.” The past generation (several generations gone in fact) is brought very much into the present. And what has happened to/for them is given immediacy for the present people.32 Psalm 78 brings into intimate proximity the relationship of Israel’s salvation history and its present situation. The decree in Jacob, the appointed law in Israel, the command given to the ancestors to remember and so to teach (Ps 78:5), is taken up by the psalmist. The memory 31. This liturgical-educational process is picked up in Nehemiah 8, where Ezra and several Levites read from the Torah, and interpreted it for the people, “They gave the sense, so that the people understood the reading” (v. 8). 32. Psalm 75 does something similar, if subtler. Verse 2 declares that “We give thanks . . . People tell .....” In verse 10, the psalmist speaks not for the people but for himself, “I will rejoice. . . . I will sing praises.” See Goldingay, Psalms, 446.

126

PSALM 78: THE HEART OF WHAT ASAPH REMEMBERS

that is established, passed on, willed to the next generation in the historical recitation is not simple “remembrance.” It is a present encounter with God’s saving acts, engendered by mnemohistorical reflection and a call to covenant obedience.33 Deuteronomy 5:1–3 does something similar. Having convened all of Israel, Moses says to them: Hear, O Israel, the statutes and ordinances that I am addressing to you today; you shall learn them and observe them diligently. 2 The Lord our God made a covenant with us at Horeb. 3 Not with our ancestors did the Lord make this covenant, but with us, who are all of us here alive today.

At the risk of oversimplifying, one may observe that the claim of Deuteronomy 5:3 is, from one point of view, patently false. In Deuteronomy, the generation that was at Horeb has passed away; they are neither there nor alive as Moses speaks. Still, Moses makes the claim that the covenant is made not just with those in the past but with his people at that very moment.34 As S. Dean McBride has noted, this reference to the exodus as constitutive of God’s people as a nation functions, essentially, as a “comprehensive political charter that is integral to the completion and historical actualization of the Horeb covenant.”35 This is also what one encounters in the history and memories of Psalm 78 and its particular form of wisdom. One who reads—who gives ear and inclines the heart and the mind along with them to the psalmist’s teaching—is linked to this chain of memory. “Their” memories—the memory of them, about them, from them, of those who lived and died those generations ago—are “ours” as well, both the “ours” of the psalmist’s present generation and, presumably, for others who read the psalm. Through its use of that cluster of pronouns, in obedience to the command to teach lest God’s actions and the identity of God’s people be forgotten, the heritage of memory is bequeathed to the next generation of readers/believers; this is the core of “torah” in 33. Goldingay, Psalms, 479 (emphasis added): “the psalm itself introduces the narrative by an exhortation to listen and a reminder about the need to learn from the story of the ancestors a lesson about faithfulness. It is designed not merely to record the past but to change people for the future.” 34. This is a repeating pattern in the Hebrew Bible, the extension of past history, past memory, into the present. It also happens in the New Testament: the apostles did it in their preaching, when they concluded the reciting of Israel’s history with the proclamation of the Gospel—the story of Jesus in the book of Acts; see Acts 7:2–53, 13:16–41. Matthew’s Jesus did it in his own speaking in “parables” and “dark sayings”; see Matt 13:24, 21:33–46. 35. S. Dean McBride, “Deuteronomy, Book of,” in The New Interpreter’s Dictionary of the Bible, vol. 2, ed. Katharine Doob Sakenfeld (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 2007), 109.

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MEMORIES OF ASAPH

Psalm 78, the mnemohistory of Israel enculturated, inculcated in present-day Israelites. In Deuteronomy 5 and 6, the commandment to teach to subsequent generations is to teach the statutes and ordinances of Yahweh. In Deuteronomy 5 the Ten Commandments follow, and in Deuteronomy 6 it is Israel’s great credo, the Shema. The emphasis is on worshipping Yahweh alone, and the wilderness (Deut 6:16) and exodus are brought to bear to support the theological claim (Deut 6:21–23). The references to the past are terse and serve to amplify the theological claims of the Deuteronomistic credo. In Psalm 78, the problems of high places, idols, and covenant faithlessness are an important part of the mnemohistory (Ps 78:56–58). But the mnemohistory of Psalm 78 is much more detailed, not moving quickly to the theological claim upon the reader (as in Deuteronomy) but drawing the reader/hearer into a shared remembering of exodus/wilderness. In obedience to the command to teach lest God’s actions and the identity of God’s people be forgotten, a heritage of memory is bequeathed to the next generation of readers/ believers.36 What Psalm 78 Remembers Even this lengthiest of the psalmic remembrances of Israel’s remembered past offers only a select portion of that past, from the exodus through the election of the Southern Kingdom, ignoring or glossing over the period of the judges, the background stories of the patriarchs, not to mention between four and five centuries worth of kings. There is a great deal of detail, much of it compelling and engaging—like the legends of Gideon and Samson, the sojourn of the future Israelites in Egypt before the exodus, the civil war of Jeroboam and Rehoboam—that is either ignored, intentionally left out, or simply unknown. The mnemohistorical material in Psalm 78 is woven in an intricate pattern, moving from the exodus (v. 10–14), to the wilderness (v. 15–43), back again to the exodus (v. 44–52), and back yet again to the wilderness (v. 52–54). Within the current framework of the psalm, which introduces the 36. When I use the word “heritage,” I recognize that there is a significant weight to the Hebrew term—‫—נחלה‬and I am not, strictly speaking, thinking in this particular theological sense. In the Psalms of Asaph, this word is used primarily in reference to Israel as God’s possession (Pss 74:2; 78:55, 62, 71; cf. Ps 106:5, 40) and once to describe Jerusalem and the temple as God’s dwelling place (Ps 79:1, and maybe 74:2), with no explicit connection to remembered history. But in another sense, “heritage” seems to me a fitting word to describe the interaction of memory and historical recitation in the book of Psalms.

128

PSALM 78: THE HEART OF WHAT ASAPH REMEMBERS

mnemohistorical narrative with a reference to the treacherous Ephraimites and returns to the Ephraimites near the end of the psalm as Shiloh, the tent of Joseph, and the North are rejected, the details of the exodus are employed to support the psalm’s conclusion, which is the establishment of David, Judah, and the Zion Temple. The chronology of what Psalm 78 remembers may be reconstructed as follows: A. Exodus, vv. 10–14, 44–52 Wonders, vv. 43–51 Pillar of cloud/fire, v. 14 Reed Sea, vv. 13, 5337 B. Wilderness, vv. 15–43, 52–53 Water/Manna, vv. 15–16, 23–29 Death of generation, vv. 32–34 C. Ephraimite Betrayal, vv. 9–10 D. Settlement, vv. 54–55 E. Shiloh abandoned, vv. 60–61 F. Fall of the North, vv. 62–64 G. Israel’s Enemies Routed, v. 66 The Exodus Event—Psalm 78:10–14, 44–52 In Psalm 78, the mnemohistorical heart and soul of the collection, the wonders of God are enumerated and detailed. This recitation takes the worship agenda of Asaph and makes it the pedagogical imperative for generations to come. The first reference to the exodus event is terse, a sort of summary introduction of the material. What ought not to be forgotten are the wonders (‫נפלאותיו‬,o78:11) God had shown the ancestors and the wonder (‫פלא‬,o78:1238) he had performed in Egypt. At this point the wonders are not enumerated, and the account moves with equal brevity through the sea crossing (v. 13) and the leading of the people by a pillar of cloud and “light of fire” (v. 14). Here again the form of the mnemo37. In Psalm 77, the sea is not only parted (v. 20), it is threatened by the theophany of a greater power in Yahweh as storm god (vv. 17–19). 38. The singular “wonder” most likely serves to refer collectively to the wonders or “plagues” performed in Egypt prior to the sea event referenced in v. 13. The Old Greek has θαυμάσια, the plural form, which suggests a shift in the text. Compare Exod 15:11, which also employs the singular in Hebrew, ‫פלא‬, which is echoed in the Old Greek, θαυμαστὸς. ‫ פלא‬occurs in several places in the singular with the sense of a plural; see Pss 77:15; 88:11; Isa 25:1.

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historical referent is terse, a kind of summary recitation. This is not to say, however, that the mnemohistory has resolved to a purely symbolic form. This is a recitation, a remembering of the event itself, neither diaphor nor metaphor, but the thing itself. The second recitation of the exodus (78:44–52) is much more detailed. It begins with a version of the wonders (plagues) that, while different in many ways from the wonders described in the book of Exodus and paralleled in the Psalter in Psalm 105, is consistent with the wider narrative tradition. The wonders catalogued in Psalm 78 are seven in number and are both similar to Exodus and, at the same time, distinctive: 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7.

rivers and streams to blood (v. 44) flies (v. 45) frogs (v. 45) caterpillars (v. 46) locusts (v. 46) hail, frost, and lightning; crops and cattle (vv. 47–49) death of the firstborn (v. 51)

According to the narrative of Exodus 7–12, the plagues are ten in number: rivers to blood (7:14–24), frogs (7:25–8:11), gnats (8:12–15), flies (8:16–28), death of cattle (9:1–7), boils (9:8–12), hail (9:13–35), locusts (10:1–20), darkness (10:21–29), and death of the firstborn (11:1–12:36). The differences in the accounts of the plagues are not of major importance. In Psalm 78, there is no immediate repetition of the winged nuisances (gnats on top of flies), and the damage to livestock is limited to the hail with no mention of a pestilence; neither is there anything of boils or darkness. The one real difference in Psalm 78 is that of “caterpillars,” (‫חסיל‬, which is used in hendiadys) to “locust” (‫)ארבה‬.39 The majority of the material is more or less the same. The wonders begin and end the same way; they emphasize the damage done to natural resources—rivers, crops, cattle, and human resources—and even the reference in Ps 78:48 to ‫( רׁשף‬lightning)40 is similar to the hail and “fire” (‫ )אׁש‬that falls—presumably from the sky—in Exodus 9:23.41 In each case, what Exodus and Psalm 78 remember is the power of God in all areas. 39. This pairing occurs in three other cases: 2 Chr 6:28 and Joel 1:4, 2:25. 40. In Ps 76:4, ‫ רׁשפ‬is part of a compound noun with ‫( קׁשת‬bow) and probably means “arrows.” Cf. Song 8:6, ‫( רׁשפיה רׁשפי‬flashes of fire). 41. See Campbell, “Psalm 78,” 69; Kraus, Psalms 60–150, 129.

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Following the wonders performed in Egypt, the image of the people as a flock led by their shepherd is employed for the first time in Psalm 78; this image is common in and distinctive of Asaph in the Psalter (cf. Pss 77:21; 79:13; 80:2)42 and borrowed in turn to support the election of the house of David (78:70–72).43 Here again the form of the mnemohistorical referent is recitation. The mnemohistory is not yet resolved or reduced to symbol but is a fuller, more detailed recital of the exodus event. The mnemohistorical recital is formalized, establishing a pattern that shifts from exodus to wilderness, then reverting from wilderness back to a more detailed exodus account as the psalmist reiterates what the people have forgotten—the signs (‫ )אתותיו‬and miracles (‫ )מופתיו‬performed in Egypt (cf. 78:43). Wilderness—Psalm 78:15–43, 52–53 As with the exodus material, the wilderness material is recapitulated in Psalm 78. In this case, it is the first instance that is lengthier, more detailed and the second reference that is abbreviated. Verses 52–54 are, in reality, little more than a summary of the whole exodus/wilderness/settlement progression. Following the seventh plague in verse 51, the psalm summarizes: God led the people like a flock in the wilderness, God brought them to his holy hill. In verses 15–43, the standard elements of the wilderness sojourn are presented poetically and structured around the repeated pattern of disbelief and rebellion. In four places—verses 17, 32, 36, and 41—the rebellion and disbelief of the Israelites is stated. The elements of the wilderness journey are also summarized in verses 19–20, framed as the accusatory testing of God by the Israelites: They spoke against God, saying, “Is God able to spread a table in the wilderness? Behold, though he struck the rock and water gushed out and torrents overflowed, 42. This metaphor of the flock/shepherd for Israel/God Hossfeld calls the “scarlet thread” of the Asaphite Psalms; see Hossfeld and Zenger, Psalms 2, 280. 43. As Campbell (“Psalm 78,” 64) notes, “to lead” is a standard expression of guidance, found here and in Exod 15:13. Compare also the use of the image of leading the flock in relation to the nomadic nature of the divine presence when David seeks to build a temple for God in 2 Sam 7:8, “I took you from the pasture, from following the sheep to be prince over my people Israel,” and also in Amos 7:15, “the Lord took me from following the flock, and the Lord said to me, ‘Go, prophesy to my people Israel.’”

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Is he also able to give bread, or provide meat for his people?” (78:19–20)

This testing question serves to introduce the historical retelling of the wilderness period. And each of these questioned matters is remembered in a positive, poetic sense: He commanded the clouds above, and opened the doors of heaven; he rained upon them manna to eat, and gave them the grain of heaven. Men ate the bread of the strong; food he sent to them in abundance. He caused the east wind to blow in the heavens, and by his power he led out the south wind; he rained upon them flesh like dust, winged birds like the sand of the seas; he let them fall within their camp, all around their dwellings. And they ate and were well filled, for he gave them what they craved. (78:23–29)44

Here again the complaint, the doubt that is evident, is expressed as a question that challenges God. In Psalm 77, it was a reflective sharing of what was on the psalmist’s mind. In Psalm 78, it is the accusation of the psalmist against the ancestors (specifically the Ephraimites) and a warning not to do likewise. And in both cases, it is the historical memory that provides the answer to the theologically pressing question. It is almost as if the psalms say, “Remember these things; do not doubt but believe”; this is certainly how the mnemohistory functions in this psalm, providing the response to the question and the means to faith and obedience. An Ephraimite Betrayal—Psalm 78:9–10 The sons of Ephraim, armed with bows, turned back in the day of battle. They did not keep God’s covenant, they refused to walk according to God’s law. 44. Ps 78:32–34 seems to be a summary, much like those found in Num 14:22–24 and Deut 1:34–36, of the death of the exodus generation in the wilderness. It may also be a reference to the incident of the serpents sent among the Israelites after their complaints at Meribah in Num 21:4–9.

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This first mnemohistorical referent in Psalm 78:9–10 appears to be to an otherwise unknown event;45 nowhere is it explicitly contested, altered, or otherwise represented. Artur Weiser identified this event not with the fall of the North as a whole but as the fall of Saul at Gilboa (1 Samuel 31).46 Taken together with the later election of the South as a whole (in the rejection of the Shiloh, the Northern tent-temple site), the rejection of Saul (from a Northern family) sets the stage for the rise of David, which follows not only in Samuel but in Psalm 78. This reading is appealing. Another possibility is worth consideration. In reconstructing the flow of the mnemohistorical chronology in the content of Psalm 78 above, I have placed the Ephraimite failure out of place in terms of its position in the psalm—after the exodus/wilderness material and before the references to the conquest—intentionally. It may be that this reference is to an Ephraimite failing in a time of battle during the conquest. In his treatment of the image of the Divine Warrior, Patrick Miller suggests the possibility of reading the reference to the “day of battle” in terms of a “military format.”47 Could this reflect, in Psalm 78, the military format of the tribes during the occupation of the promised land as it is described in Judges 1? It may be that the Ephraimite failing here is what is described in Judges 1:29 and summarized again in Judges 2:1–2.48 In Judges, Ephraim (along with several other Northern tribes) fails to keep the covenant with God by driving out the inhabitants of the land. In Psalm 78:9–10, the Ephraimites fail on the day of battle and do not keep the covenant. This reading, too, is appealing. Either of these readings is possible, as well, presumably, as others. The referent as we have it here in Psalm 78:9–10 is much too general to allow one to insist categorically upon any of the above. This referent may function in one of two ways. First, it may simply be a memory that is unique, particular to Asaph and not kept anywhere else (not unlike the reference to the fields of Zoan in Ps 78:12, 43). As such, it is an explicit referent that serves to accentuate the psalm’s 45. Schaefer (Psalms, 192) settles for a “vague ‘day of battle’”; Hossfeld and Zenger (Psalms 2, 295) spare only a few lines on this event and fail to define it all; so too Limburg (Psalms, 266). Clifford (“Interpretation of Psalm 78,” 131–32) sees the reference as a collective gloss, for “the verse probably describes a series of military defeats of the second half of the eighth century leading to the destruction of Samaria and the loss of Ephraim in 722.” Goldingay (Psalms, 388) outlines numerous possibilities, finally concluding, “Whatever the event, on this occasion the Ephraimites were equipped for battle alright, but their bows were treacherous.” 46. Weiser, Psalms, 540. 47. Patrick D. Miller, The Divine Warrior in Early Israel (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1973), 161–62. 48. Goldingay, Psalms, 487.

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point that remembering what God has done in the past is critical for the present. Like Israel’s ancestors, the Ephraimites forgot, to their detriment. The present generation is exhorted not to forget. Another possibility is that this historical event is remembered in order to shape the way in which the exodus/conquest is remembered. If these verses are a later addition to the psalm,49 they might serve to domesticate the Northern exodus tradent for use in the Southern worship.50 This, then, would be the contesting, or reshaping, of memory. As Adriane Leveen points out, memory is never uncontested, particularly memories that lay claim to some corporate identity and acceptance.51 Through the use of the very kind of mnemohistorical content that defined the psalm in an earlier form, the Ephraimite referent would then serve to appropriate the exodus tradition for a new setting and to shape the way the North/South division is viewed. Whether original or added later, within the psalm itself this referent functions in tandem with the assertion at the end of the psalm, that the North is rejected in favor of the South (Ps 78:67–72), as an inclusio that reshapes and co-opts the exodus mnemohistory. One last observation, however, shifts the impetus and impact of this particular reference. If this reference in verses 9–10 is paired with the reference to the destruction of Shiloh in verses 59–67 and forms an inclusio for the psalm, and if the defeat of the Israelites at the battle of Aphek is what the psalm has in mind in these last few verse, then the rhetorical and mnemohistorical function of the inclusio—and the mnemohistory within its boundaries—shifts. It is the loss of Shiloh that is emphasized. God’s presence has left the North and been established finally, conclusively, in Jerusalem. Settlement—Psalm 78:54–55 The “conquest” account in Psalm 78 is short and to the point. It is related in classical language associated with the exodus, and ultimately it is more generally of the saving, preserving power of God. The conquest according to Psalm 78:54–55 reads, And he brought them to his holy land, this mountain that his right hand had won. 49. Ibid. 50. Hossfeld and Zenger, Psalms 2, 295. In contrast, Antony Campbell (“Psalm 78,” 53–54) argues for a literary unity of these verses with the rest of the psalm. 51. Leveen, Memory and Tradition, 15.

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He drove out nations before them; he apportioned them for a heritage and settled the tribes of Israel in their tents.

There are two critical elements here, the “right hand of God” and the apportioning of the land. The power of God’s right hand is variously associated in the Hebrew Bible specifically with God’s saving acts in history and with God’s support, protection, and comfort for the troubled in general. Coming out of the historical remembrance of the exodus, the reference to the “right hand” (‫ )ימין‬calls to mind the Song of the Sea, specifically Exodus 15:6: Your right hand [‫]ימינך‬, O Lord, glorious in power— your right hand [‫]ימינך‬, O Lord, shattered the enemy.

This same power has shattered the enemies in the promised land, the “holy land” that God’s hand has won. As noted, there is in later material a more general sense of comfort and care in the right hand of God that is common to the psalms, but in Asaph the right hand is connected invariably to the power of the exodus event (Pss 74:11–13, 77:12-21) and to the conquest (Pss 78:54; 80:16, 18).52 A key aspect of the conquest of the promised land is the election of Israel, the claiming of the nation as God’s heritage or possession (‫)נחלה‬. This term is not uncommon either in the Psalter or in the Pentateuch. It is a foundational designation for the nation as belonging to God. In this language of apportioning and heritage, there is again a resonance with the Song of the Sea at the culmination of the exodus event: You brought them in and planted them on the mountain of your own heritage [‫]נחלתך‬, the place, O Lord, that you made your abode, the sanctuary, O Lord, that your hands have established. (Exod 15:17)

This is also the case in Deuteronomy in the remarkable passage wherein the division of the nations according to the number of the gods is made, and Israel is chosen by Yahweh, 52. Compare the Korahite Ps 44:4: “For not by their own sword did they win the land, nor did their own arm give them victory; but your right hand, and your arm, and the light of your countenance, for you delighted in them.”

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When the Most High apportioned the nations, when he divided humankind, he fixed the boundaries of the peoples according to the number of the gods; the Lord’s own portion was his people, Jacob his allotted heritage [‫]נחלתו‬. (Deut 32:8–9)

This mnemohistorical referent to the conquest as a constituting element of God’s act of electing Israel works within Psalms 78 as a theological fulcrum of sorts. As a part of the complex mnemohistorical flow of the exodus/wilderness/exodus/wilderness pattern of the psalm, the election and heritage language of 78:55 serves to reinforce the theological/political point to which the psalm drives, namely the establishment of the house of David and the rejection of the Ephraimites who, having forgotten to whom they were apportioned, have been dis-apportioned. For Judah, the house of David, this mnemohistorical nugget serves as both validation and exhortatory reminder. For the remnant of Israel, it may be seen as a reapportioning of God’s elect. Shiloh Abandoned—Psalm 78:60–61 Concomitant with reflections in Asaph on various meeting places of God and the lament of their destruction is the abandonment of the ancient cultic site at Shiloh in Psalm 78:60–61. He abandoned his dwelling [‫ ]מׁשכן‬at Shiloh, the tent where he dwelt [‫ ]ׁשכן‬among mortals, and delivered his power to captivity, his glory to the hand of the foe.

This statement that Shiloh, the onetime home of the ark of the covenant (‫[ עזו‬his power]), has been abandoned and the North rejected is reminiscent of the ark narrative (1 Samuel 4–6), and fittingly so, as the psalm drives to its conclusion, which is the lionization of the Davidic monarchy—which is precisely the same rhetorical function the ark narrative serves in Samuel. That Shiloh, the putative locale of the dwelling of God and God’s name is abandoned, is the theological sign that the Northern Kingdom is rejected in favor of the Kingdom of Judah. Again, this is the diaphoric function of the mnemohistorical symbol. The destruction of Shiloh is remembered not as an example or as a warning but as a lasting symbol of how God was and might again be at work and where God has chosen to establish the divine name. Leading into the concluding valorization

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of David’s rule and line, a rule carried out in the shadow of the sanctuary built in Zion (78:68–69), the function of the mnemohistorical referent is clear: it serves the overarching agenda of the psalm in its current form, which is the promulgation of the Davidic house and the establishment of the cult of Zion as Israel’s religious center. Fall of the North—Psalm 78:62–64 Thus far, I have emphasized that the mnemohistorical references to the Ephraimites and to Shiloh are best understood as referring to events that precede the Assyrian conquest of Israel. There may be, however, some polysemy in the references (intentional or not) that allow a reading of these verses as reference to the defeat of the Northern Kingdom at the hands of Assyria. After Shiloh is abandoned, as 1 Samuel 4 has it, the Israelites are defeated. The presence of God has gone out from them and moved to Judah and Jerusalem. Not only is the ark captured but eventually the Northern Kingdom falls in 722 BCE, which, while it may not be the actual occasion that is described, may be polysemic, a somewhat vague or general symbol that can be multivalent. These verses describe the slaughter of the priests (78:64), the mourning of the widows (78:64), and the wedding song of the young women turned to wailing (78:63). And perhaps most tellingly of all, theologically, is the statement that God has “vented his wrath on his heritage [78:62) “[‫)בנחלתו‬. What is emphasized over and over is that it is God who acts. As Goldingay has noted, the focus in this psalm is on God’s action. It is Yahweh who leads the people through the sea. It is Yahweh who is challenged by the people. It is Yahweh who settles the people in Canaan. It is Yahweh who acts.53 And what God’s right hand had won (78:54), God’s right hand now casts down. This particular mnemohistorical move—the climax to which the psalm has risen in crescendo—serves as an explicit rejection of the North, further used to establish or bolster the Davidic monarchy. Remembering what has gone before is the key to a long life in the land, the key to faithfulness and right relationship with Israel’s God, the key to understanding the election of David and God’s choice of Mount Zion as the divine throne.54

53. Goldingay, Psalms, 515. See also Limburg, Psalms, 253. 54. Goldingay, Psalms, 514.

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Israel’s Enemies Routed—Psalm 78:66 As with the reference to the Ephraimite betrayal in Psalm 78:9–10, this defeat of Israel’s enemies is unspecified. The psalm is not clear as to which enemies this might be. Many have taken this reference to be to the victories of Saul and David over Israel’s enemies at the time of the united monarchy.55 Coming where it does in the flow of the mnemohistorical recital, however, between the fall of the North and the sole election of the South, it is possible that here, too, there is polysemy in meaning. Hans-Joachim Kraus points out that this defeat is associated within the psalm directly with the rejection of the North, with “the rejection of the ‘tent of Joseph,’ i.e. with the annulment of the prerogatives of the group of tribes of the house of Joseph in middle Palestine. Northern Israel loses the claim of leadership.”56 The critical emphasis here is that God, who is now to be found in the fastness of his holy place that he has established on Mount Zion (Ps 78:68–69), rose up and defeated the enemies of God’s people. This recitation of God’s power and protection would fit well with the state of affairs after the Northern Kingdom is destroyed by the Assyrians, but in all likelihood does refer in the first place to the victories won by David over the Philistine enemy who first defiled Shiloh. As such, this recital leads naturally into the claims for the house of David that are the climax of the psalm. Why Psalm 78 Remembers Martin Buss summarized the mnemohistorical application of the Asaphite Psalter as follows, The Asaph psalms are full of wisdom themes and forms of address which exhibit a tone of exhortation proper for a religious instructor. In short, they reflect a tradition with a special kind of religious wisdom. 57

Psalm 78 in particular preserves this wisdom in terms of the remem55. Patrick Miller (Harper Collins Study Bible, 874) understands this as a reference to the victories of Saul and David over the Philistines. See also Limburg, Psalms, 268; Goldingay, Psalms, 511. 56. Kraus, Psalms 60–150, 130. Kraus has in mind 2 Kgs 19:32–36, particularly v. 35: “That very night the angel of the Lord set out and struck down one hundred eighty-five thousand in the camp of the Assyrians; when morning dawned, they were all dead bodies.” See also Isaiah 36–37. Hossfeld and Zenger (Psalms 2, 299) agree that this is likely a reference to the invasion of Sennacherib and his failed siege of Jerusalem in 701 BCE. 57. Buss, “Psalms of Asaph and Korah,” 387.

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bered past, a past cast primarily in terms of God’s actions in the exodus (Ps 78:10–14, 44–52), the wilderness (Ps 78:15–43, 52–53), and the entry into Canaan (Ps 78:54–55). Psalm 78 also employs this remembered past in service of a particular political/theological agenda, namely the support of the Davidic monarchy. These are the central elements of mnemohistory in Psalm 78. In exploring the relationship of Psalm 78 with the exodus narrative, Goldingay concludes that the “openness” of the prose narrative is closed off in the psalm. What he means by this is that there are any of a number of conclusions, lessons, implications, and so forth that might be drawn from the exodus story, but that Psalm 78 drives to “one explicit point” to the exclusion of all other points. That point, according to Goldingay, is “the vital importance of faithfulness and obedience rather than rebellion and defiance.”58 This one explicit point is not singular, however, and Psalm 78 performs other functions. In fact, Goldingay’s “one explicit point” is often overemphasized in the interpretation of Psalm 78. Psalm 78 is not, as is often maintained, primarily a warning for Judah.59 To be sure, the way in which the psalm begins, with its emphasis on instruction that will be life-giving and the exhortation not to be like the ancestors and the Ephraimites who have forgotten what God has done, does suggest that a part of what the psalm is doing is warning the people. But this is not the final point, the culmination to which Psalm 78 drives with such vigor. The destruction of Shiloh and the rejection of the North are not warnings for Judah and Zion. In Jeremiah, the destruction of Shiloh is used explicitly in this way.60 Not so Psalm 78. Here, the destruction of Shiloh paves the way for the building of God’s holy place on Mount Zion. Shiloh is rejected so that Zion can be established. 58. Goldingay, Psalms, 479. Cf. Day, “Pre-Deuteronomic Allusions,” 8. 59. Jones, Psalms of Asaph, 85, 89; Clifford, “Interpretation of Psalms 78,” 137; Goldingay, Psalms, 515; Weiser, Psalms, 540; Erhard S. Gerstenberger, Psalms: Part 1, with an Introduction to Cultic Poetry, Forms of the Old Testament Literature 14 (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1988), 98. 60. Jer 7:12–15: “Go now to my place that was in Shiloh, where I made my name dwell at first, and see what I did to it for the wickedness of my people Israel. 13 And now, because you have done all these things, says the Lord, and when I spoke to you persistently, you did not listen, and when I called you, you did not answer, 14 therefore I will do to the house that is called by my name, in which you trust, and to the place that I gave to you and to your ancestors, just what I did to Shiloh. 15 And I will cast you out of my sight, just as I cast out all your kinsfolk, all the offspring of Ephraim.” Also, Jer 26:8–9, “And when Jeremiah had finished speaking all that the Lord had commanded him to speak to all the people, then the priests and the prophets and all the people laid hold of him, saying, ‘You shall die! 9 Why have you prophesied in the name of the Lord, saying, “This house shall be like Shiloh, and this city shall be desolate, without inhabitant?”’ And all the people gathered around Jeremiah in the house of the Lord.”

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Psalm 78 (specifically vv. 70–72) stands apart in the Psalter in its purely positive reflection on David.61 The reason for this is the importance not of the “perfect David” but of the house that David founded and represents. Psalm 78 remembers not in order to valorize the individual but to make sense of the present in terms of the past. Psalm 78 remembers in order to inculcate a particular theological memory, a theology as Campbell puts it that is “a particular kind of theology, since its affirmations stem from the interpretation of history. . . . Its intention is to elucidate the meaning of recent events” through recourse to the past.62 In Psalm 78:68–69, as a direct conclusion to the exodus tradition and a finishing off of the rejection of the Northern Kingdom, God is said to choose “Mount Zion which he loves.” And there God builds the sanctuary (‫)מקדׁשו‬. The election of David is tied explicitly to Israel’s history, both further in the past (i.e., in the exodus) and in the near past (the loss of Shiloh).63 The individual who reads or who is taught the psalm is drawn into that story as it is made their own shared memory. To return to the psalms distinctive use of that cluster of pronouns in verses 1–7, the psalm enables obedience to God’s command to teach the next generation—and the next individual who is a part of it—the story of God’s actions on behalf of his heritage. This historical remembrance is used to shape the identity of God’s people—thus the heritage bequeathed via the shaping influence of memory—as a torah-centered people. In Psalm 78, the mnemohistory of Israel is thus enculturated and inculcated in “present-day” Israelites who employ the psalm. The chosen people are drawn to God’s sacred space in Jerusalem, and there they are to be shaped into God’s sacred nation.

61. Cf. Ps 18:51 and Psalm 89. Hossfeld and Zenger, Psalms 2, 405. 62. Campbell, “Psalm 78,” 77 (emphasis in the original). 63. As Gunkel and Begrich (Psalms, 249) note, this is a pattern familiar in the prophets: history and election are held together.

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6

What Asaph Remembers

If Psalm 78 is the core of the Asaphite mnemohistory, it is by no means its only locus. There is a great deal of mnemohistorical material across the Asaphite collection that appears to different extents and in various applications. The Breadth and Depth of Mnemohistory in the Psalms of Asaph Mnemohistory in the Psalms of Asaph is not uniform in its appearance or application. There is no single pattern or formula for what is recalled, how it is recalled, or how its recollection will function within a given psalm. There is a range of length and detail that the remembered past exhibits in the Asaphite Psalms, and it would be overreaching to attempt to define a kind of systematics of memory. Within this range of remembered history, differing profiles are presented; some (particularly in Psalm 78) quite large, others relatively brief, and still others so slight as to be relatively unremarkable. In other words, while a singular, overarching, consistent, systematic application of the remembered past is not in evidence, there is a spectrum of scope in the mnemohistorical material in these psalms that may be described. At one end of this spectrum lies sustained or detailed historical recitation, at the other end are undetailed or “generic” statements regarding historical recitation, and somewhere in between is the his-

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torical referent become emblem—emblematic phrasing, imagery, metaphor, and so on that embodies or evokes a specific historical referent, with little need for detail. All of these are present in the Asaphite Psalter: A. Sustained Recitation

B. Emblematic Phrase/Image

C. Generic Recitation

Psalm 78 recounts Israel’s story from the Exodus to the Davidic Monarchy. Details include the plagues (vv. 44–51), reference to testing God at Massah (vv.17–20), and the rejection of the Northern Kingdom and Shiloh (vv. 56–67).

Psalm 77:16

Psalm 75:2

‫גאלת בזרוע עמך‬ ‫בני־יעקב ויוסף‬

‫ספרו‬ ‫נפלאותיך‬

(with a strong arm you redeemed your people, the children of Jacob and Joseph)

(they recount your wonders)

A. One end of the spectrum is sustained recitation of the remembered past. The main expression is borne in the sustained recitation of Psalm 78, which is a relatively detailed and extensive (if not comprehensive) telling of the arc of Israel’s story, from the exodus out of Egypt to the establishment of the temple in Jerusalem. Psalm 78 is also the earliest of these psalms and provides the “source domain” for much of their symbolic and representative language. B. The middle stage is the use of emblematic or symbolic language to evoke the remembered past without the necessity of a complete retelling. Not every reference to the remembered past is exactly the same in the Asaphite material. “Strong arm” is an example of a phrase symbolic of God’s victory over Pharaoh and leading Israel out of slavery, which may be applied to another setting or situation. 1 C. Finally, the mnemohistorical reference that is neither symbolic nor in any way detailed. Recitation here is simply observed, with no specific historical material in the offing. This is an indication of the act of the mnemohistorical reflection, without engaging in it in any actual sense. Given the range of breadth and depth in remembered history, it may be tempting to seek to identify a trend in direction from one end of the spectrum to the other, either from sustained recitation to more brief 1. “With a strong arm” (‫ )בזרֹוע‬is often used to refer to divine agency in the exodus event; see Exod 6:6, 15:16; Deut 4:34; 2 Kgs 17:36; Pss 77:16, 79:11, 136:12.

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references, or the reverse, from terse, featureless recollections to more detailed, didactic pieces.2 Such a trend, however, is virtually impossible to identify with any clarity in such a relatively small corpus of texts. The attempt to discern a movement along this spectrum in one direction or the other is not only difficult but may also either assume or engender a false dichotomy. Difference in length, form, or appearance does not necessitate a fundamental difference in the character of the mnemohistorical material. In each case where one encounters the mnemohistorical material in the Asaphite Psalms, what one finds is exemplary of the scripturalization of the remembered past—the fixing of memory (both its object and its subject) in the written, ritual text—regardless of length or form. Each point along this spectrum offers a different expression of what is essentially the same thing—the resolution of the historical referent into some form of written, material record; the shared object of memory is fixed for a new reader (hearer, interpreter, etc.), a new generation. What comes closest to a formulaic mnemohistorical arc, the exodus/ wilderness/“Hauptgebot” sequence, is discernible in both Psalms 78 and 81. Each of these psalms includes reference to the two major stages of the people’s movement from Egypt to the holy habitation of God. The initial point of the arc is reference to the exodus: 78:10–14, 44–52; 81:6–7a, 10. The second point is reference to the Wilderness trials: 78:15–43, 52–53; 81:7b–c. The final point is what I am calling the “Hauptgebot”: 78:56–58; 81:9. Hauptgebot (great commandment) is a term borrowed from Norbert Lohfink, who isolated a portion of the Shema (Deut 6:4b) as the Deuteronomistic prime-directive. The Hauptgebot was a cultic expression (originally introduced with something like ‫[ יהוה אלהינו‬Yahweh is our God!]) that, though located initially in the cultus, was redacted by the Deuteronomist3 as the focal point of the Ten Words. Deuteronomy 6:4b–5 was the whole of that cultic expression, which was used as an introduction or an admonition to keep the word of God. Whether or not Lohfink is correct in his reconstruction of the origin and redaction of the phrase, the role of the Hauptgebot as it is employed in Deuteronomy 6:4 and in relation to verses 10–12 is quite similar. The “great commandment” is initiated in relation to what God has done—namely, 2. See Brueggemann, foreword to Psalms for Preaching, xv. 3. Norbert Lohfink, Das Hauptgebot: Eine Untersuchung literarischer Einleitungsfragen zu Dtn 5–11 (Rome: Pontificio Istituto Biblico, 1963), 163–64.

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brought them out of Egypt, the house of slavery. Something similar is happening in Psalms 78 and 81. In both cases, the question of theological fidelity is raised. In Psalm 78:58, the problem is that the people have provoked their God to jealousy with other gods, with idols. In Psalm 81:10, it is remembered as a historical command, “there shall be no strange god among you,” a command that the people failed to heed (v. 12). In neither Psalm 78 nor 81 does one find a perfectly articulated “first” or “great” commandment in quite the way one finds it in the theological heart of the book of Deuteronomy, the Shema of 6:4–5 (although Psalm 81 is close). But that the exodus is remembered as the motivation, in the appeal to Hauptgebotliche (i.e., covenant), fidelity is clear. The emphasis in Psalm 81 is just that; it is an appeal. The psalm ends with the Lord speaking almost plaintively about his desire to care for and feed this people, if only they would listen (vv. 14–17). Psalm 78 reports that Shiloh is abandoned not because it is a false place of worship but because of the danger often associated with rural cultic places, the danger of syncretism and idolatry (i.e., the failure to maintain Hauptgebotliche fidelity in the face of idols and strange gods). This is the theological drive of this arch in Psalms 78 and 81, just as it is Deuteronomy 6. As S. Dean McBride has pointed out: It is noted in Deuteronomy that the plethora of lesser cosmic forces designated “gods” by Israel’s neighbors are at best proxy rulers whose existence and authority were decreed by Yahweh himself (4:19; 32:8; cf. 29:26 [25 Heb.]). Yet the Deuteronomists’ theological interest in such deities goes no further than the point of enjoining Israel from having anything whatsoever to do with them. And this is the crux. It is underscored emphatically and often in the book. From Israel’s point of view (as the Deuteronomists define it), the contrast between Yahweh and the “gods” is not relative in either a qualitative or quantitative sense; it is, quite simply, absolute.4

The mnemohistorical arc of exodus/wilderness/Hauptgebot is a distinctive theological trait of these psalms. It is important to note, however, that this pattern is neither ubiquitous in the Asaphite Psalter nor evenly applied in these two psalms themselves. The significance of this 4. S. Dean McBride, “Yoke of the Kingdom: An Exposition of Deuteronomy 6:4–5,” Interpretation 27, no. 3 (July 1973): 294. One might add the Asaphite Psalm 82 to this list of texts that characterize other gods as “proxy rulers.”

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WHAT ASAPH REMEMBERS

arc, however, ought not to be overlooked. If the dating of Psalm 78 hazarded above is accepted5 (even the later dates associated with Hezekiah or Josiah), this constitutes evidence of a pre-Deuteronomic covenant theology that finds its locus in a henotheistic commitment to Yahweh, established and enabled by the exodus event.6 The Presentation and Shape of Explicit Mnemohistory What one finds in the Asaphite mnemohistory is not a chronological historical record. The vocabulary of memory does not work in a formal way to outline or order cultic mnemohistory in terms of systematic or critical historiography. These psalms do not follow a set pattern. However, by drawing on the Asaphite corpus as a whole, one can reconstruct an admittedly epigrammatic chronology of Israel’s history: Exodus Summarized

Pss 77:15–21; 80:9; 81:6–11

Ps 78:10–14, 44–52

Pss 80:9; 81:6–8a

Wonders

Ps 78:43–51

Pillar of cloud/fire

Ps 78:14

Reed Sea as storm

Ps 77:17–19

parted

Ps 77:20

Ps 78:13, 53

Ps 81:8

Ps 78:15–43,,52–53

Ps 81:8b

Ps 78:15–16, 23–29

Wilderness Water/Manna Death of generation

Ps 78:32–34

Ephraimite Betrayal Settlement

Ps 78:9–10 Ps 80:10–11

Shiloh abandoned Fall of the North / Israel’s sanctuaries destroyed Israel’s Enemies Routed

Ps 78:54–55 Ps 78:60–61

Ps 74:3–7

Ps 78:62–64 Ps 78:66

5. See pp. 49–50. 6. Day, “Pre-Deuteronomic Allusions,” 1–12.

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God’s indwelling at Salem/Mount Zion

Pss 74:2; 76:2–9

Jerusalem Temple destroyed / Israel’s sanctuaries destroyed

Ps 79:1–7

Ps 78:68–69

As was discussed in the previous chapter, Psalm 78 is the backbone of the Asaphite mnemohistory. And while Psalm 78 does not seem to presuppose the fuller narrative of the Pentateuch and Former Prophets, the other Asaphite Psalms do seem to presuppose Psalm 78, with Psalms 80 and 81 summarizing the exodus event in a line or three where Psalm 78 has gone into great detail. The explicit references made in the Asaphite Psalms do not, first and foremost, serve the purpose of reconstructing a history of Israel; rather, these referents serve as the preserved cornerstone of memory upon which the Asaphite Psalms intend to build identity. What follows are examinations of the explicit mnemohistorical references in these psalms with an eye both to their form and to their function. The Exodus Event As Abraham Malamat has noted, there is no other biblical event or tradition as prominent and fundamentally significant as the exodus: The Exodus figures most prominently in the biblical tradition as one of the foundations of Israelite faith, referred to in retrospect throughout the Bible more often than any other event of Israel’s past—in historiography, in prophecy, and in the Psalms.7

And in the Asaphite Psalms the exodus is of particular prominence and importance. Several of the Asaphite Psalms either render a memory of the exodus or make reference to it and thus meaning through it. Psalm 77:15–21 (cf. Psalm 78:10–14, 44–52) As was seen in the survey of the vocabulary of memory, remembrance serves a vital function in Psalm 77. The language of remembering and appeal to the “God who works wonders” introduces the historical remembrance proper .8 In the context of the individual’s struggle and

7. Abraham Malamat, The History of Biblical Israel: Major Problems and Minor Issues (Leiden: Brill, 2001), 57. 8. Clifford, Psalms 73–150, 40.

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WHAT ASAPH REMEMBERS

outcry, the nation’s history is recalled, made known, remembered, meditated upon, and mused over. The psalm itself is made up of three parts: (1) verses 1–11 are a cry of personal anguish, (2) verses 12–15 are a general statement recalling God’s deeds on Israel’s behalf in the past, and (3) verses 16–21 are the recollection of a specific event, the crossing of the Reed Sea. 9 Verses 1–11 open the psalm with a description of, presumably, the psalmist’s distress. Crying out to God, the psalmist describes an angst that consumes him both day (v. 3) and night (vv. 3, 5–7). This turmoil is driven by a theological crisis, the question of God’s regard for the psalmist. “Will the Lord spurn forever, will he never be favorable again? Has his steadfast love ceased forever? has the promise ended for all time? Has God forgotten to show compassion? Has he in anger shut up his mercy?” And I say, “This is my grief, the right hand of the Most High has changed.” (Ps 77:8–11)

What we find in this portion of the psalm, typically set apart in translations by quotation marks, are the questions that make up the musing and meditation of the psalmist. This is what Rolf Jacobson calls “self quotation.”10 These are the doubts and inner struggles of the psalmist put to page, uttered “out loud” not only in the night but in a liturgical act.11 But even in the initial cry of anguish, the psalmist anticipates the move to mnemohistory. The language of meditation, communing, and remembering is not just about the psalmist’s personal situation, nor is it loose or rootless theologizing; rather, it is tied subtly to the national past from the start.12 The phrase ‫( ימים מקדם‬days of old; v. 6) is an early hint that the mnemohistory of the exodus is coming.13 This concept of 9. “In a distinctive way, the psalm combines lament at trouble and declaration of God’s past acts.” Goldingay, Psalms, 459. 10. R. Jacobson, Many Are Saying, 72. 11. Hossfeld and Zenger, Psalms 2, 278. 12. “We would not do justice to the significance of the tradition of the Heilsgeschicte for the faith of the psalmist if we were to regard his hymn merely as the ‘lyric effusion’ of a man fleeing from a bleak present and taking refuge in recollection of a brighter past; such a view would entail that the liturgical impact of the cultic events to which the hymn refers back is reduced by psychology to a superficial experience.” Weiser, Psalms, 533. 13. Hossfeld and Zenger, Psalm 2, 277.

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the “days of old” takes two forms, which are synonymous; the phrase is built on the word “days” (‫ )ימים‬and either “antiquity” (‫ )עולם‬or “of old” (‫)קדם‬. In numerous cases—in Deuteronomy, the Prophets, and the Psalms—these phrases are accompanied by references to some element of the exodus event: Then they remembered the days of old, of Moses his servant. Where is the one who brought them up out of the sea with the shepherds of his flock? (Isa 63:11) Shepherd your people with your staff, the flock that belongs to you, which lives alone in a forest in the midst of a garden land; let them feed in Bashan and Gilead as in the days of old. As in the days when you came out of the land of Egypt, show us wonders [‫]נפלאות‬. (Mic 7:14–15) Remember the days of old, consider the years long past; ask your father, and he will inform you; your elders, and they will tell you. The LORD’s own portion was his people, Jacob his allotted share. He sustained him in a desert land, in a howling wilderness waste; he shielded him, cared for him, guarded him as the apple of his eye. (Deut 32:7, 9–10)14

What is more, the phrase ‫( מקדם‬from of old) is used again in Psalm 77:12, and in this case the connection with the mnemohistory of the exodus is more explicit as the psalmist declares, ‫( אזכרה מקדם פלאך‬I will remember your wonders from of old). Furthermore, ‫ מקדם‬is employed in two other places in the Asaphite Psalms, and in each case explicitly in connection to the exodus (Pss 74:2, 12; 78:2).15 The evi14. Deut 32:7–10 portrays the primordial establishment of the nations and their apportioning; cf. Ps 78:52–55. Ps 78:55 and Deut 32:10 are synonymous representations of Yahweh’s election and establishment of the nation of Israel. 15. Psalm 44, a Korahite Psalm, begins (v. 2) in a somewhat similar way, speaking of God’s deeds performed “in the days of old” (‫)בימי קדם‬. The psalm then goes on to celebrate in a general way the clearing of the promised land for Israel’s habitation and applies those victories to an appropriate sense of the “present” nation’s victories—“for not in my bow do I trust” (Ps 44:7). The only other place in which the exact phrase found in Ps 77:6, ‫ימים מקדם‬, occurs in the Psalter is in Ps 143:5. Psalm 143 is, in many regards, similar to Psalm 77, with one exception—there is nothing in the

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WHAT ASAPH REMEMBERS

dence for understanding this phrase as tied in most contexts to the exodus event is overwhelming. As the connection of these phrases with the exodus is common in other passages in the Hebrew Bible and also in the Asaphite Psalms it is suggestive of an assumed correlation between the phrase and content. This is enough to suggest an early intimation within Psalm 77 that the mnemohistorical recital is in the back of the writer’s mind and may be presumed to have been intentionally, if subtly, evoked within the reader/hearer of the psalm as well; what follows would have been expected.16 Psalm 77:12–15, the psalm’s intermediate section, is a second declaration about remembrance in which the psalmist answers his own “self quotation.” The heartfelt question “Has God forgotten to show compassion,” and the anguished cry that “this is my grief, the right hand of the Most High has changed” are met with the cohortative (a sort of reflexive imperative) to remember what God has done. The battery of remembrances—‫( מעללי‬deeds) and ‫( פלאך‬your wonders) (v. 12); ‫( פעלך‬your work) and ‫( עלילותיך‬your mighty deeds) (v. 13)—are then summarized with another question in parallel with 74:10, “What god is so great as our God?” To this God is said to be “the God who works wonders [‫]פלא‬.” This portion of the psalm is both answer and introduction—answering the psalmist’s own issue and introducing the mnemohistorical material—and works as a sort of hinge in the psalm, swinging the reader along with the author from question to answer. Verses 16–21 contain the recitation of the historical memory.17 What is remembered might be seen as the culmination or denouement of the great saving act of the exodus. “Jacob” and “Joseph”18 were redeemed by God’s strong arm—a phrase synonymous with the exodus19—by the parting of the waters and the way through the sea. The event at the Reed Sea is the core of the mnemohistory of Psalm 77. It is the defining act or wonder (v. 15) by which the people of Israel are created. This is one of the early examples of the interconnection of cosmogonic and historical elements in Israel’s hymnody, wherein God’s power over creation is paralleled with God’s redemptive power in creation (i.e., in way of historical recitation, a further example of the particular mnemohistorical provenance of the Asaphite material. 16. “The psalm reports that remembering the Lord’s work in the past aided in the struggle of trying to understand God’s apparent lack of action in the present.” Limburg, Psalms, 261. 17. Hossfeld and Zenger, Psalms 2, 279. 18. Cf. Obad 1:18 “The house of Jacob shall be a fire, the house of Joseph a flame, and the house of Esau . . .” each of which is a reference to a nation and not the individuals from the narratives of the Pentateuch. 19. See Exod 6:6, 15:16; Deut 4:34; 2 Kgs 17:36; Ps 136:12; Isa 63:12.

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MEMORIES OF ASAPH

human history).20 As Frank Moore Cross has shown, the cosmogonic myth is brought fully into synchronicity with exodus and conquest here in Psalm 77 (see also Exodus 15, Habakkuk 3, Isaiah 51, and Psalm 114).21 The form of the mnemohistorical referent here is largely symbolic, and the function is diaphoric. There is little in the way of detail to the remembered “history,” but the event the imagery and language point to—the culminating wonder of the parting of the Reed Sea—is intended to answer and redefine the theological question at the heart of the psalm. Has God forgotten to show compassion? No, the God who led the people like a flock by the agency of Moses and Aaron leads the people, the person, still. And no, the God who battled the forces of chaos in the act of creation battles chaos still, on behalf of God’s people. One final word about the introductory section of the psalm and its prayer of lament. What is particularly striking is that the cry of anguish is remarkably undetailed. The psalmist does not cite illness or the assault of some foe; rather, it is a “day of trouble” and a “night ..... without comfort.” The psalmist’s personal struggles are implicit.22 This move from a general situation of trouble into a specific citation of God’s wonders in Israel’s past makes the historical recitation an answer to the troubles of any day. Frank-Lothar Hossfeld sees the individual of the psalm possibly as a cult prophet, one seeking (‫רש‬ ֹ ‫ )ד‬the Lord on 23 behalf of the nation. This is certainly possible; there are other examples in the Asaphite Psalms of a situation of national crisis giving rise to historical recitation. It is not necessary, however, for the psalm to be read only as an individual’s prayer on behalf of the nation, and there is in fact nothing in the body of the psalm itself to make such a reading necessary—no reference to either the destruction of Jerusalem or to an imminent physical danger. The psalm is remarkable both in its lack of a reason for complaint and in its generality at this point, and could just 20. As Othmar Keel (Symbolism, 214–15) correctly observes, the imagery of the “battling storm god” who wins victory in creation over the forces of Chaos (as in Psalm 29) is borrowed here as a metaphor for God’s victory over the “chaos” of disorientation represented in the slavery and persecution of the exodus tradition, and resonant with the psalmist’s present, personal disorientation. 21. Frank Moore Cross, Canaanite Myth and Hebrew Epic: Essays in the History of the Religion of Israel (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1973), 136–37, 157. Goldingay, Psalms, 468: “In Exod. 15 and here [Psalm77] the poems superimpose onto the exodus story the imagery of a divine victory over forces of disorder, embodied in and symbolized by the sea. Thus the sea takes over much of the place of the Egyptian army. The imagery and syntax of the final tricola (v. 19) are such as to make a transition to a more regular reference to the Red Sea event.” 22. Goldingay, Psalms, 460. 23. Hossfeld and Zenger, Psalms 2, 277; so too R. Jacobson, Many Are Saying, 72.

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WHAT ASAPH REMEMBERS

as easily be read as an individual’s prayer of complaint that is answered by the corporate history. Psalm 80:2, 9 Psalm 80 begins with language typical of Asaph and evocative of the exodus:24 O shepherd of Israel give ear, you who lead Joseph like a flock. (Ps 80:2)

“Joseph” is the Asaphite euphemism for Israel and the Northern tribes, and “flock” is the metaphor for the people common to these psalms. The reference to the exodus in Psalm 80:9 seems to follow naturally here, but it also shifts the operative metaphor in the psalm, referring to Israel as a transplanted “vine” (‫)גפן‬.25 This particular metaphor is unique in the Psalter to this Asaphite psalm.26 What is remarkable is the rhetorical force of these few words, which cover a long period of Israel’s history and several scrolls worth of the biblical narrative in just a few short verses.27 The vine that is Israel has been brought out of Egypt—the exodus event is cited here by means of the vine metaphor and serves as mnemohistory that is directed, as a part of the complaint, to God.28 Based on the positive references to Ephraim, Benjamin, and Manasseh in Psalm 80:3, before whom the Shepherd of Joseph is seated upon the cherubim (80:2—which is a clear reference to the sanctuary at Shiloh), it seems likely that the context for this communal complaint is some point during the Northern Kingdom’s struggles against the Assyrians. It is God who is called upon to remember Israel’s history—a history in which God has been active in a particular way and that is brought into play in the current national situation. 29

24. Hossfeld and Zenger, Psalms 2, 313. 25. Limburg, Psalms, 274. 26. Clifford, Psalms 73–150, 55. See also Jer 2:21; Hos 10:1. 27. Which as Limburg’s (Psalms, 274) commentary shows is clearly evocative of the exodus and is summative of a large narrative arch in just a few words: “The image is that of a farmer, taking a vine out of Egypt (the exodus), clearing the ground (driving out the nations), planting it, and watching it prosper (the growth of the kingdom David).” 28. Goldingay, Psalms, 540. 29. Weiser, Psalms, 550.

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MEMORIES OF ASAPH

Psalm 81:6–11 Using the same phrasing as Psalm 77:16, Psalm 81 has the “God of Jacob” addressing “Joseph,” a.k.a. Israel. In this case, the mnemohistorical recitation is placed not in the mouth of a ready scribe but in the mouth of God.30 “Burden” and “basket” refer to the labors of the slaves to the Egyptians (Exod 6:6); the description of God hearing the distressed cries of the Israelites is resonant with Exodus 2:23–24. The flow of the mnemohistory is from exodus to wilderness to the Hauptgebot, and the function of this mnemohistory drives at first commandment fidelity.31 Psalm 81:10–11 states the unequivocal reality that is based on the exodus—Yahweh is Israel’s god, and no other: There shall be no strange god among you; you shall not bow down to a foreign god. I am Yahweh your God, who brought you up out of the land of Egypt. Open your mouth wide and I will fill it. (Ps 81:10–11)

With its clear Northern language32 and (at least initially) setting, Psalm 81 seems most likely to be a critique of Northern religious practices.33 This critique is not associated directly with the cultic practices attributed to Jeroboam in the psalm and need not be inferred in interpretation. Based on other references in Asaph, there does not seem to be so much a prohibition against traditional Northern worship as there is against polytheism. As the Kuntillet ‘Ajrud inscriptions have shown, one of the features of religiosity in the North was syncretism, most notably in the reference to Yahweh and his Asherah.34 Is it possible that the critiques of Psalm 81 are leveled against just this sort of religious practice and that it bears the kernel of the mnemohistorical and theological agenda of the earliest Asaphite school? In exploring textuality and education in ancient Israel, David Carr identifies some of the earliest epigraphic evidence for a system of religious education centered not in Jerusalem but in the North. He includes the Kuntillet ‘Ajrud 30. Ibid., 553. 31. Hossfeld and Zenger, Psalms 2, 324. 32. “In v. 11b we encounter the verb ʿālâ (Hiph), which, in the oldest material is used about the Exodus in liturgical contexts, and which has been shown to have certain connexions with the cults of Bethel and Dan in the Northern Kingdoms.” Haglund, Historical Motifs, 17. 33. For a discussion of the Northern tradition stream, see Nasuti, Tradition History, 81. 34. See Moshe Weinfeld, “Kuntillet ‘Ajrud Inscriptions and Their Significance,” SEL 1 (1984): 121–30.

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WHAT ASAPH REMEMBERS

inscriptions in the admittedly small body of texts that support such a theory. Of these he writes, The founding of a northern monarchy, and especially its expansion under Omri-Ahab, was probably accompanied by at least a small-scale northern Israelite textual-educational system of the sort we see in other kingdoms.35

Admittedly, the body of texts available are precious few. As Carr points out, the access to Northern Israel texts is limited and mostly “indirect.” He cites secondary texts such as Hosea and some portions of the Pentateuch.36 What Carr seems to miss is the potential of the Asaphite corpus not as instructive of such syncretism but as an answer to this tendency/danger. The Northern cultus, whether in Shiloh, Bethel, or Dan, was just as likely to have been critical of polytheism, if not the multiplicity of worship sites or even of idols, both traditional features of Israelite religion, as any Southern cultic body.37 Psalm 82, following as it does on the heels of the present psalm, describes the judgment and sentencing of the “sons of God.” These other divine beings are measured, found wanting, and sentenced to death like any mortal. The two psalms go well together in this regard. Had Psalm 81 addressed idolatry directly, mentioned the calf icons of Bethel and Dan, or offered a critique specifically of the “sins of Jeroboam” (1 Kgs 14:16, 15:30; 2 Kgs 10:29; etc.) that would be one thing, but it seems here to be the false foreign god, not the false idol of the true God, that is addressed.38 In other words, it is not Northern worship that is the issue but base polytheism. Placed upon the lips of Yahweh, the mnemohistory of Psalm 81 serves as an exhortation to fidelity vis-à-vis the Hauptgebot.39 This is the Asaphite answer to syncretism, a response that is a further indication of the prophetic, critical nature of this cultic material and its use of mnemohistory to address what are likely the major issues of the day. 40 35. David M. Carr, Writing on the Tablet of the Heart: Origins of Scripture and Literature (New York: Oxford University Press, 2005), 164. See also Karel van der Toorn, Scribal Culture and the Making of the Hebrew Bible (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2009). 36. Carr, Writing on the Tablet, 164. 37. Kraus (Psalms 60–150, 151) argues that the traditions of Northern Israel are preserved here, “the false gods and their worship are set aside and eliminated, and Yahweh himself as the Present One who reveals himself takes his place in the midst of the community.” 38. As is surely the case in the original trident on Exodus 32, though it should be noted that this distinction is not always clear; see 2 Kgs 17:16–18. 39. Clifford, Psalms 73–150, 61, 63; Goldingay, Psalms, 553. 40. Limburg, Psalms, 277.

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MEMORIES OF ASAPH

This exhortation, effected via mnemohistory, is also represented as part of the decreed festal worship that is definitive of Israel (Ps 81:2–6). Sing a shout to God our strength; sing a shout of joy to the God of Jacob. 3 Raise a song, shake the tambourine, the sweet lyre with the harp. 4 Blow the trumpet at the new moon, at the full moon, in our festal day. 5 For it is a statute for Israel, an ordinance of the God of Jacob. 6 He made it a decree in Joseph, when he went out over the land of Egypt.

This echoes Psalm 78:5–8 and presents a clear picture of mnemohistory vis-à-vis the exodus tradition: it is a constitutive act for the community that endorses, engenders, and enables faithfulness to God. 41 Wilderness Sojourn Practically speaking, the wilderness sojourn is inseparable from the mnemohistory of the exodus. As was shown above for Psalm 78, the two pieces, exodus and wilderness, are interwoven back and forth in such a way that they are not merely consecutive stages of the story but an intimately connected repeating pattern. By contrast, in the case of Psalm 81, the wilderness reference is a very small part of the mnemohistorical framework, encompassing only a third of a verse. But each of these examples, as different as they are, reveals something of the form and function of the mnemohistorical recitation or referent. Psalm 81:8 (cf. Psalm 78:15–43, 52–53) The distinctive element of Psalm 81’s mnemohistorical referent is the testing at Meribah. Meribah is mentioned relatively infrequently in the Hebrew Bible, only eleven times.42 With two exceptions, the reference to Meribah identifies the verbal action associated with the place name as the people testing the Lord. Psalm 81:8 is one of the exceptions. In this verse it is God who is said to be testing Israel:43 41. Weiser, Psalms, 555. 42. Exod 17:7; Num 20:13, 24; 27:14; Deut 32:51; 33:8; Pss 81:8; 95:8; 106:32; Ezek 47:19; 48:28. 43. Clifford, Psalms 73–150, 61.

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WHAT ASAPH REMEMBERS

In distress you called and I rescued you; I answered you in the secret place of thunder; I tested you at the waters of Meribah.

If one compares this with the parallel version of the incident in Exodus 15:22–26, one notes immediately that the verb for testing is different (‫נסהו‬, not ‫)אבחנך‬, and while there is reference to statute and ordinance, the reference to the wonders of Egypt is a cautionary tale lest the Israelites forget and fail to obey.44 Psalm 81’s characterization of the events at Meribah as God’s testing of Israel and not the reverse is supported only by Deuteronomy 33:8, where Moses prays to God concerning Levi saying, Give to Levi your Thummim, and your Urim to your loyal one, whom you tested at Massah, with whom you contended at the waters of Meribah.

God is the one addressed, making God the subject of the verb “tested.”45 What this differing tradition does functionally as a part of the mnemohistorical record of Psalm 81 is to frame the tension of the story differently. In Exodus, the sense of the story is that the Israelites are contending with God, showing displeasure at their state of affairs. Psalm 81 changes the emphasis, calling to mind in a dissonant way the same sentiments as Psalm 77’s anguished cries and self-quotations of doubt, and makes test of their faith (i.e., God contending with the people and highlighting the command to proper worship). “Conquest” or “Settlement” The settlement of the promised land is, in both Psalms 78 and 80, relatively terse; in both, the emphasis is placed firmly upon God’s action. Psalm 80:9–10 (cf. Psalm 78:54–55) “Settlement” seems a more appropriate term for the “conquest” in Psalm 80 in that the image of the vine dresses the psalm and the picture in these verses is of God settling the land, clearing the ground so that vine-Israel might be transplanted. The metaphor is clearly shared with and likely drawn from the Song of the Sea, “You brought them in and planted them” (Exod 15:17).46 Exodus 15 is celebratory, rejoicing in 44. Goldingay, Psalms, 552. 45. Hossfeld and Zenger, Psalms 2, 324.

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what God has done and anticipating the establishment of the nation in Israel.47 The rhetorical thrust of Psalm 80, however, is different. Psalm 80 reminds God of the planting God has done and complains that the vineyard is now ravaged by “the boar from the forest” (80:14).48 The psalm then urges restoration, reminding God of the past and praying fervently—rooted in the fertile ground of mnemohistory—for the future.49 Episodes in the Promised Land (Destruction/Desertion) Having moved past the high (and central) points of Israel’s remembered past, there are still other minor historical referents that are explicitly employed. These events tend, relative to the exodus tradition, to be more recent events in the life of the divided kingdom. Once again it may be observed that the remembered past is incomplete. This is in part, no doubt, out of necessity. To order, record, and apply all of the possible events from the nation’s history would be impossible. What this may suggest is that the events that are preserved are valued as important in ways that other historical events were not. Whatever the case, these events or referents are explicitly cited and may be evaluated. Israel’s Sanctuaries: Psalm 74:3–7 A somewhat strange reference is made in Psalm 74:8 to ‫( כל־מועדי־אל‬all the meeting places of God). The language in these verses is difficult to navigate because it is not always clear to what the psalmist is referring. There are several references to places of worship, using a variety of terms—in the other cases in the singular and in the case of 74:8 in the plural. Psalm 74:3–8: Direct your steps to the perpetual ruins; the enemy has destroyed everything in the sanctuary [‫]קדׁש‬. Your foes have roared within your meeting place [‫;]מועדך‬ they set up their emblems there. At the upper entrance they hacked the wooden trellis with axes. 46. Weiser, Psalms, 550. 47. Brenner, Song of the Sea, 136–42. The language of Exod 15:13–17 is best translated in terms of past action, but in the context of the overarching narrative is a preview of what will not happen until the book of Joshua. 48. Hossfeld and Zenger, Psalms 2, 315; Clifford, Psalms 73–150, 56. 49. Limburg, Psalms, 274.

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WHAT ASAPH REMEMBERS

And then, with hatchets and hammers, they smashed all its carved work. They set your sanctuary [‫ ]מקדׁשך‬on fire; they desecrated the dwelling place of your name [‫]מׁשכן־ׁשמך‬, bringing it to the ground. They said to themselves, “We will utterly subdue them”; they burned all the meeting places of God [‫ ]כל־מועדי־אל‬in the land.

It is widely held that this is a description of the destruction of Jerusalem, and this is entirely possible.50 The use of ‫קדׁש‬i(74:3, 7)—a term often associated not only with Zion the “holy hill” (Pss 43:3; 15:1; 48:2) but with the temple specifically (‫ ;היכל‬Pss 5:8; 11:4, which is also the case in the Asaphite Ps 79:1)—makes a strong case for such a reading. The “dwelling place of your name” (‫ )מׁשכן־ׁשמך‬is suggestive as well of Mount Zion, which becomes the one location where that is the case; compare Deuteronomy 12:5, But you shall seek the place that the Lord your God will choose out of all your tribes a his habitation to put his name there.

This only makes the phrase ‫ כל־מועדי־אל‬in 74:8 all the more strange. If it is the temple that the psalm has in mind—and here again the description of the assault upon the entrance and the destruction of its trellises and engraving seem to support just this—how can the psalm also speak of “meeting places” without a condemnation of them as high places? C. H. Toy’s assertion that these are second century BCE synagogues is unconvincing, putting a date and setting to the psalm that it is difficult to establish with any certainty, but he is correct in begging the question of just what is meant here.51 Are these “meeting places” simply the temple? Are they the Northern sites? Are they the high places of Judah, still referenced, still seen as valuable and viable? So far as the local shrines are concerned, Psalm 74:8 says, “They have burned up all the meeting places of God in the land.” This is supported by a similar phrase in Psalm 73:17, where it is the ‫( מקדׁשי־אל‬holy places of God) that are identified as places of refuge, comfort, and insight. While this phrase may strike one as strange or out of place, it seems that within the Asaphite Psalter, the ‫ מועדי־אל‬are in fact nothing else 50. Miller, Harper Collins Study Bible, 868; Hossfeld and Zenger, Psalms 2, 244–45. 51. C. H. Toy, “On the Asaph-Psalms,” Journal of the Society of Biblical Literature and Exegesis 6, no. 1 (June 1886): 76.

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than local shrines; far from being seen as sinful, idolatrous, or otherwise problematic, they are God’s meeting places, and their destruction is appealed to as a gross insult to God’s dignity, which God is expected to avenge.52 What we have here, then, is a memory of various worship sites, in addition to the temple, which have been violated or destroyed, and all of them are similarly lamented. God’s Indwelling at Salem/Mount Zion: Psalms 74:2, 76:2–9 (cf. 78:68–69) The representation of the indwelling of God at Salem/Mount Zion is represented in historic terms no less than three times in the Asaphite Psalter. In Psalms 78:60–69 (see chapter 5), 74:2, and 76:2–9. The movement to establish the divine name in Jerusalem is relatively terse in Psalm 78: God chose the tribe of Judah, Mount Zion, which he loves; He built his holy place like the heights, like the earth which he has founded forever. (Ps 78: 68–69)

Similarly, Psalm 74:2 does not make fully explicit reference to the exodus event, but it does borrow the language as it calls upon God to remember “your congregation . . . which you redeemed as your heritage.” The language of heritage and redemption, under the aegis of “from ‘of old’ [‫;קדם‬o74:2],” is at least subtly evocative of the familiar exodus mnemohistory. What follows is the claim about the dwelling place of God, Remember Mount Zion, where you came to dwell [‫]ׁשכנת‬. (Ps 74:2c)

Psalm 76:2–9 portrays the same concept as a historical moment,

52. Hossfeld and Zenger, Psalms 2, 245: “That despite and after the so-called Josianic reform there were still ‘places of God’ ‘in the land’ where cultic assemblies took place is historically probable.” See also Goulder, Psalms of Asaph, 33. See Exod 20:20: “You need make for me only an altar of earth and sacrifice on it your burnt offerings and your offerings of well-being, your sheep and your oxen; in every place where I cause my name to be remembered I will come to you and bless you.”

158

WHAT ASAPH REMEMBERS

In Judah God is known, his name is great in Israel. His abode [‫ ]סכו‬has been established in Salem, his dwelling place [‫ ]מעונתו‬in Zion. There he broke the flashing arrows, the shield, the sword, and the weapons of war. Glorious are you, more majestic than the everlasting mountains. The stouthearted were stripped of their spoil; they sank into sleep; none of the troops was able to lift a hand. At your rebuke, O God of Jacob, both rider and horse lay stunned. (Psalm 76:2–7)

This may be read as a version of the conquest where the indwelling of the divine name is definitively and perhaps exclusively associated with the early victories of the fledgling Israelite nation in the land of Canaan.53 The short form “Salem” is used, and while there is disagreement about whether or not this is legitimately an early form of “Jerusalem,”54 the name here is associated directly with Zion, making the equivalence of Salem/Jerusalem the only reasonable conclusion within the context of the psalm. The actual historic correlative is, for the present study, not essential. What matters is the way the mnemohistorical referent works, how it functions, what is affected through it. If the Asaphite Psalms are originally Northern in origin, as much scholarship on these psalms agrees, then relaying the theological claim that God dwells in Zion in mnemohistorical terms is of central importance to the Asaphite mnemohistory as a whole. What happens in each of these psalms is a shift in the cultic and the national locus for the exodus tradition with its attending details. The exodus traditions, if originally Northern, are appropriated by a recasting and rewriting of remembered history in order to establish Jerusalem, its temple, worship, priesthood, theology, and perhaps above all, its kingship as the intentional outcomes of God’s salvific work.55 The mnemohistorical references to the indwelling of God at Jerusalem are an adoption and a coopting of the mnemohistorical tradition to this particular end.

53. Clifford, Psalms 73–150, 24. 54. Limburg, Psalms, 257; Goldingay, Psalms, 451; Clifford, Psalms 73–150, 33; Hans-Joachim Kraus, Theology of the Psalms, trans. Keith Crim (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1992), 109; Weiser, Psalms, 526. 55. See 2 Sam 7:6–11, 22–24.

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MEMORIES OF ASAPH

Jerusalem/Temple: Psalm 79:1–7 (cf. 74:4–8) In a remarkably similar way, the destruction of Jerusalem and the temple in 587 BCE speaks of God’s inheritance (‫ )נחלתך‬being defiled in Psalm 79:1–7. In both Psalms 78:62–64 and 79:1–7, the freshest of the mnemohistorical events, the fates of the Northern and the Southern Kingdoms, are laid out. And in both, something of one of the key theological innovations of the Hebrew Bible is iterated. In both of the psalms, it is finally God who forsakes the heritage. Rival gods do not overwhelm the Most High; rather the Most High gives the people to the sword (78:62) and in anger and jealousy casts them off (79:5–6).56 But at the very last, in Psalm 79:11 and 13, a new exodus is prayed for, one based very much on the memories and language of history, and geared toward a future possibility, 11

Let the groans of the prisoners come before you; according to your great power preserve those doomed to die. 13

Then we your people, the flock of your pasture, will give thanks to you forever; from generation to generation we will recount your praise.

This, too, is the diaphoric force of the symbolic mnemohistorical language employed here. The past event of the exodus, evoked by the echoing “groans of the prisoners” and further through the appeal to Israel’s identity as the very flock of God’s pasture, is not isolated and cannot be separated from that vital event, even as the psalmist and the psalm’s audience struggle in the present. The mnemohistorical diaphor works to bring into juxtaposition past, present, and future. Individuals Remembered As observed above, the Asaphite Psalms are not primarily interested in individual figures from Israel’s past.57 To be sure, there are individuals 56. Clifford, Psalms 73–150, 49–50. Limburg (Psalms, 270) points, in a similar manner, to the theological nature of the complaint here. The psalmist calls God to account for what “you” are doing and about “your wrath.” 57. Hossfeld and Zenger’s (Psalms 2, 4) characterization of Asaph commemorating the “great figures of the canonical era of Israel’s foundations” notwithstanding. Apart from the superscriptions, the mention of David in Psalm 78 is one of relatively few references to David in the Psalter (cf. Pss 18:51; 89:4, 21, 36; 122:5; 132:11, 17; 144:10), similar to the Psalter’s treatment of Moses and Aaron

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WHAT ASAPH REMEMBERS

mentioned, but in each of those cases there is little or no detail about the individual in question, and the emphasis is placed on what God was doing through them for the people as a whole. Only brief discussion is required. Moses and Aaron: Psalm 77:21 Moses and his brother Aaron appear at the end of the individual complaint turned communal reflection of Psalm 77: You led your people like a flock by the hand of Moses and Aaron. (Ps 77:21)

Notice that while Moses and Aaron are mentioned, this culminating declaration is addressed to God. The recollection of Moses and Aaron has little of Moses and Aaron in it. While this does parallel the account of the paired agency of Moses and Aaron in the Reed Sea crossing in Numbers 33:1, this is not the valorization of these two figures—giants in the history of Israel and in the memory of Israelites—but an appeal to what God worked through them.58 Moses and Aaron here are symbols of God’s work. It is God’s actions that remain of central concern in Asaphite mnemohistory. Individuals as Metonym for the Nation The only references to the patriarchs, or to the sons of Israel, are to Joseph, Jacob, Ephraim, Benjamin, and Manasseh. Joseph and Jacob appear together in 77:16; Joseph alone in 78:67, 80:2, and 81:6; and Jacob alone in 78:71 and 79:7. Ephraim, Benjamin, and Manasseh are named together in 80:3. The phrase “God of Jacob” is in 75:10; 76:7; 81:2, 5. At no point are any of these figures named as individuals per se. Each time one of the patriarchs is mentioned in Asaph, the name is employed as a collective euphemism or metonym for the nation, typically the Northern Kingdom. These references serve as poetic appellations, as mnemohistorical referents whose poetic function is metonymical. The names of individuals drawn from Israel’s past are

(cf. Moses: Pss 103:7; 106:23, 32; Moses and Aaron: Pss 99:6; 105:26; 106:16; Aaron: Pss 115:10, 12; 118:3; 133:2; 135:19). 58. Goldingay, Psalms, 472.

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MEMORIES OF ASAPH

employed in Asaph primarily as metonymical stand-ins for the people as a whole. David: Psalm 78:67–72 The figure of David works in the closing verses of Psalm 78 as part of a well-developed metaphor. It is not David as the founder of a dynasty that is established as the object of memory so much as it is the Davidic dynasty itself that is exemplified. The metaphor for the kingly line is of a shepherd, drawn from watching over the sheep and set to watching, ruling over, and “keeping” the kingdom.59 Once again, “David” is best understood here as a metonym; as the “crown” is the kingdom, so “David” is the royal house.60 Without exception, the rhetorical function of the individuals named as mnemohistorical referents in these psalms work in one of two ways. First, as exemplars, or diaphors, pointing to the work of God in relationship with the people. And second, as metonym, referring to the people themselves. Important figures are called to mind, but there is never a valorization of the person, only a recollection and re-presentation of what God has done for and through them. The Primary Resolved Symbol: Exodus in Psalms 77 and 78 The interaction of memory and historical recitation of the exodus functions to draw the people—both corporately and individually—into a shared and renewed world view in which Israel and the individual Israelite recognize (once more) to whom they belong. The means of this reconstitution is memory—memory of God’s past actions in the nation’s history, with implications for the “present” people/person engaged by the psalm. A particular facet of this remembered history in actualizing a communal memory for individuals is evident in two Asaphite Psalms: 77 and 78. There is, in these two psalms, interplay between individual and communal action that is illustrative of how meaning is made in these psalms and the way this meaning is bequeathed to the next generation. What is for Psalm 78 the “mission statement” of its recitation is implicit in Psalm 77.61 That is, there is no move to connect the present 59. Goldingay (Psalms, 513) emphasizes the “important reference to David” as an individual, but it is David as metaphor that drives this ending of the psalm. 60. “Judah, Zion, and David are the enduring constants of the election.” Hossfeld and Zenger, Psalms 2, 299.

162

WHAT ASAPH REMEMBERS

“I” of the psalmist to past generations, the connection is in place and assumed. The meaning and function of Psalm 77 are driven by the vocabulary of memory. In its twenty-one verses, there are no fewer than ten verbs having to do with memory. And in what I take to be the verses of central importance, verses 12–13, the act of remembering takes center stage: I will make known [‫ ]אזכיר‬the deeds of the Lord; I will remember [‫ ]אזכרה‬your wonders of old. I will meditate [‫ ]הגיתי‬on all your work, and muse [‫ ]אׂשיחה‬on your mighty deeds. (Ps 77:12–13)

Verbs having to do with the act of memory are used four time. First is ‫( אזכיר‬I will call to mind), which introduces the others. Here the act of remembering is declarative. It is in the causative aspect of the hiphil verb and is intended to serve as a spur to the memories of others—just who we shall see in a moment. Next are three verbs in the qal that carry out the act of remembering by the individual that is both personal—the psalmist remembers—and communal—those with whom and for whom the act of the memory is presented share in it. While I have no doubt that there is nuance of meaning in ‫( אזכרה‬I will remember), ‫( הגיתי‬I will meditate), and ‫( אׂשיחה‬I will muse), it seems to me that there is significant shared meaning as well, particularly in this psalm where the verbs are employed so tightly together. This is supported by Psalm 143:5 where these three verbs are employed in a similar manner, “I remember [‫ ]זכרתי‬the days of old, I meditate [‫ ]הגיתי‬on all your deeds, I muse [‫ ]אׂשוחח‬on the works of your hands.” The function of this tightly bunched vocabulary of memory, and the rhetorical force of Psalm 77, is threefold. First, the vocabulary of memory serves as an answer to the plaintive question “Has God forgotten to be gracious?” The answer to the psalmist’s question is at least “maybe,” as the experience is one that leads to the question, but by the act of remembering the psalmist will remind God of who and what God has been to Israel—and to the Israelite—in the past. Second, the psalm is clearly a very personal act of remembering. The psalmist is in trouble, he cannot be comforted, and his spirit faints. And 61. Psalm 106 does something similar, making a clear, calculated statement. Cf. Campbell, “Psalm 78.”

163

MEMORIES OF ASAPH

the only antidote that he sees is in God’s graciousness. How is it that he can trust in the midst of his dire situation? He considers the days of old and calls to mind the deeds of the Lord. Israel’s history, specifically God’s leading of the people “like a flock,” makes possible the psalmist’s hope for his own deliverance. This is where Psalm 77 follows implicitly the explicit action of Psalms 78 and 106—God’s saving power that is memorialized in remembered history is claimed for the psalm’s present circumstance. Finally, the act of remembrance that is cherished by the psalmist is made public, presumably in worship, for the psalmist’s listeners. What God has done for Israel, what the psalmist relies upon and claims, is declared once again as “for Israel.” Conclusions Like the mnemohistory of Psalm 78, the referents in other Asaphite Psalms serve specific purposes. In shorter mnemohistorical recitals and symbolic references, the past is employed to make sense of the present and to chart possibility for the future. The larger framework of Israel’s story is used as an mnemonic structure upon which identity, sense of self and nation, and vision for the future may be constructed. The historical memories of these psalms are selective. What is deemed meaningful is preserved and employed in various contexts to make sense of reality. The explicit references made in these psalms do not serve the purpose of reconstructing a history of Israel, although history is remembered in and through them; instead, the application of the mnemohistorical material serves as the cornerstone of memory upon which the Asaphite theology and Israelite identity are built.

164

7

Excursus: Residual Memories in the Asaphite Corpus

There is, in addition to the intentional, explicit mnemohistory of the Asaphite Psalms, which seeks to preserve and apply the remembered past, what may be called residual mnemohistory. It consists of information that while not a part of the conscious mnemohistorical agenda of the Asaphites is nevertheless preserved in the corpus that bears their name. Residual mnemohistory is not intentionally marked, as is the stuff of explicit mnemohistory, but it may be recognized in the ostensible context out of which the psalm arises or in anachronisms that give one a sense of older religious sensibilities or tradents embedded in the Asaphite tradition. Examples of the former context include the reference to meeting places (plural) of God (Ps 74:8), the striking phrase “there is no longer any prophet” (Ps 74:9), and the description of the destruction of the sanctuaries, meeting places, and temple in Israel (Pss 74:3–7; 79:1–7), as well as the diverse appellations for God. Examples of the latter include the collection of prophetic judgments in these psalms (e.g., Ps 50:7–15, sharing concerns with Hos 6:6 and Mic 6:6-8; Ps 75:9 sharing imagery with Isa 51:17, 21 and Jer 25:15, 17, 27-28). Other indications of anachronism are the unabashed, unselfconscious reference to a “divine council” (‫ ;בעדת־אל‬Ps 82:1) and the use through-

165

MEMORIES OF ASAPH

out the Asaphite Psalter of a striking variety of divine epithets (e.g., ‫יהוה‬, Ps 74:18; ‫אלהים‬, Ps 77:14; ‫אל עליון‬, Ps 78:35; ‫אלהים עליון‬, Ps 78:56; ‫אל אלהים יהוה‬, Ps 50:1; ‫אדני יהֹוה‬, Ps 73:28; ‫אלהי יעקב‬, Ps 75:10; ‫קדֹוׁש יׂשראל‬, Ps 78:41; ‫אלהים צבאֹות‬, Ps 80:8; ‫יהוה אלהים צבאֹות‬, Ps 80:5). Residual mnemohistorical material in Asaph is not reflective, detailed, preservative historical memory; neither is it symbolic language intentionally evocative of historical events or figures. The implicit mnemohistorical material is, instead, the almost certainly unconscious preservation of historically significant material and referents that may be of interest to the historian of Israel.1 They can also highlight, if indirectly, the theological and religious world view operative in the Asaphite school. Asymbolic Memories Residual mnemohistorical material may be characterized as an embryonic stage in the preservation of a remembered referent. Here the memory of the historical situation, perspective, individual, or event, is present largely as a part of the context for the explicit mnemohistorical symbol or is in the background. In other words, the residual mnemohistorical referent is not represented as important for remembering in and of itself but is a part of the tradition associated with what is remembered that is retained in the psalm. The residual memory, then, does not take on the form and function of an image or metaphor; it preserves not historical referents but historical remnants. The Vocabulary of Worship Sites in the Asaphite Psalms In numerous places in the Hebrew Bible, the legitimacy of worship sites outside of Jerusalem is hotly contested. In the reformations of Hezekiah and Josiah, sites deemed dangerous and/or blasphemous to Yahwistic worship practices are destroyed (2 Kgs 18:4; 23:19). The negative evaluation of Israelite and Judean kings was often summarized, in part, in terms of allowing worship sites other than the Jerusalem Temple to continue; Jehoram is denounced for allowing high places (2 Chr 1. See Megan Bishop Moore’s remarks on the role of the prophetic books vis-à-vis history of Israel’s past: “Israel’s prophets were not historians, and the prophetic books are not history, but the prophets can contribute to the study of Israel’s past. Incidental information found in the prophetic books can help historians understand the details and organization of Israelite life.” Moore “Writing Israel’s History Using the Prophetic Books,” in Kelle and Moore, Israel’s Prophets, 36.

166

EXCURSUS: RESIDUAL MEMORIES IN THE ASAPHITE CORPUS

21:10–11) and several kings are found guilty of “the sins of Jeroboam” (1 Kgs 14:16; 2 Kgs 10:29).2 As Brevard Childs summarizes it, The total claim of Yahweh on his people results in the severance of all connection with those areas of nature which offer opportunity for syncretistic infiltration. The cult is legitimate only “at the place where Yahweh reveals his name.”3

When the defiled temple itself is finally destroyed, it is a sign of God’s rejection of a faithless people (2 Kgs 24:13–14). The problem here is that the Asaphite material reflects a complex picture of where Yahweh’s name is revealed; the cult is not located only, or perhaps even primarily, in Jerusalem. What is striking in the Psalms of Asaph is that, with the exception of Psalm 78, there is not the overwhelming sense of the centralization of worship in Zion that is so essential to the Deuteronomistic History. Nor is there a sense even in the North that only in Bethel and Dan is true worship found. In Asaph, these religious tensions are held, neither pressed vigorously nor resolved—at least not fully. The Asaphite Psalms employ several different terms for sites of worship. In Asaph, these terms are, with one exception, largely interchangeable and may refer to a variety of locales. The terms employed in these psalms are: ‫מקדׁש‬/‫( קדׁש‬sacred/holy place), ‫( מועד‬meeting place), ‫( סך‬abode), ‫( מעון‬hiding place), ‫( היכל‬temple), ‫( במה‬high place), and ‫מׁשכן‬/‫( ׁשכן‬dwelling). ‫( קדׁש‬sacred) and ‫( מקדׁש‬holy place) Both of these semantically related terms, ‫ מקדש‬and ‫קדׁש‬, are employed in the Asaphite tradition to refer to a holy place (cf. Pss 73:17; 74:3, 7; and 78:69). In the Hebrew Bible, ‫ מקדש‬refers variously to a holy place (cf. Exod 15:17; Lev 21:12; 1 Chr 22:19) or holy things associated with the activities of the holy place (Num 18:19; Ezra 2:63); in the Psalms of Asaph, it has strictly to do with a holy place (the temple in Ps 74:7 and Ps 78:69).4 One distinctive form of the word appears in the Asaphite 2. In Sir 49:4, this is a part of the evaluation of all of Israel’s kings, in comparison to David, Hezekiah, and Josiah, “Except for David and Hezekiah and Josiah, all of them were great sinners, for they abandoned the law of the Most High; the kings of Judah came to an end.” 3. Childs, Memory and Tradition, 78. 4. ‫ מקדׁש‬can also refer to other places of worship where false worship was practiced; see Amos 7:9; Isa 16:12; Lev 26:31. Harris, Archer, and Waltke, Theological Wordbook, 789.

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MEMORIES OF ASAPH

Psalm 73:17, where the noun is plural in construct, ‫מקדׁשי־אל‬, which is often translated (whether in English or the Old Greek5) in the singular, “sanctuary of God.” John Goldingay, citing Gesenius’ Hebrew Grammar, identifies the form as the “plural of amplification.”6 But there is no compelling reason, outside of capitulating to the influence of a kind of later biblical orthodoxy, not to read this as a standard plural form. And indeed, even in Leviticus this noun is used to refer to holy places plural: ‫( לא יחלל את־מקדׁשי כי אני יהוה מקדׁשם‬Do not profane my holy places, for I, the Lord, sanctify them; Lev 21:23). Another possibility is that the ‫ מקדׁשי‬refers to the vessels and accoutrements of the tabernacle (see Num 10:21). The more common description of the temple/tabernacle vessels is ‫( כלי הקדׁש‬all the holy vessels; cf. Num 3:31, 4:15, 18:3, 31:6; 1 Kgs 8:4; 1 Chr 9:29). And there is nothing in the rest of the psalms that necessitates an association with the singular temple of Mount Zion in Jerusalem. Furthermore, the presence of multiple worship sites in the North, and the acceptance of numerous places in which Yahweh’s name might be invoked, argue for an understanding of holy places in the plural, rather than a singular holy place. What we have here then is reference to the holy places, the sanctuaries where El is worshipped in the North. More will follow below in the discussion of ‫ מועד‬in Psalm 74:8. In the Psalter, ‫ קדׁש‬usually functions adjectivally, modifying anything from the divine name (‫[ ׁשם קדׁשו‬holy name]; Pss 33:21; 97:12; 103:1; 105:3; 106:47; 145:21), to Mount Zion (‫ ;הר־קדׁש‬Pss 2:6; 3:5; 15:1; 48:2; 78:54; 87:1; 99:9), to God’s throne (‫ ;כסא קדׁשו‬Ps 47:9), to the holy of holies (‫ ;דביר קדׁשך‬Pss 28:2; 60:8; 108:8). This usage reflects the wider use of the word in the Hebrew Bible (cf. ‫[ אדמת־קדש‬holy ground]: Exod 3:5; ‫[ מקרא־קדׁש‬sacred assembly]: Exod 12:16; Lev 23:2–4, 7–8, 21, 24, 27, 35–37; Num 28:18, 25–26; 29:1, 7, 12; and individuals devoted to God: Lev 21:6; Num 6:5; Deut 26:19). ‫ קדׁש‬is employed precisely this way in the Asaphite material, modifying two of the synonyms for “holy place.” In Psalm 68:6, God is “in his holy habitation” (‫)במעון קדׁשו‬, and in several psalms, the temple is called holy (‫ ;היכל־קדׁשך‬Pss 5:8; 11:4; 79:1; 138:2). Finally, ‫ קדׁש‬can, independently, mean not simply “holiness” but “holy place” or temple. This latter is the case in the Asaphite Psalm 74 (v. 3), and also in Psalms 63:3; 68:18, 25; and 150:1. 5. Old Greek, Ps 73:17, τὸ ἁγιαστήριον τοῦ θεοῦ. 6. Goldingay, Psalms, 399.

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‫( מועד‬meeting place) At its root, ‫ מועד‬means “appoint.” When tied to place, it has to do with the locus of God’s meeting with God’s people.7 In the Psalter, ‫מועד‬ occurs five times. In three cases, Psalms 75:3, 102:14, and 104:19, ‫מועד‬ has to do with the appointed time, the right time, the seasonal time for God’s action. In the other two, both in the Asaphite Psalm 74 (v. 4, 8), ‫ מועד‬means the meeting place, an appointed locale in which God will encounter God’s people and in which God’s name may be invoked. The first example, in 74:4, seems to refer to the destruction of the temple in Jerusalem.8 While this is likely, the possibility that this Asaphite Psalm refers to the destruction of Northern meeting places, perhaps even the Ephraimite sanctuaries at Bethel and Dan, cannot be ruled out. This is supported by the striking use of ‫ מועד‬in verse 8, where the noun is a masculine plural construct, and by the variant reading of‫( מועדי‬my holy place) in verse 4 instead of ‫( מֹועדך‬your holy place). Psalm 74:8 thus talks about meeting places, ‫מועדי‬. This is, at the very least, an acknowledgement that despite the reforms attributed to Hezekiah and Josiah, Yahweh was worshipped in places other than the centralized cultus of Jerusalem, and that the destruction of these meeting places was lamentable.9 It may be maintained that the striking phrase ‫( כל־מועדי־אל‬all the meeting places of God) preserves the memory of shrines in the Northern Kingdom during or shortly after the fall of Israel to the Assyrians in 701 BCE. In tandem with the similar phrase ‫( מקדׁשי־אל‬sanctuaries of God) in 73:17, the use of the plural in 74:8 points to the existence of cultic sites outside of Jerusalem. 10 7. ‫ מֹועד‬is used for a variety of happenings, from the birth of a child (Gen 17:21), to the wonder of the exodus (Exod 9:5), an appointed time (1 Sam 13:8), a vision (Hab 2:3), or festival observation (Lev 23:2). Harris, Archer, and Waltke, Theological Wordbook, 388. 8. Hossfeld and Zenger, Psalms 2, 243. 9. Ibid., 245. 10. Addressing the phrase ‫מועדי־אל‬, Anthony Gelston (“A Note on Psalm LXXIV 8,” Vetus Testamentum 34, no. 1 [1984]: 83), notes that in Lam 2:6 the term is used in tandem with ‫ׂשּכֹו‬, in which both words apply to the temple. Gelston sees four possible explanations in accounting for the multiple “meeting places.” “The first possibility is to take môʿadê-ʾēl as a reference to non-Yahwistic sanctuaries. . . . The difficulty with this interpretation is that the whole context of the lament concerns an attack on the practices of Yahwism; the very next verse laments the absence of any prophet, and it is hardly conceivable that the psalmist would include regret for the destruction of nonYahwistic sanctuaries in the middle of his lament. The second possibility is to see the môʿadê-ʾēl as a reference to the local sanctuaries or ‘high places.’ . . . The difficulty with this interpretation is that on the usual understanding of the Deuteronomic reforms Josiah had enforced the cessation of sacrifice at these ‘high places,’ which had been the centres of syncretistic religion, leaving the Temple in Jerusalem as the sole legitimate sacrificial centre in Judah. The third possibility, argued by S. Krauss . . . is to regard the plural môʿadê-ʾēl as indicating the Temple with its several buildings. He notes that many manuscripts read the plurals môʿadęka in v. 4 and miqdāšęka v. 7, and

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MEMORIES OF ASAPH

The implicit mnemohistorical referent that drives the psalm, which informs its Sitz im Leben, is revealed in this striking phrase: the community’s shared lamenting of the destruction of the appointed meeting places of its God. ‫( סך‬lair) and ‫( מעון‬dwelling place) Related to the word “booth,” ‫ סך‬occurs four times in the Hebrew Bible. Twice, in Psalm 10:9 and in Jeremiah 25:38, the word is employed as a part of a metaphor of a lion hiding in its lair. And twice, in Psalms 27:5 and 76:3, it is the “lair,” house, booth, or abode of God. In Psalm 76:3, ‫ סך‬is employed in hendiadys with ‫מעון‬. This is fitting in two senses. First, the pairing fits in that ‫ מעון‬is often used to describe the lairs of wild animals (Job 37:8, 38:40; Ps 104:22), much like ‫סך‬. In addition to the explicit remembering of God’s indwelling in the conquest of Jerusalem, in the use of these two unusual terms for the Temple Mount, Psalm 76 employs an implicit metaphor. God’s dwelling in Zion is like that of a lion or some other ferocious animal; God is like a lion, waiting to strike out at prey.11 Second, the pairing of ‫מעון‬/ ‫ סך‬is fitting as it is also used frequently to describe not just God’s dwelling place, the temple (Pss 26:8; 68:6), but God as personified as a dwelling or refuge (Pss 90:1; 91:9). The two words are employed in Psalm 76 in part to valorize the holy habitation “in Salem . . . in Zion.” But the use of the implicit metaphor of God as a lion who emerges from his covert to dominate in battle (v. 4), to strip the mighty of their spoil (v. 6), to stun rider and horse (v. 7), drives this hymn of praise. In Psalm 76, the dwelling place of God is the site of God’s victory and thus the source from which God’s victory issues for Israel.

explains all three plurals as referring to the Temple complex, since its courts and outbuildings could serve as places of assembly. . . . The remaining possibility is the one which appears most natural in the context. This takes the miqdāšęka to be other places of Yahwistic worship in Judah besides the Temple.” Ibid., 83–85. This last suggests meeting places where, while sacrifice was not practiced, other ritual observations such as prayer and praise were carried out. 11. Hossfeld and Zenger, Psalms 2, 260, 262. As William Brown (Seeing the Psalms, 136) has noted, the lion is the primary animal metaphor in the Psalms. It is possible that the simple use of ‫ סך‬to describe the temple would have been enough to evoke in the minds of hearers of the psalm the idea of God as lion (cf. Hos 5:14). Cf. Amos 1:2, “The Lord roars from Zion, and utters his voice from Jerusalem.”

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EXCURSUS: RESIDUAL MEMORIES IN THE ASAPHITE CORPUS

‫( היכל‬temple) “Temple,” or “palace,” occurs only once in the Asaphite material (twelve other times in the Psalter). The term itself is diverse in its usage and application in the biblical material, referring variously to the tent of meeting, the temporary house David built, and the Jerusalem temple.12 In Psalm 79:1, as it is modified by ‫( קדׁש‬your holy temple [‫היכל‬ ‫ ;]קדׁשך‬a not uncommon construction, see Pss 5:8; 138:2; Jonah 2:5, 8; cf. Ps 68:30) it is clearly a reference to the Jerusalem Temple. ‫( במה‬high place) Psalm 78:58 marks the one instance in the Asaphite material of alternative worship sites being identified as problematic. It is not always the case that the ‫—במה‬a technical term that means literally “high place” but which also has connotations of “cultic place”—was identified with idolatry.13 As was seen above, the Asaphite Psalter itself attests a positive evaluation of cultic sites other than the Jerusalem Temple. In contrast to Psalm 74:8, Psalm 78 rejects these, labeling them “high places.” This is particularly striking insofar as the word is attested nowhere else in the Psalter.14 What happens in Psalm 78:58 is unique in terms of its harmony with the Deuteronomistic formulae, both in Asaph and in the Psalter at large.15 The example of Shiloh (Ps 78:60)16 is employed as a judgment of Israel’s faithlessness and a shift to David and Mount Zion as the locus of worship and relationship with God. The use of this particular word as it stands out in contrast with the rest of the Asaphite material and in harmony with later biblical orthodoxy supports the idea that Psalm 78 was composed in stages.17 The close of the psalm shifts the mnemohistory of the exodus from North to South. The memory is borrowed here, and the use of ‫ במה‬is a clear indication of the appropriation and reimagination of that memory. This is 12. “It is to be noted that the term h¢k¹l l is applied to God’s house while it was still a tent (1 Sam 1:9; 1 Sam 3:3). In Psa 27, the temporary structure where David placed the ark is called a house (b¢t), a temple (h¢k¹l), a booth (sukkâ), and a tent (°œhel).” Harris, Archer, and Waltke, Theological Wordbook, 215. 13. G. Johannes Botterweck and Helmer Ringgren, eds., Theological Dictionary of the Old Testament, vol. 2 (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1978), 139–44. 14. In the technical sense of a place of worship that is. Ps 18:34 uses ‫ במה‬as a parallel term for safe pathways or places, “the heights,” which are a place of safety. 15. Hossfeld and Zenger, Psalms 2, 298. 16. Cf. Jer 7:12, 14; 26:6, 9. 17. Goldingay, Psalms, 481.

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not to suggest that the mnemohistory of the exodus is solely Northern in origin. There does, however, seem to be a shift from the exodus referent as employed in the contexts of lament, praise, and thanksgiving—to the lives of the people and nation—to the use of the referent to boost the Davidic monarchy. ‫( ׁשכן‬dwell) and ‫( מׁשכן‬tabernacle) In the wider Old Testament, ‫ מׁשכן‬is most frequently the tabernacle, the tent in which the ark of the covenant was housed (Exodus 25–31; Lev 26:11). In the Psalter, this is almost never the case. In the Psalter, ‫מׁשכן‬ typically means the house or temple of Yahweh (Pss 26:8; 43:3; 46:5; 74:7 84:2; 87:2; 132:5, 7). In one case (Ps 49:11), ‫ מׁשכן‬characterizes the grave, which is the eternal dwelling place of the dead (both the wise and the foolish). Similarly, in Psalm 78:28, ‫ מׁשכן‬is used for the tents of the Israelites as they sojourn in the wilderness. One other use of ‫מׁשכן‬ is in Asaph, in Psalm 78:60, where it is the tabernacle, referencing its former importance when it served as God’s dwelling place at Shiloh. This is unique in the Psalter and stems from an earlier stratum of the psalm.18 ‫ מׁשכן‬is not a part of the Deuteronomistic lexicon. In Deuteronomy, it is the piel infinitive construct of ‫ׁשכן‬o(‫[ לׁשכן ׁשמו ׁשם‬the name to dwell there]; see Deut 12:5, 14:23) that is used to express the indwelling of the divine name and that supports the Deuteronomistic agenda of a unified Yahwistic cultus.19 This does not seem to be the case in Psalm 78:60, except insofar as it is a negative evaluation of Shiloh. What we find in the nominal form is another indication that Psalm 78:60 is a holdover, a residual mnemohistorical referent that retains an anachronism, an obsolete (or at least less common) referent conserved in the Asaphite memory.20 Psalms 73 and 74 and the Meeting Places of God As has been shown, there is variety within the Asaphite Psalter in the terms employed for holy places or worship sites. In general, this variety alone need not be indicative of anything other than synonymous 18. Hossfeld and Zenger, Psalms 2, 291. 19. S. Dean McBride, The Deuteronomic Name Theology (PhD diss., Harvard University, 1969), 179. 20. It is likely, as Cross (“The Priestly Tabernacle.” In The Biblical Archaeologist Reader, 201–28, ed. G. Ernest Wright and D. N. Freedman. [New York: Anchor Books, 1961], 224–26) has shown and McBride (Deuteronomic Name Theology, 205) notes, that the verbal meaning and usage of ‫ ׁשכן‬is derived from ‫מׁשכן‬.

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terms for describing the same type of place or places, the worship site. But there is also some tension as to how these various terms are received. While Psalm 78 employs the familiar Deuteronomic/ Deuteronomistic association of high places with idolatry and identifies this association with the fall of Ephraimite Israel, it does so clearly as counter-memory, as a shifting of the mnemohistorical force of the Asaphite material from Shiloh (now associated with the ‫ )במה‬to Jerusalem (which is God’s proper ‫)מׁשכן‬. What is more, the other Asaphite Psalms do not share this condemnation. As was shown above, Psalm 74 itself employs three of these different terms (‫מועד‬, ‫מקדׁש‬/‫קדׁש‬ and ‫ )מׁשכן‬and, most striking, laments the destruction of not the Jerusalem Temple alone but ‫( כל־מועדי־אל‬all the meeting places of God; Ps 74:8). Psalm 73 does the same, praising the holy places of God, ‫מקדשי־אל‬, as the locales in which wisdom is found and sense is made of the world. Psalms 73 and 74 do not seem to exhibit the traits of pure Yahwistic orthodoxy (in contrast to the close of Psalm 78), at least as it is laid out in Deuteronomistic History, and the eighth-century prophets. As Patrick Miller has observed, one of the features in the practice of Yahwistic religion is a surprising multiplicity of shrines and worship sites.21 And as S. Dean McBride has summarized in his study of the Deuteronomic name theology, The Law of the Altar prefixed to the Book of the Covenant suggests the clearest biblical model for the šēm formula: “In every place (bekol-hammāqôm) where I have ‘established’ my name (ʾāzkîr ʾet- šemî) there I will come to you and bless you. Here Yahweh through his name both legitimizes the existence of multiple shrines and guarantees his presence at each of them.”22

Ultimately, the place where God’s name dwells is to be Jerusalem; at least, this is the religious and theological goal of Deuteronomistic material. But certainly before the centralization of worship as established in the Solomonic Temple (and probably after), it is in every place where God’s name is invoked—every place, not just Jerusalem. In their references to ‫( כל־מֹועדי־אל‬all the meeting places of God) and ‫מקדשי־אל‬ (the holy places of God), Psalms 74:8 and 73:17 preserve, unintention-

21. Patrick D. Miller, The Religion of Ancient Israel (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox, 2000), 48. 22. McBride, Deuteronomic Name Theology, 209.

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ally or unconsciously, implicit mnemohistorical evidence of an earlier understanding of proper Yahwistic worship. Destruction of Yahweh’s Worship/Dwelling Places While Asaph retains, in part, a tolerance for numerous cultic sites in Psalms 73 and 74, the implicit warning of Psalm 78:58–60 comes to fruition in Psalm 79. Psalm 78:58–60 recounts the rejection of cultic high places and couches this in terms of Yahweh’s rejection of Shiloh. As David and Zion are chosen over and against what the mnemohistorical referent of Shiloh represents, a tacit warning may be included for Judah and Mount Zion. The rejection of Shiloh—an explicit mnemohistorical referent—functions in Asaph in part as it comes out of the implicit tension that is maintained in the Asaphite corpus as a whole. This tension, which is unvoiced and seems for the most part to be comfortably maintained within the Asaphite Psalms, is implicit as it is embodied in the collection. The “meeting places of God” are, on one level, not associated with the “high places” but are venerated and mourned. On another level, the meeting places of God, in particular Shiloh, are rejected and even characterized as high places. Tension between two very different religious and theological positions seems to be maintained within the corpus of the Asaphite Psalms. What I mean by this is that while Psalm 78 does critique and condemn alternate worship sites, the rest of Asaph does not—unless perhaps the “compositional arc” of the collection is considered.23 Psalm 74 refers to the destruction of the meeting places (plural) of God. And while Psalm 79 is remarkably similar in tone and content to Psalm 74 (as is frequently observed24), a key difference is that Psalm 79 laments the violation of “your holy temple” (‫ )היכל קדׁשך‬and of Jerusalem. This has led some to observe that Psalm 79 appears to be an interpretation of Psalm 74.25 In fact, this is an example of the reappropriation of mnemohistory within the Asaphite corpus itself. Psalm 78 associates the northern meeting places of El, Shiloh in particular, with the high places. Psalm 74’s lamentation is transformed in Psalm 78 to an explanation. Then, as Psalm 78 ends with the elevation of Mount Zion, Psalm 79 begins with lamentation over its destruction. The three 23. Hossfeld and Zenger, Psalms 2, 250, 307. 24. For example, Konrad Schaefer, Psalms, 195: “As in Psalm 74, the poet describes the state of emergency in the city (vv.1–4), appeals to God on behalf of the oppressed population and admits that both past and present generations have erred (vv. 5–9).” 25. Hossfeld and Zenger, Psalms 2, 307; Goldingay, Psalms, 519.

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psalms then, 74, 78, and 79, show a progression from multiple worship places, to the establishment of the temple, to its loss. In this progression, the earlier lamentation over the loss of the ‫ כל־מועדי־אל‬and the ‫ מקדשי־אל‬is appropriated for lamentation over the holy temple. Taken within the collection as a whole, Psalm 78 refers explicitly to the historical memories of the Philistine victory over Israel, which resulted in the destruction of Shiloh and the loss of the ark (1 Sam 4:1b–11). This historical memory is employed to buttress the claim of the Jerusalem sanctuary as the true center of the worship of Yahweh, over against other sites that are associated with the syncretism redolent of the high places. Finally, this historical memory may, in turn, function as an implicit warning: what happened in Shiloh may happen in Jerusalem. And indeed it does, as is recorded in Psalms 79 (cf. Jeremiah 7). “There is no longer any prophet . . .” Psalm 74 laments the destruction of Israel’s sanctuary and the meeting places of God, but this lamentation is about more than the place. It is about what is invested there, both the name of God and those who invoke that name and speak in that name. Not just the temple(s) but the officials invested therein are lost. Erich Zenger has observed that the crisis of Psalm 74 is, above all else, the crisis of separation from God. Following the loss of the temple, the place where God’s name has been brought to dwell and where God is rightly invoked, Israel itself is lost: Whatever the Babylonians did in the way of devastation of individual places, what interests the psalmist is the religious crisis in the relationship with Yhwh and Israel that resulted: Israel’s privileged place for contact with God was destroyed.26

This is followed by lamentation over the loss of the prophet as well: ‫( אין־עֹוד נביא‬there is no longer a prophet; Ps 74:9). While the technical term for prophet (‫ )נביא‬occurs only three times in the Psalter, it is clear that there were prophets who held office and practiced their prophetic vocation within the cultus.27 This is, according to Miller, another of the features of orthodox Yahwism, that the 26. Hossfeld and Zenger, Psalms 2, 245. 27. Hossfeld, “Das Prophetische in den Psalmen,” 223–43; Hossfeld and Zenger, Psalms 2, 245; R. Jacobson, Many Are Saying, 84; Nasuti, Tradition History, 70; Bellinger, Psalmody and Prophecy, 16; Gunkel and Begrich, Introduction to the Psalms, 251-292; Mowinckel, Psalms in Israel’s Worship; etc.

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will of God is communicated through the prophet.28 Sigmund Mowinckel’s observations about the developing roll of state prophets in the liturgical life of Israel support this likelihood as well, It is a pointer in the same direction that the Chronicler considers the Levitical temple singers to be somehow inspired, and uses the term “prophesy” about their official singing, meaning that their singing arises from an ex officio inspiration (1 Chr 25:1ff.).29

In 1 Chronicles 25:1: “David and the officers of the army also set apart for the service the sons of Asaph, and of Heman, and of Jeduthun, who should prophesy with lyres, harps, and cymbals.” And in 2 Chronicles 29:30 Asaph is called ‫( החזה‬the seer). These descriptions are certainly suggestive of a distinctly prophetic nature or tone to the Asaphite content. And the Asaphite collection supports these conclusions, both in Psalm 74:9’s reference to the loss of the prophetic figure and in the language used, the quotation formulas employed, and sensibilities these psalms display.30 As Zenger has observed, the driving question of Psalm 73 is proximity to God: The question that runs through the whole of Psalm 73, “Where is God?” is given a clear answer both in Psalm 73 and Psalm 82: God is on the side of the common people. That is the message Psalm 73 wishes to proclaim (cf. 73:28).31

The opening lines of the psalm illustrate this tension even better, How good God is to Israel; to the pure of heart. But . . . my feet stumbled; my steps nearly slipped. For I was jealous of the boastful; I saw the welfare of the wicked. For they suffer no pains of death; their bellies are fat. (Ps 73:1–4) 28. Miller, Religion of Ancient Israel, 48. 29. Mowinckel, Psalms in Israel’s Worship, 2:56. 30. Discussing the term ‫ נביא‬in Ps 74:9, Nasuti (Tradition History, 70; cf. 127-136) concludes, “The usage here is important, since it indicates that 1) the psalmist considers a nāḇî at home in a cultic situation, 2) such a presence was a repeated occurrence, and 3) its absence was something to be lamented, at least for the psalmist.” Cf. Goldingay, Psalms, 429; Limburg, Psalms, 255. 31. Hossfeld and Zenger, Psalms 2, 237.

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The claim that “God is good to Israel” is contrasted with the reality that the psalmist experiences. He stumbles over the claim as he observes the wicked who are doing well (‫[ ׁשלֹום‬well-off/prosperous/at peace]), whose bodies do not suffer “pain that feels like death” (‫)חרצבֹות למֹותם‬, whose bellies are well-fed and show it (‫)ובריא אולם‬. Implied in the struggles of the psalmist to understand this contradiction is his observation (and perhaps his personal experience) of those who are not well-off, who suffer great pain, in large part the pain of hunger. Zenger is right that the psalm begs this question and searches for the answer. And where is the answer to this wearying search found? Only in the sanctuaries of God (Ps 73:17), only in the presence of God (Ps 73:28) does the psalmist come to understand how this theological/anthropological dilemma is resolved. The question is just how this dawn of understanding is to be understood. Echoing as it does the prophetic preference of the poor, Psalm 73 may contain a tacit answer to the question it raises. Returning to the opening line of the psalm, there is some question as to the proper reading of the opening colon. Following the attribution of the psalm to Asaph, the opening phrase of the Masoretic Text (MT) is ‫אך טֹוב ליׂשראל אלהים‬. I have translated this “How good God is to Israel” following the MT, the LXX, and other ancient witnesses.32 It has been argued that such a reading does not fit the psalm as a whole. Kraus, among others, concludes, “‘for Israel’ is hardly possible in view of the inner division of the verses and also in consideration of the syntax.”33 The suggested textual emendation (noted in Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia and followed by the New Revised Standard Version) divides the third word of the colon and represents the first phrase of the psalm as follows: ‫ ;אך טֹוב ליׂשר אל אלהים‬thus, the opening colon of the psalm reads, “How good to the upright is El Elohim.” Beyond the apparent difficulty of reading “Israel” at the beginning of an individual’s psalm, there is the attractiveness of paralleling “the upright” with the “pure of heart” in the second colon of the first verse, and contrasting the pair with “the boastful” and “the wicked” of the second verse. These are not sufficient reasons, however, to alter the present form of the text, particularly when the psalm’s identification as an Asaphite Psalm and its position at the head of the collection are taken into account. If the wicked are the nations—those who plague Israel and 32. Hossfeld and Zenger, Psalms 2, 221–22. 33. Kraus, Psalms 60–150, 83. In contrast, see Goldingay, Psalms, 397.

177

MEMORIES OF ASAPH

beside whom Israel struggles (as iterated so clearly in the destruction visited upon Israel in Psalms 74 and 79)—which raises serious theological questions, then the ‫ ליׂשראל‬of the MT makes sense.34 And indeed, the next psalm in the collection is a prayer for help that addresses this very problem—the worship places of Israel are a “perpetual ruin” (Ps 74:3), and the nation’s enemies rage within their sanctuaries (vv. 4–7)—and in turn seeks to answer it. In Psalm 73, it is in the sanctuaries, in the presence of God, schooled in the counsel of God that the psalmist finds peace and an understanding of the fate of the wicked who seem to prosper. But the question is worth raising again: What is the source of the psalmist’s understanding of the end of the wicked? The psalm, other than locating this understanding in the temple and citing (somewhat blandly or generically) the ‫( עצת‬counsel) to be found there, does not say explicitly. But as both John Goldingay and James Limburg have observed, the psalm does place a heavy emphasis on the heart.35 The state of the psalmist’s heart is at issue, and his heart is only purified (v. 1), unembittered (v. 21), and strengthened (v. 26) when it is strangely warmed in God’s presence, at God’s sanctuaries. For the psalm, the heart is the seat of experience of God and of instruction.36 Further, as the introduction to the Asaphite corpus, with its attention to the poor and its mnemohistorical recitation, this orientation of the heart to God is apropos. Psalm 73 thus begs the question that the collection as a whole addresses and that is taken up in the subsequent psalm. The heart must attend to the remembered past of God’s presence with God’s people. Psalm 74, while not a prophetic psalm itself, bears witness to the role and importance of the prophetic figure in the cultus. More than simply lamenting the loss of the cultic prophet, the psalm seems to take up or reintroduce that prophetic office and introduce the basic mnemohistorical content of that office as it is filled out in the Asaphite tradition. Psalm 74 concludes with an appeal to God on behalf of the downtrodden, the poor, and the needy (Ps 74:22). This appeal follows closely after the recital of the mnemohistorical conflation of the cosmogonic power of God in/with the exodus (Ps 74:12–17), a recitation that follows closely after the lament of the loss of the cultic prophets and their signs. 34. Goldingay (Psalms, 401) claims that “God is good to Israel” is so commonplace as to amount to an aphoristic saying, but his textual support for the claim is slim at best. 35. Goldingay, Psalms, 418; Limburg, Psalms, 246. 36. Harris, Archer, and Waltke, Theological Wordbook, 466.

178

EXCURSUS: RESIDUAL MEMORIES IN THE ASAPHITE CORPUS

The relationship of ‫( אותתינו‬our signs; Ps 74:9) and the cultic prophet is the subject of much speculation. There is general consensus that “sign” in this case is not necessarily a military standard (although it probably does mean military standard in v. 4) but a message from the cultic prophet, anticipated, presumably, in response to Israel’s trials.37 Though clearly not a new military standard of some kind, “sign” here need not necessarily only be an oracle answering directly the plaintive “how long?” of verses 9–10, predicting some end to the period of waiting and disorientation. The meaning of “signs” here may also include the essence of the distinctively Asaphite message, that is the mnemohistorical recitation of God’s saving acts on Israel’s behalf with an eye to actualizing the experience of the past acts for the present generation.38 In these first two psalms of the Asaphite collection, whether addressed to Israel as a whole or to the righteous remnant of Israel, one particular expression of the role of the cultic prophet is preserved in the lamentation of his loss and the reintroduction of his sign—the mnemohistorical anchoring of Israel’s self-understanding, of Israel’s hope, and Israel’s expectation in God’s saving acts in Israel’s past. The Asaphite Name(s) for God As is often noted, there is notable diversity in the divine epithets in the Asaphite Psalter. Drawing on the work of Franz Delitzsch and Michael Goulder, I have laid out a table to chart the variety and distribution of these epithets (see table 1, p. 180). In the Asaphite Psalter, there is a clear sense of the importance of the proximity or indwelling of the divine name. In lamenting the loss of the temple, the psalmist decries the destruction of the ‫( מׁשכן־ׁשמך‬the dwelling place of your name; Ps 74:7). Psalm 76:2 begins “In Judah God is known, in Israel great is his name [‫]גדול ׁשמו‬.” Psalm 75:2 sings thanks to God because “your name is near” (‫)קרוב ׁשמך‬, before employing a stock phrase of the Asaphite mnemohistory, “People tell of your wondrous deeds.”39

37. See for example Kraus, Psalms 60–150, 98–99, 240, 245; Schaefer, Psalms, 182; Clifford, Psalms 73–150, 24. Cf. Miller, Harper Collins Study Bible, 869; Jacobson, “Book of Psalms,” 929. 38. Hossfeld and Zenger, Psalms 2, 245–47. 39. Goldingay, Psalms, 441: “First, the congregation has experienced Yhwh’s name come near it. Yhwh’s name stands for Yhwh in person acting on the people’s behalf to deliver them (44:5 [6]; 54:1 [3]; 124:8), and the nearness of the name or the person means that Yhwh is indeed so present to act on their behalf when they are in trouble. . . . The parallel reference to Yhwh’s wonders restates that.”

179

‫‪MEMORIES OF ASAPH‬‬

‫‪Composite‬‬ ‫& ‪Names‬‬ ‫‪Epithets‬‬

‫יהוה עליֹון אלהים ‪ /‬אל‬ ‫יהוה‬ ‫אדני‬ ‫‪in‬‬ ‫‪in‬‬ ‫‪apposition‬‬ ‫‪apposition‬‬

‫אל אלהים‬ ‫יהוה‬

‫‪1, see far‬‬ ‫‪right‬‬

‫‪14‬‬

‫אדני ‪28,‬‬ ‫יהֹוה‬

‫‪11‬‬

‫אל‬

‫אלהים‬

‫‪2, 3, 6,‬‬ ‫‪14, 16,‬‬ ‫‪23‬‬

‫‪1, see far‬‬ ‫‪right‬‬ ‫אלהים ‪7,‬‬ ‫אלהיָך‬

‫‪20‬‬

‫יהוה ‪12,‬‬ ‫אלהיכם‬

‫‪50‬‬

‫‪11, 17‬‬

‫‪1, 26, 28‬‬

‫‪73‬‬

‫‪8‬‬

‫‪1, 10,‬‬ ‫‪12, 22‬‬

‫‪74‬‬

‫אלהי ‪10,‬‬ ‫יעקב‬

‫‪2, 8‬‬

‫‪75‬‬

‫אלהי ‪7,‬‬ ‫יעקב‬

‫‪2, 10‬‬

‫‪76‬‬

‫‪18‬‬ ‫‪9‬‬

‫‪Psalm‬‬

‫יהוה ‪12,‬‬ ‫אלהיכם‬

‫קדֹוׁש‪41,40i‬‬ ‫‪i‬יׂשראל‬

‫‪3, 8‬‬

‫‪12,‬‬ ‫יּה‬

‫‪11‬‬

‫‪65‬‬

‫‪4,‬‬ ‫‪21‬‬

‫‪17‬‬

‫‪12‬‬

‫‪5‬‬

‫‪10, 14‬‬

‫אל עליֹון ‪35,‬‬ ‫אלהים ‪56,‬‬ ‫עליֹון‬

‫יהוה אלהים‬ ‫צבאֹות‬

‫‪5, see far‬‬ ‫‪right‬‬

‫‪5, 20, see‬‬ ‫‪far right‬‬

‫רעה יׂשראל ‪2,‬‬

‫‪20, see far‬‬ ‫‪right‬‬

‫אלהים ‪8, 15‬‬ ‫צבאֹות‬

‫יהוה ‪11,‬‬ ‫אלהיָך‬

‫אלהי ‪2,‬‬ ‫יעקב‬

‫‪16‬‬

‫‪2 (x2), 4,‬‬ ‫‪14 (x2),‬‬ ‫‪17‬‬

‫‪77‬‬

‫‪7, 10, 19, 7, 8,‬‬ ‫‪22, 31,‬‬ ‫‪18, 19,‬‬ ‫‪35, 59‬‬ ‫‪34, 41‬‬

‫‪78‬‬

‫‪14‬‬

‫‪10‬‬ ‫)‪(x2‬‬

‫‪1, 9, 10‬‬

‫‪79‬‬

‫‪4‬‬

‫‪80‬‬

‫‪1‬‬

‫‪81‬‬

‫אלהי ‪5,‬‬ ‫יעקב‬ ‫יהוה ‪11,‬‬ ‫אלהיָך‬

‫‪5‬‬

‫‪6‬‬

‫‪6‬‬

‫‪1‬‬

‫‪1 (x2), 6,‬‬ ‫‪8‬‬

‫‪82‬‬

‫‪17,‬‬ ‫‪19‬‬

‫‪19‬‬

‫‪2‬‬

‫‪2, 13, 14‬‬

‫‪83‬‬

‫‪9‬‬

‫‪6‬‬

‫‪13‬‬

‫‪14‬‬

‫‪Totals 42‬‬

‫‪180‬‬

EXCURSUS: RESIDUAL MEMORIES IN THE ASAPHITE CORPUS

And Psalm 73:17 rejoices in the wisdom that comes after the psalmist has approached (one of) the sanctuaries of God (‫ )מקדׁשי־אל‬and there, in the light of the confines of the temple, lauds the benefits of being near the place of the divine name: “I am continually with you” (‫;תמיד עמך‬ v. 23), “those who are far from you will perish” (‫ ;רחקיך‬v. 27), “for me it is good to be near God” (‫ ;קרבת אלהים‬v. 28). All of this is derivative from the theology of the divine name’s indwelling in the loci of worship, a concept of divine immanence that lies squarely and repeatedly within the Asaphite tradition stream in terms of mnemohistory. The Mnemohistorical Force of the Asaphite Use of Divine Epithets First, the God of the Asaphite Psalter is called ‫( אל אלהים יהוה‬Ps 50:1). Coming as it does in the opening verse of the first (canonically) of the Asaphite Psalms, this three-fold appellation holds together three divine epithets, any of which might be used on its own. ‫אל אלהים יהוה‬ occurs elsewhere only in Joshua 22:22, were it is repeated as a kind of oath and invocation over the altar that a confederation of the Reubenites, Gadites, and Manassehites built east of the Jordan. The repeated invocation serves as evidence to Phineas and the chiefs of the western Israelite tribes that this altar was not intended as an act of rebellion against Yahweh. In the case of Psalm 50, there is a similar sense that right relationship with God is in question (vv. 22–23). What is more, standing at the head of the whole of the Asaphite Psalter with its surfeit of theophorisms, the yoking of ‫אלהים‬, ‫אל‬, and ‫ יהוה‬appears intentional.41 The Asaphite Psalms hold together these various designations for God while clearly honoring God as Yahweh—or Yahweh as God. It must be insisted that this is not indicative of syncretism. Various gods are not worshipped or honored in these psalms, each called by their own name; rather, God is addressed variously in worship by different titular forms. This serves the mnemohistorical aim of the collection 40. This phrase is typical of Isaiah, occurring twenty-four times in that book; cf. 1:4; 41:14; 60:9. In the Psalter, the phrase is found only here, and in Pss 71:22 and 89:19. 41. There is little agreement on just how these three appellations ought to be understood and why they are placed together. J. Clinton McCann (“The Book of Psalms: Introduction, Commentary, and Reflections,” in The New Interpreter’s Bible, vol. 4, ed. Leander E. Keck [Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1994 ], 881) sees this as establishing God’s authority to judge—this is God, which god? the Lord who judges—while Weiser (Psalms, 392) takes the first two words to be the community talking about their God as Yahweh, and Hossfeld and Zenger (“The So-Called Elohistic Psalter: A New Solution for an Old Problem,” in A God So Near: Essays on Old Testament Theology in Honor of Patrick D. Miller, ed. Brent A. Strawn and Nancy R. Bowen [Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2003], 45) take it to be an escalating theophoric climaxing in Yahweh: “The psalm intends to stress the final term in the triad, Yhwh, and relate the others to it.”

181

MEMORIES OF ASAPH

by—for lack of a better term—democratizing the God whose history this is. Second, the God of the Asaphite corpus is ‫( אלהי יעקב‬the God of Jacob). ‫ אלהי יעקב‬occurs four times in the Asaphite Psalms, three times in the Korahite Psalms (Pss 46:8, 12; 84:9), and in just two other places in the rest of the Psalter (Pss 20:2 and 94:7). While this title for God is not unique to Asaph, the “singer psalms,”42 or to the Psalter,43 it is a distinctive element of the Asaphite appellations for God in terms of the mnemohistorical connections it raises. The God of Jacob evokes the connection of the congregation (Ps 74:2) to the patriarchs.44 The God of Jacob is the God who has made statutes for Israel and decrees in Joseph (Ps 81:5–6), which are explicitly tied in these psalms to the saving acts of God in Jacob’s past (Ps 81:9-11 ). Third, the God of Asaph is ‫יהוה אלהים צבאֹות‬. This phrase, along with ‫( אלהים צבאֹות‬Ps 80:8, 15), has been the cause of much speculation about the preference of Elohim over Yahweh in Psalms 42–83, the so-called Elohistic Psalter. Hans-Joachim Kraus finds the phrase metrically and syntactically impossible. The question of meter is difficult to prove at best, but syntactically Kraus is correct, this phrase is difficult. Syntactically, one would expect ‫יהוה אלהי צבאֹות‬, as one finds frequently in Jeremiah and Amos.45 Within the Psalter, there is also attestation of the expected form in Psalm 89:9. What is confusing is that Kraus then amends the text to read ‫יהוה צבאֹות‬, correcting the Elohistic redaction.46 One wonders why Kraus would not simply amend the text to show the correct syntactical form and to read in harmony with Psalm 89:9, thus retaining the evidence of what he understands as the Elohistic insertion of ‫אלהים‬. Regardless, there is a simpler explanation for this three-fold appellation that holds ‫ יהוה‬and ‫ אלהים‬in tension. Psalm 80:19 promises that the people of Israel will call upon the name of God. The verse that follows then names God “Yahweh, God of Hosts.” It is clear elsewhere that the Asaphite name for God is Yahweh. Other titles or appellations notwithstanding, Yahweh is God’s name.47 Consider the following:

42. Nasuti, Tradition History, 72. 43. ‫ אלהי יעקב‬appears in Exod 3:6, 15; 4:5 as a part of the Abraham-Isaac-Jacob trifecta, and independently in 2 Sam 23:1; Isa 2:3; Mic 4:2. 44. Hossfeld and Zenger, Psalms 2, 257. 45. Jer 5:14; 15:16; Amos 4:13; 5:14–16, 27; 6:8. 46. Kraus, Psalms 60–150, 138, cf. 200. 47. Goulder, Psalms of Asaph, 19.

182

EXCURSUS: RESIDUAL MEMORIES IN THE ASAPHITE CORPUS

But for me it is good to be near God; I have made my refuge with my Lord Yahweh, [‫]ׁשתי באדני יהוה מחסי‬ to tell of all your works. (Ps 73:28)

The use of ‫ אדני‬with ‫ יהוה‬is by no means unique, but it does name the Lord, as the Lord. Yahweh is God’s name. Make vows to Yahweh your God [‫]ליהוה אלהיכם‬, and perform them; let all who are around him bring gifts to the one who is awesome. (Ps 76:12)

“Your God” is Yahweh. Yahweh is God’s name. And in the clearest declaration of the divine name in all of the Asaphite material, there is Psalm 83:19: Let them know that you alone whose name is Yahweh [‫]ּכי־אּתה ׁשמָך יהוה‬, are the Most High over all the earth.

Here God is named Yahweh exclusively, and ‫ עליֹון‬is reduced to an appellant, a designation of Yahweh’s sovereignty. To what does the Asaphite collection owe its variety of divine epithets? Is this reflective of syncretism, adopting other religious or theological nomenclatures? Or is it harmonizing, holding together various appellative tradents of the tribes of Israel and uniting them under the Tetragrammaton, the divine name? In light of the concern of the collection with “Hauptgebotliche” fidelity and the apparent plethora of acceptable worship sites, the latter seems the most likely. Asaphite Epithets and the So-called Elohistic Psalter With the plethora of titles in play in these twelve psalms, how are we to understand the place of the Asaphite Psalter in the context of the Elohistic Psalter? A simplistic view of the Elohistic redaction, wherein Yahweh is replaced by Elohim, cannot be maintained.48 It is inarguable, 48. Since Heinrich Ewald’s (Allgemeines über die Hebräische Poesie und über das Psalmenbuch, [Gottingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1835]) initial characterization of the Elohistic redaction of a portion of the Psalter as a replacing of the Tetragrammaton with “Elohim,” there have been numerous attempts to explain the assumptions that this must be the case, due to the numerous occurrences of Yahweh within the apparently redacted collection. Erhard Gerstenberger (Psalms, 37) goes so far as to maintain a first redaction that is, in turn, re-redacted by a Yahwistic traditum. The most common conclusion is that the history of redaction is inconsistent. Hossfeld and Zenger (“So-

183

MEMORIES OF ASAPH

though, that Elohim is the dominant appellation for God in the second and third books of the Psalter. Within those two books, however, the Asaphite collection seems to push in the direction less of Elohim and more for a diversity or plurality of designations. A classic example of the Elohistic redaction is taken from Psalm 50:7, where‫ אלהים אלהיך‬is taken to be an edited version of the Deuteronomistic phrase ‫יהוה אלהיך‬.49What this conclusion overlooks is both the use of the Tetragrammaton in Psalm 50:1 and the occurrence of the phrase ‫ יהוה אלהיך‬in another of the Asaphite Psalms, 81:11, ‫אנכי יהוה‬ ‫( אלהיך‬I am Yahweh your God), which goes “unaltered.” At the very least, it must be admitted that an Elohistic preference in these psalms is incomplete and does not take into account the complexity of the picture. More, one might conclude that the standard evaluation of the influence of the Elohistic redaction is overrated. Indeed, far from supporting an Elohistic redaction of this group of psalms, the plurality of the divine names and epithets employed suggests a broadening of designations for God, likely from a different redactional tradition, perhaps from the Asaphite traditum.50 Another possibility is that while the redactors of the so-called Elohistic Psalter display an inclination toward the use of Elohim, they incorporate or retain the epithets (among others) enumerated above. To label this “Elohistic” strikes me as a misnomer. Asaphite Epithets in/as Confessional Formulae Finally, in its selection of names for God, the Asaphite corpus presents an identifiable theology. In three particular cases the divine name is employed in creedal statements, Ps 77:15 ‫עׂשה פלא הֹודעת בעמים עזך‬ ֹ ‫אתה האל‬ You are the God who works wonders, you have made known your might among the peoples. Ps 81:11 ‫אנכי יהוה אלהיך המעלך מארץ מצרים‬ I am Yahweh your God, who brought you up out of the land of Egypt. Ps 83:19 ‫וידעו כי־אתה ׁשמך יהוה לבדך עליון על־כל־הארץ‬ Called Elohistic Psalter,” 38) conclude that “the whole inconsistency of the traditional ‘Elohisticthesis’: a consistent redaction that does not always redact (Psalm 78) or that cannot redact (Psalm 48) is, to say the least, not a ‘consistent’ redaction!” 49. Goulder, Psalms of Asaph, 19. 50. Hossfeld and Zenger, Psalms 2, 4.

184

EXCURSUS: RESIDUAL MEMORIES IN THE ASAPHITE CORPUS

Let them know that you alone, whose name is Yahweh, are the Most High over the earth.

Each of these creedal statements echoes texts from the Pentateuch. Psalm 77 calls to mind the distinctiveness of the God who works wonders as expressed in Exodus 15:11 and Deuteronomy 9:26, 29. Psalm 81 reads very similarly to Exodus 20:2, “I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery.”51 Psalm 83 evokes the repeated theme of Exodus that what God does serves to teach all involved to know that Yahweh is the Lord (see Exod 6:7, 7:17, 8:22, 10:2, 16:12). What is more, these creedal statements make the confession, echoing the commandment of Ps 78:5, that it is Yahweh who has been active in the life of the nation, and this past action has implications for the present. The mnemohistorical confession makes a claim on those who hear it. Yahweh is the God who worked wonders (‫ )פלא‬on behalf of Israel and who can be counted on to work wonders for the psalmist. The credo stands in for the expected element of trust that rounds out the prayer for help. “Yahweh is your God” is the song that Israel is called to sing on the festal day (Ps 81:4 ). The credo, with its summary of Israel’s history, works as the foundation of Israel’s festal observance. “Let them know” that Yahweh is the God who is Most High, as exemplified, remembered, and proclaimed in the victories over Israel’s numerous enemies (Ps 83:4–12). The credo works to make immediate in a present time of trouble the past actions of God on Israel’s behalf. In the mnemohistorical symbolic term “wonders”—the explicit statement that it was Yahweh who led the people out of Egypt (in the case of Psalm 81, placed in the very mouth of God) and the implicit invocation of the exodus at the end of the review of Israel’s God’s victory over her enemies52—the creedal statements built around the name Yahweh reveal the mnemohistorical background and impact of the Asaphite Psalter. There is definite interplay in the employment of these creedal statements, tying the divine name to the sacred history of the nation. If 51. The one significant difference between the two statements is the verb employed to express the bringing of the people out of the land Egypt. In Ps 81:11 it is ‫המעלך‬, the masculine singular hiphil participle of ‫( עלה‬bringing you up). In Exod 20:2 it is ‫הֹוצאתיך‬, the hiphil first person singular of ‫יצא‬ (I made you go). 52. “Let them know that you alone whose name is Yahweh” in Ps 83:19 cannot help but call to mind the repeated summary of Yahweh’s intention in the struggle with Pharaoh that all will “know that I am Yahweh.” A similar summary appears in Exod 7:5; 14:4; 29:46.

185

MEMORIES OF ASAPH

Hossfeld and Zenger are correct that in the so-called Elohistic Psalter, the motivating tendency behind the “increasing” use of Elohim emphasizes God’s distance and transcendence; the distant, dark, mysterious God is accentuated. Finally “Elohim” is preferred when God’s universality ought to be extolled,53

then, in contrast to what Hossfeld and Zenger themselves infer from this,54 the emphasis in the Asaphite material on the name of God being Yahweh and the connection of that name with the historic and historical antecedents of the nation serve to emphasize the immanence of God, this presence and involvement of God. For Asaph, the divine name, with and over its numerous accompanying epithets, is tied to the mnemohistorical recital of God’s wondrous actions in Israel’s life, in Israel’s past, and for Israel’s “now.” Historical Peculiarities and “Anachronisms” Another way in which residual mnemohistory appears is in preserving what may seem to be historical peculiarities. In the Asaphite collection, there are names, ideas, and memories that appear to be at odds with what is “typical” or “orthodox” in other portions of the Hebrew Bible. These are ideas or practices that have become so deeply engrained in other places—having receded into a negligible or shadowy profile in other biblical texts—that they seem to be glossed over. But in the mnemohistorical material of the Psalter their profile is more pronounced or obvious. I turn now to the primary theological particularity of the Asaphite Psalms, the ‫( בעדת־אל‬Ps 82:1), examining it from a mnemohistorical perspective. The concept of a divine council of the gods is well attested in the Old Testament. In this, the Old Testament reflects the Canaanite myths with which it shares some of its origins and from which it emerges.55 But the “divine council” as a council of the gods has been for the most part altered to refer to the hosts of heaven (i.e., angelic servitors of the 53. Hossfeld and Zenger, “So-Called Elohistic Psalter,” 51. 54. “The theologians responsible for the Asaph Psalms gave the Elohistic tendency a distinctive expression in that they propagated their theology of God’s name and introduced the proper name Yhwh in an ‘all-encompassing manner.’” Ibid. This is true in large part but not to the exclusion of the personal, present, immanent Yahweh who is accessible in the temple via praise and prayer in mnemohistorical terms. 55. See Kraus, Psalms 60–150, 155–56, for a concise overview of the Ugaritic and Mesopotamian parallels. See also E. Theodore Mullen, The Divine Council in Canaanite and Early Hebrew Literature, HSM 24 (Chico, CA: Scholars Press, 1980).

186

EXCURSUS: RESIDUAL MEMORIES IN THE ASAPHITE CORPUS

divine sovereign), with three notable exceptions, Deuteronomy 32:8–9, Psalm 89:6–8, and Psalm 82:1. As a point of comparison, we may take two examples of the heavenly council as it has been reshaped to consist not of gods but of angelic figures, Isaiah 6 and Psalm 103. Isaiah 6:2–3: Seraphs were in attendance above him; each had six wings: with two they covered their faces, and with two they covered their feet, and with two they flew. 3 And one called to another and said: “Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts; the whole earth is full of his glory.”

The praise of the angelic beings here reflects the adoration of the hosts of heaven, which may retain a shadow of the Ugaritic role of El as the chief god of the Canaanite pantheon but reduces the sons of god to angelic figures. While the echoes of the Canaanite traditions may be heard, the divine council as it appears in Isaiah 6 is something different, something “less.” Psalm 103:19–22: The Lord has established his throne in the heavens, and his kingdom rules over all. 20 Bless the Lord, you his (angelic) messengers, you mighty ones who do his bidding, obedient to his uttered word. 21 Bless the Lord, all his hosts, his ministers that do his will. 22 Bless the Lord, all his works, in all places of his dominion. Bless the Lord, O my soul.

Here, too, those figures who are present around the throne of Yahweh in the heavenly court are called messengers or angels and stand in parallel with other lesser beings—“mighty ones,” “ministers,” “all his works”—all of which are called upon to praise God. Compared to these, Psalm 82 is clearly up to something different. Goulder has called the reference to the divine council in Psalm 82:1 the “clearest piece of non-orthodoxy to survive in the Bible.”56 Psalm 82 stands with Deuteronomy 32:8–9 and Psalm 89:6–8 as a clear reference to the foundational place of an essentially West-Semitic theological concept: 56. Goulder, Psalms of Asaph, 35.

187

MEMORIES OF ASAPH

Deuteronomy 32:7–9: Remember the days of old, consider the years long past; ask your father, and he will inform you; your elders, and they will tell you. When the Most High apportioned the nations, when he divided humankind, he fixed the boundaries of the peoples according to the number of the gods; the Lord’s own portion was his people, Jacob his allotted share.

Psalm 89:6–8: And the heavens shall praise your wonders, O Lord, your faithfulness in the assembly [‫ ]קהל‬of the holy ones. For who in the clouds can be compared to the Lord? Who among the sons of god is like the Lord, a god feared in the council [‫ ]סֹוד‬of the holy ones, greater and more awesome than all around him?

Psalm 82:1: God stands in the divine council [‫;]בעדת־אל‬ in the midst of the gods he judges.

In each case, the role of the gods as gods is retained, though each is to be understood somewhat differently. In Deuteronomy, which begins with what is essentially a formula for mnemohistorical recollection, the gods appear to be allotted their tribe and lands by Yahweh, while Yahweh claims Israel by divine right. Here, Yahweh seems to take the place of El as the head of the pantheon, but the gods are very much gods.57 The point of these verses from the Song of Moses is to emphasize the election of Israel by Yahweh. At best the theology here is 57. “Most High (Hebrew Elyon) is an appellation generally expressing the Lord’s sovereignty . . . here and occasionally elsewhere (Isa 14:14; Ps 82) it denotes the executive of the divine assembly, comprising the subordinate gods.” S. Dean McBride, “Deuteronomy Annotations,” in The Harper Collins Study Bible, ed. Wayne A. Meeks (San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 2006), 318. Cf. “The Song of Moses begins its elaboration of the Lord’s care of Israel with a call to remember the past wonderful works of the Lord in behalf of this people. . . . The story here is a poetic recollection of the Lord’s election of a people (v. 9) out of all the peoples brought into being by God’s creative activity (cf. v. 6).” Patrick D. Miller, Deuteronomy, Interpretation: A Bible Commentary for Teaching and Preaching (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox, 1990), 228.

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EXCURSUS: RESIDUAL MEMORIES IN THE ASAPHITE CORPUS

henotheistic, prescribing loyalty to Yahweh alone as the “god” become “God,” to whom Israel has been allotted (by this god Yahweh’s choice). In Psalm 89, it is the incomparability of Yahweh that is emphasized. The other heavenly beings are called “the sons of god” (‫)בני אלים‬, and while the psalm moves quickly to a claim for the supremacy of Yahweh, the gods are still gods. Psalm 82 seems to be doing something different. The purpose of the scene of judgment in the divine council as it is introduced in Psalm 82:1 seems to be the protection of Israel (herein characterized as the “weak, orphan, lowly, destitute”) and the claiming of the whole world as Yahweh’s possession. Here, God does not rise up to take a place of seniority among the gods; God stands to judge, try, condemn, and execute the other gods. God in Psalm 82 is not “God of gods”58 but becomes God alone. The psalm is not concerned that the God of Israel takes over the role of El by ascending to the position of chief of the pantheon (as has repeatedly been said in interpretations of this psalm), but rather that “all the gods” (cf. v. 6b) are condemned to death by the God of Israel, and he himself becomes God of the whole earth and all the nations.59

In this sense, Psalm 82 marks not the chief example of non-orthodoxy in the Bible but an expression of the beginnings of theological orthodoxy. Psalm 82 retains the memory of the Canaanite theological world view and transforms it. What makes this so compelling is the way that Israel’s theological antecedents are engaged. In reflecting on the element of forgetting in Jewish history and memory, Yosef Yerushalmi argues that every “renaissance,” every “reformation,” reaches back into an often distant past to recover forgotten or neglected elements with which there is a sudden sympathetic vibration, a sense of empathy or recognition. Inevitably, every such anamnesis also transforms the recovered past into something new; inexorably, it denigrates the intermediate past as something that deserves to be forgotten.60

As an illustration of this point, Yerushalmi alludes to the development of monotheism in the Hebrew Bible. He claims that Israel’s pagan Near Eastern mythological origins are suppressed and forgotten so that “all 58. Cf. Dan 11:36, ‫ ;אל אלים‬Deut 10:17, ‫אלהי האלהים ואדני האדנים האל הגדל‬. 59. Hossfeld and Zenger, Psalms 2, 333. 60. Yerushalmi, Zakhor, 113.

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MEMORIES OF ASAPH

that was remembered was its prophetic caricature as mere idolatry, the worship of inanimate figures of wood and stone.”61 Eventually this does seem to be the case. But in Psalm 82 this is not so. Precisely in the remembering of Israel’s theological and religious mnemohistory as real, significant, and actual, that past is not suppressed or forgotten but remembered for the purpose of transforming it. Unintentional Remembering in Asaph The memory of Asaph goes beyond explicit exhortations to remember and specific events or figures that are to be remembered. In addition to these memories, the Asaphite material includes residual memories—referring to worship sites and employing various divine appellations. In the very fabric of these psalms, the shared Canaanite background of Israelite religion, the complex history of Israel’s understanding of where God can be encountered and counted upon, the harmonization and retention of various ways of naming or entitling the divine, and the basic—essential—theological association of the Israelite God with the exodus event are retained.

61. Ibid.

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8

Conclusions: Why Asaph Remembers

It has been shown that the Asaphite Psalms (50 and 73–83) exhibit the most concentrated collection of historical referents in the Psalter. This material is distinctive both in terms of its content (when compared to other Levitical collections and other individual psalms) and in its function. In the cultic poetry of the Asaphite material in particular, there is a ritualization of the act of shared remembering, engendered through recourse to the record of historical subjects or moments. The historical referents embodied in the Asaphite collection serve to preserve and pass on Israel’s historical memory and to establish a cultic framework in which Israel’s memory is formed, its history re-presented , and its identity thereby shaped and passed from one generation to the next. Mnemohistory in the Asaphite Psalms: A Sketch of What Asaph Remembers The central elements of the framework present in the Asaphite Psalms are exodus, wilderness, and Hauptgebot, or “great commandment.” Exodus and wilderness are the primary historical events (or periods) called to mind, and the Hauptgebot is the primary theological and religious crux.

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MEMORIES OF ASAPH

exodus

wilderness

Hauptgebot

78:10–14, 44–52

78:15–43, 52–55

78:56–58

“he redeemed them from the foe; when he displayed his signs in Egypt”

“then he led his people like sheep, and guided them in the wilderness like a flock”

“they moved him to jealousy with their idols”

81:7–8a

81:8b–c

81:10

“I relieved your shoulder of the burden”

“I tested you at the waters of Meribah”

“there shall be no strange God among you”

This primary theological and religious crux is shown to be moving, both via the Asaphite collection’s mnemohistorical recollections and within the collection itself, from an earlier henotheistic religiosity (as in belief in the existence of other gods, but loyalty, worship, faithfulness directed to God, to Yahweh, alone), toward a more orthodox form of Yahwism. This movement is most clearly seen in Psalm 78’s exultation of the Davidic House and the centralization of Israel’s religious identity in the now one place where God’s name can be said to dwell, namely Jerusalem. It is also reflected more imaginatively in the theological shift shown to be taking place in Psalm 82. Other remembrances and reflections are built from or around these central elements. In Psalm 78, memories of an otherwise unknown Ephraimite betrayal of Israel (78:9–11) and the election of the Davidic dynasty (78:68–72) are juxtaposed with the memories of exodus/ wilderness/Hauptgebot. In the remembered context of what God has done, the infidelity of the “Ephraimites” (i.e., the Northern Kingdom) and their rejection in favor of the worthier, more faithful house of David (i.e., the Southern Kingdom) is in turn remembered. In Psalm 81, in a more general sense, there is an ongoing call to rejoice in the decrees of the Lord in worship (81:2–4), set in the context of the remembered past, that challenges the “festal day” faithful with other memories, memories of Israel’s faithlessness, which may serve to explain the nation’s struggles (81:11–16). In each of these psalms, the central elements of the mnemohistorical material serve as the core around which other memories and subsequent identity are built. These core elements serve not only as the

192

CONCLUSIONS: WHY ASAPH REMEMBERS

baseline of historical remembrance but become (as has been noted) symbolic imagery and language serving to inform a new historical situation. One striking feature that accompanies the three central elements of Asaphite mnemohistory is that while establishing a structure upon which memories may be strung and developed, and from which identity may be derived, this structure is remarkably conservative of what is, from other biblical perspectives, typically seen as heterodox. The “limits” or boundaries of the Asaphite field of memory are not exclusive; Asaph is not defined by a move to a kind of hyper-orthodoxy of the remembered past but preserves, along with the remembered past, features of Northern Israelite religion that are otherwise or elsewhere effaced. At this stage, the sketch of the “mnemonic architecture” of the Asaphite material is somewhat rough. Only when we turn to the various ways in which the material functions and survey the breadth of the subject matter will a fuller picture take shape. The Assimilation of Mnemohistory: A Schema for Appropriation One of the limitations inherent in form-critical study is that there can be a tendency to expect (or even allow) only what formal elements and patterns established for a particular genre of psalm incline one toward. As an example, in his evaluation of this collection of psalms flowing out of his form-critical work, Hermann Gunkel identified several of the Asaphite Psalms as cultic (Psalms 75, 76, 77, 80, and 81), and several as not cultic (Psalms 73, 77, and 78). In order to justify the inclusion of non-cultic hymnody in a cultic collection, Gunkel concludes: This situation should be interpreted to mean that the temple singers have incorporated half of the individual spiritual songs for their character and beauty. They combined them with the main body of their cult songs. 1

The individual psalms cannot be cultic but are included for their “character and beauty,” a surprisingly uncritical evaluation that is employed to justify a foregone conclusion based on the elements necessary to qualify as “cultic.” As David Clines summarizes it, Gunkel insists on three factors in establishing a specific gattung, the “form” for a psalm: 1. Gunkel and Begrich, Introduction to the Psalms, 344. One should note that the limitations of formcriticism allow Gunkel, ironically, to identify Psalm 77 as both cultic and not cultic.

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MEMORIES OF ASAPH

(1) a common setting in life, (2) common mood and style of thought, and (3) common literary motifs, expressions, and images.2 What Gunkel misses in his conviction that, among other reasons, the individual nature of these psalms indicates a non-cultic setting is, first, the form critical possibilities of identifying the mnemohistorical elements that are evidenced in numerous genres of psalm, and second, the democratization that is inherent in the Asaphite collection as it functions as a whole. Gunkel’s form-critical sensibilities are, in this sense, too restrictive. As Mowinckel puts it, The form may be overrated so as to arrest one’s vision and understanding through purely formal limitations, and make one overlook important inner correspondences between psalms which outwardly appear to belong to different groups, but which are governed by the same ideas, and thus prove to belong together.3

A full understanding of the mnemohistorical material cannot be limited to the larger, longer, more detailed pieces. There is a spectrum of scope and application of the mnemohistorical referents in Asaph that requires attention that is too often diverted by the form-critical approach to the Psalms. What we see in the Asaphite Psalms is the overarching application and impact of the historical material as it is remembered, employed, and instilled in the worshipping communities for which these psalms were written and by whom they were used. What follows here is an outline or schema of the flow of the assimilation of mnemohistory through the Asaphite collection. Schema for Appropriation of Communal Memories: How Asaph Remembers Stage One: The Memory of the Event is Transmitted, Regularly, at the Communal Level Selected historical memories are made a part of the worship life of the community and are commended (and commanded) to that community as of central importance. Three examples: Psalm 81, in obedience to the divine decree, associates the mnemo2. David J. Clines, “Psalm Research Since 1955: II. The Literary Genres,” in On the Way to the Postmodern: Old Testament Essays 1967–1998, vol. 2 (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1998), 673. 3. Mowinckel, Psalms in Israel’s Worship, Vol. 2, X:31.

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CONCLUSIONS: WHY ASAPH REMEMBERS

history of the exodus with the recurring festal worship at one of the major festivals of the calendar year, either Passover or Sukkoth, and perhaps both.4 The very definition—form and content—of the‫( חג‬festival) is the exodus tradition. Psalm 78, in obedience to the divine decree, establishes a generational pattern of retelling the mnemohistory of Israel, from the exodus to David. History is preserved in/as memory and put to a particular purpose, to explain the rejection of the North and the establishment of the house of David, a theological and mnemohistorical enterprise. Psalm 74, in addressing the present duress of the people, draws a direct, almost one-to-one equivalence between Israel’s past and its present. The mnemohistorical referents are presented both as instructional and as the reason for and the means of hope—hope that is based in God’s pattern of action in Israel’s remembered past. In this first stage of appropriation, the communal mnemohistorical features central to the tradition are established and shared. Stage Two: The Historical Memory Resolves, to Some Degree, to Symbolic Form As has already been seen, the mnemohistorical accounts are not always present in fine or great detail. The remembered past may be appropriated and summarized in service of a psalm’s particular function. Three examples: Psalm 75 employs the language of wonders (‫)נפלאות‬, Psalm 76 the image of the sunken chariots and horses (‫)ורכב וסוס‬, and Psalm 79 the diaphors of arm and flock (‫ צאן‬. . . ‫)זרוע‬. In each case, the explicit connection is not made—need not be made—because the event in question, the exodus, lies at the root of each of these borrowed images. 5 4. In a general discussion of festivals and the Psalter, Richard J. Clifford (Psalms 1–72, 19) writes, “Passover commemorated the exodus from Egypt and entry into the promised land (Exodus 12–13). Psalms that celebrate the exodus conquest (e.g. 105, 114, 135–136, and 147) could have been sung appropriately during the feast. The second feast, Pentecost (also called Firstfruits and Feast of Weeks), was associated with the giving of the law by the second century BCE and perhaps much earlier. Psalms 50 and 81 would have been appropriate at this time.” J. Alberto Soggin (Israel in the Biblical Period: Institutions, Festivals, Ceremonies, Rituals [New York: T&T Clark, 2001], 121, 136) argues that based on the phrase ‫ בחדׁש‬it must be a part of the ceremonies following Sukkoth. The festival in question seems to move along the lines of covenant renewal, in terms of the mnemohistory; see Weiser, Psalms, 396; Hans-Joachim Kraus, Psalms 1–59 (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1993), 489; Limburg, Psalms, 276; Goldingay, Psalms, 549. 5. Two of these three examples (Psalms 75 and 76) bear the designation‫( ׁשיר‬song). In each of these hymns (and in Psalm 83, also a “song”) we find reference to the theophanic intervention of Yahweh to rescue the people. This fits perfectly as a compliment to the explicit mnemohistorical recital of Yahweh’s saving acts on behalf of the people. Onto the architectural mnemonic estab-

195

MEMORIES OF ASAPH

In this second stage, while there may be some distance from the “actual” account of the remembered past, that remembered past remains actualized for those who join in these songs as the diaphoric symbol moves one beyond mere comparison to the shared recollection of Israel’s history. Stage Three: The Appropriation of the Iconic Event (Communal Memory) Is Passed on to the Individual Individual appropriation can take one of two forms. In the first form, the individual, as a part of the community, takes part in the actualizing of the past in worship and/or education. As Psalm 81 embodies the mnemohistory in the festal liturgy, the individual member of the community experiences Israel’s history as it is sung and applied. As Psalm 78 bears the wisdom of the tradition to the next generation in its parables and dark sayings, the individual member of the subsequent generation is told the story and learns the glorious deeds of the Lord. In this sense the individual is drawn in. The cultic, ritual, instructional aim of the different mnemohistorical psalms is to make the community’s historical memory each person’s historical memory in turn. In the second form, the individual might take a more proactive role. Having learned what the historical memories have to impart, the individual takes hold of the mnemohistorical tradition and plies it as their own. The single example of this in the Asaphite material is Psalm 77. This psalm has taken the community’s national memory and applied it to an individual situation. The move is religiously and theologically important, as it allows the individual to understand the God who saves through wondrous deeds in Israel’s past history as a God who will act in an individual’s life in wondrous ways as well. At this point, Mowinckel is simply incorrect when he asserts, “It is of the nature of the cultic psalm that it cannot express the individual’s definite, once-forall, experiences and emotions.”6 In the case of the interplay of Psalm 77 with the rest of the Asaphite Psalms, this is precisely what the psalm does and intends. Each of these “stages” in the working of mnemohistory is present and, potentially, effective in the Asaphite Psalms. The flow of this schema, from the community level to the individual and from the lished by the remembered past, these hymns are fixed, expressing dependence upon, hope in, and trust in this God who has acted in Israel’s past. Cf. Hossfeld and Zenger, Psalms 2, 264. 6. Mowinckel, Psalms in Israel’s Worship, Vol. 2, X:31.

196

CONCLUSIONS: WHY ASAPH REMEMBERS

detailed mnemohistorical account to the terse symbolic reference, shows the rich possibility of the mnemohistorical material in these psalms. This is a complex collection of varied content and application, which establishes the shared communal memory and bridges the gap between the individual and collective memory. Conclusions: Mnemohistory in the Asaphite Psalms: Reactualizing and Architectural Mnemonic Framework Throughout this work, I have used the term “scripturalization” to describe what is happening in the mnemohistorical material in the Asaphite Psalms. I do not mean to suggest by this, necessarily, that the Psalms of Asaph, as they represent one particular mnemohistorical tradition, are the primary agents of the textualization of Israel’s oral tradition—that is, that they are a central part of the move to the codification of the book that will become the Hebrew Bible.7 It may well be that a study of the Asaphite Psalms through that particular lens might reveal just such a movement, but that is beyond the scope of the present study. By “scripturalization,” I mean that a particular set of historical memories are established in these psalms as authoritative and central to the identity of both community and individual. These memories, via these mnemohistorical recitals, are the vehicle of an emergent orthodoxy, defined by Yahweh’s sovereignty as shown to the people in the exodus and responded to in commitment to the Hauptgebot. With the Asaphite corpus itself, it seems, this development is not yet completed, but significant movement can be seen. The remembered past in Asaph was a part of the cultic practice in the place(s) where God’s name was invoked. The purpose of this mnemohistory was both to instill a sense of identity in relationship with the past and to shape a present identity through that past—a “present” identity that appears to have been, in many cases, in jeopardy and is addressed in the communal complaint and generational education. This takes shape in the Asaphite tradition in two ways: the reenactment in worship and the establishment of a mnemonic framework for the people.

7. For discussion of textualization in this sense, see William M. Schniedewind, How the Bible Became a Book (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004); and John H. Choi, Traditions at Odds: The Reception of the Pentateuch in Biblical and Second Temple Period Literature (New York: T&T Clark, 2010).

197

MEMORIES OF ASAPH

Reenactment and Representation in Worship As a part of cultic practice, the Asaphite mnemohistory works to represent the nation’s past. As Paul Connerton rightly sees, the actuality—literally the actualizing, the making real, immediate, significant—of the past in the present takes place in the ritual practice of the collective memory. Commemorative ceremonies share two features of all other rituals, formalism and performativity. . . . But commemorative ceremonies are distinguishable from all other rituals by the fact that they explicitly refer to prototypical persons and events, whether these are understood to have a historical or mythological existence; and by virtue of that fact rites of this sort possess a further characteristic and one that is distinctively their own. We may describe this feature as that of ritual re-enactment, and it is a quality of cardinal importance in the shaping of communal memory. 8

The Asaphite collection does just this. In ritual and psalm, the Asaphite mnemohistory represents Israel’s past as its heritage for both present and future. This representation of mnemohistorical events in worship is the means by which (1) sense is made of life in the context of a current, immediate situation; (2) as the context for reflection on the current situation, hopeful expectation is made possible; and (3) the identity of the community and its understanding of God are held together. Psalms 78 and 81—Architectural Mnemonic Framework Considering the ways in which the Asaphite Psalms make recourse to the past in an attempt to shape the present is important to an understanding of how they create meaning. While there is no formulaic pattern to the content of the mnemohistorical material in Asaph, there is something of a pattern to how the individual and the community are brought together in the sharing of the remembered past, as has been shown above. The way in which individual and collective memory come together is important. The individual’s memory is (1) called into the collective, where the worshipping “self” is found in the community’s story; and (2) defined and expressed through the commu8. Connerton, How Societies Remember, 61. See also Halbwachs, Collective Memory, 177–78: “We readily say that we practice a religion. This is because rites, sacraments, the recitation of liturgical formulas, and prayers are thought to have by themselves a permanent value and an immediate efficacy insofar as they are acts that are accomplished and renewed in many successive moments.”

198

CONCLUSIONS: WHY ASAPH REMEMBERS

nity’s story. This is evidenced in the central historical memory of the Asaphite Psalms, the exodus, which serves as the foundation of a collective framework of memory first for the community (Psalm 78) and second for the individual (Psalm 77). As the comparisons with the other Levitical guilds show, Asaph’s is not the only voice in the Psalter, let alone in the greater Hebrew Bible. Because any “collective,” particularly on the large scale of a nation or people, is likely to include other groups or at least be in tension with the interests of other groups, one must resist the urge to describe a particular social framework as the framework that supersedes all others. What is distinctive of Asaph is, however, identifiable, and worthy of attention. Memory and history, as they are woven together in the mnemohistory of the Asaphite Psalms, take on, as Childs puts it, “a highly theological meaning.”9 To remember was to actualize the past, to bridge the gap of time and to form a solidarity with the fathers. Israel’s remembrance became a technical term to express the process by which later Israel made relevant the great redemptive acts which she recited in her tradition. The question of how to overcome the separation in time and space from the great events of the past became the paramount issue.10

And again, Actualization is the process by which a past event is contemporized for a generation removed in time and space from the original event. When later Israel responded to the continuing imperative of her tradition through her memory, that moment in historical time likewise became an Exodus experience. Not in the sense that later Israel crossed the Red Sea. This was an irreversible, once-for-all event. Rather, Israel entered the same redemptive reality of the Exodus generation.11

This is the goal of the Asaphite mnemohistory. The actualization is effected in multiple ways in the biblical material, through the reading, reciting, and remembering of the scripturalized memories of Israel’s history. In the case of Asaph, this is established first and foremost by the two psalms that set the decree to remember and the means by which that remembering takes place. The psalms that follow in the collection, and that echo this mnemohistorical note, order the application 9. Childs, Memory and Tradition, 74. 10. Ibid. 11. Ibid., 85.

199

MEMORIES OF ASAPH

of it to the settings in life of first the community and then the individual: Psalm 78

Psalm 81

Israel’s mnemohistory is taught

Israel’s worship life is centered in history Psalms 74, 79

the reality of present trials is honored and juxtaposed with Israel’s past and God’s action in it Psalm 75

Psalm 76

Psalm 83

thanks is given

Zion is celebrated

history is reimagined

all within the framework of the God who works wonders in Israel Psalm 77 the individuals’ trials are made sense of in the context of the community’s collective framework

As Israel’s mnemohistory is taught through worship that remembers and celebrates the God who acts with power on Israel’s behalf (Psalms 78 and 81), even those desperate moments in the people’s shared existence—defeat, conquest, and even the loss of their sacral center in Jerusalem (Psalms 74 and 79)—can be endured and hope imagined. Because of the remembered past, thanks can be given (Psalm 75), the place where God’s name is (still) made to dwell can be celebrated (Psalm 76), and a new future story in which the enemies of God and God’s people are no more can be imagined (Psalm 83). This is the structure that the mnemohistorical recitals engender, a mental and spiritual landscape in which sense may be made of the individual’s struggles as well (Psalm 77). Within this structure (a religious and cultural construct) laid out in the cultic historiography of the Asaphite Psalter, both community and individual find themselves in their connection to both past and present, and thus culture is constructed theologically. The conclusion is that history did play a significant part in ancient Israelite and Judean cultic traditions and is distinctive as encountered in the cultus reflected by the Asaphite collection. This cultic function, this application of the memory of Israel’s past, operates across the spectrum of Asaphite material, irrespective of form-critical restrictions. This is a matter not just of type but of content and meaning. As was noted above (p. 180), the occurrence of ‫( עדות‬statute) and

200

CONCLUSIONS: WHY ASAPH REMEMBERS

‫( תורה‬law) occurs only here, in Psalm 78:5. Elsewhere in this work I have, with the NRSV, translated ‫ עדות‬as “decree,” a translation that may not be sufficiently precise. Based not only on the pairing of the ‫ עדות‬with ‫ תורה‬but also on, in 78:7, the pairing of remembering God’s past actions and, in response to them, keeping “his commandments” (‫)מצותיו‬,o‫ עדות‬may better be understood as something like “loyalty oath.” This translation decision is bolstered by the evidence of the cognate term ±ade^ in both Akkadian and Aramaic. ‫עדות‬, here, probably has something to do with a testimonial stipulation to attend to the provisions of a legal code or, better, a treaty. The ‫עדות‬, then, is the “loyalty oath,” which is expressed, in the case of Psalm 78, liturgically as religious instruction in the people’s mnemohistory, promulgated through its cultic application. The Asaphite mnemohistory functions to call hearers and readers into reflection on social situations and makes theological claims that are of particular emphasis and importance as the identity of its recipients is shaped by the past, in the present, for the future. This shaping takes place only in relationship with the God Yahweh, the one they know through the salvific acts performed in the days of old. It might be that these psalms, with their emphasis on the mnemohistorical reactualization, and which engage Israel’s history in order to shape Israelite identity, not only bear a distinctive element of the poetry of ancient Israelite religion but are a lens through which all biblical historiography, from the later traditions of Chronicles, Ezra, and Nehemiah, back through the former prophets, and even to the Pentateuch, might better be understood. Mnemohistory, then, is a rhetorical device that has interpretive weight all its own and theological significance within the collective of Old Testament voices that vie for pride of place. As was stated above in the earliest stages of this text, mnemohistory is not history proper, not in any objective, critical sense. The goal of mnemohistory itself, and a study of the Psalms of Asaph through the lens of mnemohistory, is not to reconstruct Israel’s earliest days through the poetry of these few psalms. Mnemohistory itself is, at its core, apologetic. Its goals are not neutral reporting but life, faith, and identity altering persuasion. As John Goldingay puts it in his discussion of Psalm 78, “For the people of God, deciding to remember is then the key to faithfulness.”12 This is the architectural mnemonic established and borne out in the Asaphite Psalms, a religious, social, and cultural 12. Goldingay, Psalms, 514.

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MEMORIES OF ASAPH

imperative that the great mnemohistorical heart of the collection puts forth most clearly: Give ear, O my people, to my teaching; incline your ears to the words of my mouth. I will open my mouth in a parable; I will utter dark sayings from of old, things that we have heard and known, that our ancestors have told us. We will not hide them from their children; we will tell to the coming generation the glorious deeds of the Lord, and his might, and the wonders that he has done. He established a festal oath in Jacob, and appointed a law in Israel, which he commanded our ancestors to teach to their children; that the next generation might know them, the children yet unborn, and rise up and tell them to their children so that they should set their hope in God, and not forget the works of God, but keep his commandments (Ps 78:1–7)

202

Bibliography

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203

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Burke, Peter. “History as Social Memory.” In Memory: History, Culture, and the Mind, edited by Thomas Butler, 43–59. Oxford: Blackwell, 1989. Buss, Martin J. “The Psalms of Asaph and Korah.” Journal of Biblical Literature 82, no. 4 (1963): 382–92. Campbell, Antony F. “Psalm 78: A Contribution to the Theology of Tenth Century Israel.” Catholic Biblical Quarterly 41, no. 1 (1979): 51–79. Carr, David M. Writing on the Tablet of the Heart: Origins of Scripture and Literature. New York: Oxford University Press, 2005. Childs, Brevard S. Memory and Tradition in Israel. Studies in Biblical Theology 37. London: SCM Press, 1962. Choi, John H. Traditions at Odds: The Reception of the Pentateuch in Biblical and Second Temple Period Literature. New York: T&T Clark, 2010. Clifford, Richard J. “An Interpretation of Psalm 78.” In Traditions in Transformation: Turning Points in Biblical Faith, edited by Baruch Halpern and Jon D. Levenson. Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 1981. ______. Psalms 1–72. Abingdon Old Testament Commentaries. Nashville: Abingdon Press, 2002. ______. Psalms 73–150. Abingdon Old Testament Commentaries. Nashville: Abingdon Press, 2003. Clines, David J. “Psalm Research Since 1955: II. The Literary Genres.” In On the Way to the Postmodern: Old Testament Essays 1967–1998, 665–86. Vol. 2. Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1998. Connerton, Paul. How Societies Remember. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989. Craigie, Peter C. and Marvin E. Tate. Psalms 1-50. Word Biblical Commentary, vol. 19. Nashville: Thomas Nelson, Inc., 2004. Cross, Frank Moore. Canaanite Myth and Hebrew Epic: Essays in the History of the Religion of Israel. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1973. ______. “The Priestly Tabernacle.” In The Biblical Archaeologist Reader, 201–28, ed. G. Ernest Wright and D. N. Freedman. New York: Anchor Books, 1961. Day, John. “Pre-Deuteronomic Allusions to the Covenant in Hosea and Psalm LXXVIII.” Vetus Testamentum 36, no. 1 (1986): 1–12. Delitzsch, Franz. Biblical Commentary on the Psalms. 3 vols. London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1888. Ewald, Heinrich von. Allgemeines über die Hebräische Poesie und über das Psalmenbuch. Gottingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1835. Freedman, David Noel. Pottery, Poetry, and Prophecy: Studies in Early Hebrew Poetry. Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 1980. Funkenstein, Amos. Perceptions of Jewish History. Berkley: University of California Press, 1993.

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MEMORIES OF ASAPH

Baltzer. English translation by Linda M. Maloney. Hermeneia. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2005. ______. “The So-Called Elohistic Psalter: A New Solution for an Old Problem.” In A God So Near: Essays on Old Testament Theology in Honor of Patrick D. Miller, edited by Brent A. Strawn and Nancy R. Bowen, 35–51. Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2003. Hutton, Patrick H. History as an Art of Memory. Hanover: University Press of New England, 1993. Illman, Karl-Johan. Thema und Tradition in den Asaf-Psalmen. Abo: Stiftelsens för Åbo Akademi Forskningsinstitut, 1976. Jacobson, Karl N. “Asaph/Asaphites.” In Encyclopedia of the Bible and Its Reception. Vol. 2, Anim–Atheism, edited by Hans-Josef Klauck, 880–81. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2009. Jacobson, Rolf A. “Introduction and Study Notes for the Book of Psalms.” In The Lutheran Study Bible, 847–1010. Minneapolis: Augsburg Fortress, 2009. ______. Many Are Saying: The Function of Direct Discourse in the Hebrew Psalter. JSOTS 397. New York: T&T Clark International, 2004. Jones, Christine Danette Brown. The Psalms of Asaph: A Study of the Function of a Psalm Collection. PhD diss., Baylor University, Waco, TX, 2009. Jonker, Gerdien. The Topography of Remembrance: The Dead, Tradition and Collective Memory in Mesopotamia. Studies in the History of Religions 68. New York: Brill, 1995. Kansteiner, Wulf. “Finding Meaning in Memory: A Methodological Critique of Collective Memory Studies.” History and Theory 41, no. 2 (Spring 2002): 179-197. Keel, Othmar. The Symbolism of the Biblical World: Ancient Near Eastern Iconography and the Book of Psalms. Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 1997. Kelle, Brad E., and Megan Bishop Moore, eds. Israel’s Prophets and Israel’s Past: Essays on the Relationship of Prophetic Texts and the Israelite History in Honor of John H. Hayes. New York: T&T Clark, 2006. Klein, Ralph W. 1 Chronicles: A Commentary. Edited by Thomas Krüger. Hermeneia. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2006. Kraus, Hans-Joachim. Psalms 1–59: A Continental Commentary. Translated by Hilton C. Oswald. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1993. ______. Psalms 60–150: A Continental Commentary. Translated by Hilton C. Oswald. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1993. ______. Theology of the Psalms. Translated by Keith Crim. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1992. Le Goff, Jacques. History and Memory. New York: Columbia University Press, 1992.

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BIBLIOGRAPHY

Leveen, Adriane. Memory and Tradition in the Book of Numbers. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008. Limburg, James. Psalms. Westminster Bible Companion. Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox, 2000. Lohfink, Norbert. Das Hauptgebot: Eine Untersuchung literarischer Einleitungsfragen zu Dtn 5–11. Rome: Pontificio Istituto Biblico, 1963. Lowenthal, David. The Past Is a Foreign Country. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985. Malamat, Abraham. The History of Biblical Israel: Major Problems and Minor Issues. Leiden: Brill, 2001. Mays, James Luther. Psalms. Interpretation: A Bible Commentary for Teaching and Preaching. Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox, 1994. McBride, S. Dean. The Deuteronomic Name Theology. PhD diss., Harvard University, 1969. ______. “Deuteronomy Annotations.” In The Harper Collins Study Bible, edited by Wayne A. Meeks. San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 2006. ______. “Deuteronomy, Book of.” In vol. 2 of The New Interpreter’s Dictionary of the Bible, edited by Katharine Doob Sakenfeld, 108–17. Nashville: Abingdon Press, 2007. ______. “Yoke of the Kingdom: An Exposition of Deuteronomy 6:4–5.” Interpretation 27, no. 3 (July 1973): 273–306. McCann, J. Clinton. “The Book of Psalms: Introduction, Commentary, and Reflections.” In vol. 4 of The New Interpreter’s Bible, edited by Leander E. Keck, 641–1280. Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1994. McKenzie, Steven L. 1–2 Chronicles. Abingdon Old Testament Commentaries. Nashville: Abingdon Press, 2004. Meeks, Wayne A., ed. The Harper Collins Study Bible. San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 2006. Miller, Patrick D. Deuteronomy. Interpretation: A Bible Commentary for Teaching and Preaching. Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox, 1990. ______. The Divine Warrior in Early Israel. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1973. ______. “Psalms.” In The Harper Collins Study Bible, edited by Wayne A. Meeks, 732–848. San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 2006. ______. The Religion of Ancient Israel. Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox, 2000. Mitchell, David C. The Message of the Psalter: An Eschatological Programme in the Book of Psalms. JSOTS 252. Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1997. Mowinckel, Sigmund. The Psalms in Israel’s Worship. 2 vols. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2004.

207

MEMORIES OF ASAPH

Mullen, E. Theodore. The Divine Council in Canaanite and Early Hebrew Literature. HSM 24. Chico, CA: Scholars Press, 1980. Nasuti, Harry P. Defining the Sacred Songs: Genre, Tradition and the Post-Critical Interpretation of the Psalms. JSOTS 218. Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1999. ______. Tradition History and the Psalms of Asaph. SBL Dissertation Series 88. Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1988. Nelson, Diedrik A. Cult and History: A Study of the Historical Psalms. ThD diss., Union Theological Seminary, Richmond, VA, 1964. Nora, Pierre. “Between Memory and History: Le Lieux de Memoire.” Representations 26, no. 1 (Spring 1989): 7–24. Pierce, Charles S. “Logic as Semiotic: The Theory of Signs.” In Philosophical Writings of Pierce, 98–119. Edited by Justus Buchler. New York: Dover, 1955. Rabinowitz, Isaac. A Witness Forever: Ancient Israel’s Perception of Literature and the Resultant Hebrew Bible. Edited by Ross Brann and David I. Owen. Bethesda, MD: CDL Press, 1993. Ricoeur, Paul. Memory, History, Forgetting. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004. Roberts, J. J. M. The Bible and the Ancient Near East: Collected Essays. Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2002. Schaefer, Konrad. Psalms. Berit Olam. Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 2001. Schniedewind, William M. How the Bible Became a Book. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004. Schökel, Luis Alonso. A Manual of Hebrew Poetics. Subsidia Biblica 11. Rome: Editrice Pontificio Istituto Biblico, 1988. Schuman, Howard, and Jacqueline Scott. “Generations and Collective Memories.” American Sociological Review 54, no. 3 (June 1989): 359–81. Smith, Mark S. The Memoirs of God: History, Memory, and the Experience of the Divine in Ancient Israel. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2004. ______. The Origins and Development of the Waw-Consecutive: Northwest Semitic Evidence from Ugarit to Qumran. Harvard Semitic Studies 39. Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1991. Soggin, J. Alberto. Israel in the Biblical Period: Institutions, Festivals, Ceremonies, Rituals. New York: T&T Clark, 2001. Spero, Shubert. “Was Psalm 50 Misplaced?” Jewish Bible Quarterly 30, no. 1 (Winter 2002): 26–31. Stern, Philip. “The Eighth Century Dating of Psalm 78 Re-Argued.” Hebrew Union College Annual 66 (1995): 41–65. Stewart, Pamela J., and Andrew Strathern, eds. Landscape, Memory and History: Anthropological Perspectives. London: Pluto Press, 2003.

208

BIBLIOGRAPHY

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209

Name and Subject Index

architectural mnemonic, 32–34, 44, 131, 197, 198–201, 195n5 Aristotle, 16, 97 ark of the covenant, 48, 48n3, 50n12, 60, 60n41, 112, 122, 136–37, 171n12, 172, 175 arm (‫)זרוע‬,o63, 65, 70, 80, 82, 83, 94, 97–98, 104, 107, 135n52, 142, 149, 195 Asaph, Asaphites, 1–2, 10, 48–59. 58–62 Augustine, 16 Benjamin, 151, 161 Bethel, 7, 152, 152n32, 167, 169 Cicero, 18, 33 consider (‫)חׁשב‬,o75, 78, 85, 87–89, 89n20, 93 cultic interpretation, 5, 55 cultus, 3, 5, 8, 23, 41, 44, 55–56, 57, 58, 63 143, 172, 175, 178; Asaphite, 9, 20, 55–58, 200; Jerusalem, 126, 169 Dan, 152n32, 153, 167, 169 David, 3, 48, 56, 59–61, 105, 162, 171;

house of, 67, 73, 117, 121, 123, 125, 131, 136–38, 140, 162, 192 decree (‫)עדות‬,o56, 57, 59, 66, 72, 77, 109–10, 121, 126, 144, 154, 182, 192, 194–95, 199, 200–201 Deuteronomistic, 119, 121, 128, 143, 171–73, 184; History, 8, 25n53, 49, 167, 173 diaphor, 97–99, 98n33, 105, 107, 130, 136, 150, 160, 162, 195–96 dwell (‫)ׁשכן‬,o105, 122, 136, 139n60, 146, 172–73, 175, 179, 180, 192 dwelling place (‫)מעון‬,o167, 168, 170 Elohistic Psalter, 52, 181n41, 182, 182n48, 183–84, 186, 186nn53–54 Ephraimite (Northern), 7, 52, 65, 77, 84–85, 105, 125, 129, 132–34, 136–38, 139, 145, 169, 173, 192 epiphor, 97 Erinnerungsfigur, 26–27, 34, 44, 75, 125 Ethan, 2, 51, 58, 64–65, 61n45 flock (‫)צאן‬,o54, 71–72, 80, 82, 96, 98,

211

MEMORIES OF ASAPH

104–6, 105n49, 107, 131, 131n42, 148, 150–51, 160, 161, 164, 192, 195 forget (‫)ׁשכח‬,o11, 37, 37n96, 67–68, 75, 77, 78, 84–85, 89n20, 92–93, 125, 134, 155, 189, 202 Gadamer, 24n49 Gesenius, 168 Gilgal, 7 Hammurabi, 35–36 Hauptgebot, 143–44, 152, 153, 183, 191–92, 197 Hegel, 15, 19 Heidegger, 20, 23n48 Heman, 2, 5n8, 58, 60–62, 60n40, 61n45, 64, 113, 176 heritage, 13, 16, 22, 44, 67, 127–28, 128n36, 135–36, 140, 158, 160, 198 Herodotus, 13 Hezekiah, 36, 36n91, 48, 56, 59, 59n38, 120, 145, 167n2 high place (‫)במה‬,o128, 157, 166–67, 169n10, 171–72, 174, 175 historical referents, 1–2, 3, 7, 8, 11, 25, 40–41, 44, 47, 53, 55–58, 62, 69, 75–78, 85, 88, 97, 98–101–2, 112, 133, 142, 146–55, 161–64, 166, 172, 174, 191, 195 historiography, 11, 12, 13–14, 19n29, 26n57, 27n61, 145, 201; cultic, 1–3, 9, 20, 23, 40–45, 50, 57, 62, 200 history, 13–14 holy place (‫)מקדׁש‬,o53–54, 73, 88, 137, 140, 157, 158, 167–68, 167n4, 172–73, 175, 180

212

identity, shaping of, 1, 8, 12, 15, 18, 25n50, 28n61, 30, 31, 31n72, 34, 40, 43, 45n126, 48, 50, 73, 76, 78, 108, 123, 126, 134, 140, 146, 160, 164, 191–93, 197, 198, 201 Jacob, 65, 125, 126, 136, 149, 154, 161–62, 149n18; God of, 62, 152, 154, 182, 182n43 Jeduthun, 2, 57, 58, 60, 61, 62, 64, 113, 176, 60n40 Jerusalem, 7, 49n9, 50n11, 53, 54, 59, 60, 77, 77n6, 97, 103, 104, 108, 113, 122–23, 126, 128n36, 134, 137, 138n56, 140, 142, 146, 150, 152, 157, 158, 159, 160, 166–67, 169–71, 169n10, 192, 200 Joseph, 13, 60, 65, 105, 125, 129, 138, 142, 149, 149n18, 151–52, 154, 161, 182 Josephus, 13, 28 Josiah, 48, 49n9, 56, 120, 145, 166, 167n2, 169, 169n10 Korah, Sons of Korah, Psalms of, 2, 6n11, 44, 48, 51, 58, 59n38, 62–63, 64, 83, 91–93, 135n52, 138n57, 148n15, 182 lair (‫)סך‬,o167, 170, 170n11 Levites, Levitical guilds, 1–2, 7, 50, 52, 53, 54, 54n3, 55n12, 57, 62, 66–75, 67n38, 69n45, 70n47, 85, 94, 106, 107, 110, 130, 132, 148, 148n31, 227, 236 Manasseh, 151, 161,181 Manetho, 29 meditate (‫)הגה‬,o71, 75, 78, 87n17, 89–90, 93, 107, 147, 163

NAME AND SUBJECT INDEX

meeting place (‫)מועד‬,o53, 103, 113, 136, 156–58, 165, 167, 169–70, 170n10, 172–74 memory, 1, 4, 8, 15–19, 27, 31, 78–90, 214 125, 163–64; and history, 19–24, 49, 52, 54, 57, 104, 132, 166, 175, 195–96, 199; collective, 16–18, 20–23, 32, 34, 38–39, 40, 91, 115, 125, 197–98, 200; communal, 8, 36, 102, 108, 115, 162, 163, 194–97; heritage of, 16, 22, 127, 128, 191, 198, 128n36; scripturalization of, 17, 30, 39, 42, 43, 44, 78, 84, 91, 143, 197, 199; topography of, 34–36, 117 Merarites, 2, 44, 58, 61n45, 64–65, 91–93 Meribah, 110, 132n44, 154–55, 192 metaphor, 37, 64, 69, 76, 76n2, 86, 94–96, 105, 105n50, 114, 121, 131n42, 142, 151, 155, 162, 170 metonym, 69–70, 161–62 mnemohistorical referent, 62, 63, 69, 70–73, 103, 107, 111, 114–15, 117 mnemohistory, 2, 3, 8–9, 24–33, 37, 40–45, 53, 63, 104, 191–93, 201; explicit, 53, 75, 77–78, 94–98, 145–61; residual, 75, 76, 165–90; as symbol, 20, 43–45, 75–77, 94–95, 96–97, 102, 104, 111–12, 136, 162–64, 195–96 Moses and Aaron, 71, 81, 150, 161, 160n57 muse (‫)ׂשיח‬,o71, 75, 78, 85–87, 87n17, 89, 90, 93, 107, 163 ordinance, 54, 109, 110, 114, 127, 128, 154, 155

parable (‫)מׁשל‬,o63, 83, 118, 124–25, 196, 127n34 promised Land, 37, 43, 66, 71, 77, 93, 118, 133, 135, 148n15, 155–60 prophet and cultus, 2n1, 51, 51n18, 52n20, 56, 61, 110, 113, 150, 153, 176, 178–79 recount (‫)ספר‬,o75, 78, 89n20, 93, 111–12, 125, 142, 160 Reed Sea, 53, 70, 73, 107, 108, 109, 118, 129, 145, 147, 149, 161 Red Sea, 67, 108n57, 150n21, 199 remember (‫)זכר‬,o38, 63, 65, 75, 78–84, 87n17, 92, 102, 148, 163 right hand (God’s; ‫)ימין‬,o81, 94, 107, 134–35, 135n52, 137, 147 sacred (‫)קדׁש‬,o167–68, 171, 173, 174, 175, 180 Salem, 77, 146, 158, 170 Shiloh, 49, 77, 122, 125, 129, 133, 134, 136–37, 139, 140, 142, 144, 145, 151, 153, 171, 172, 174–75, 139n60 statute, 72, 77, 109, 110, 114, 121, 127, 154, 122, 200 symbol, resolution to, 20, 29, 31, 39, 43, 63, 75–76, 78, 94, 102, 104, 112, 130, 162–64, 195–96 tabernacle (‫)מׁשכן‬,o136, 157, 167, 168, 172–74, 172n20 temple, 3, 36, 49, 50, 73, 97, 104, 112, 122, 128n36, 129, 142, 146, 158, 160, 165, 169n10, 171n12; (‫)היכל‬,o157, 167, 168, 171, 174, tradent, 72, 134, 165, 183

213

MEMORIES OF ASAPH

vine (‫)גפן‬,o54, 66, 86, 96, 105, 105n50, 114, 151, 151n27, 155 Vorlage, 8, 60n41, 123 wonders (‫נפלאות‬/‫)פלא‬,o37, 53, 62–63, 65–66, 69, 70, 80, 81–83, 88n19, 90–91, 107, 111, 114, 118, 125, 129–31, 129n38, 142, 145,

214

147, 149, 150, 155, 163, 179n39, 184–85, 188, 195, 200 Zion, 53, 56, 73, 92, 93, 108, 115, 125, 129, 137, 139–40, 146, 157, 158–59, 167, 170, 174, 200, 125n30

Ancient Sources Index

Exodus 2:23–24 . . . . . . 98n32, 150 3:5 . . . . . .168 3:6 . . . . . .182n43 3:7 . . . . . .104 3:20 . . . . . . 111n67 6:6 . . . . . . 98n32, 104n46, 142n1, 149n19, 150 6:7 . . . . . . 185 7–12 . . . . . . 65, 130 7:5 . . . . . . 185n52 7:17 . . . . . . 185 8:5 . . . . . . 169n7 8:10, 22 . . . . . . 185 9:23 . . . . . . 130 10:2 . . . . . . 185 12–13 . . . . . . 195n4 12:16 . . . . . . 168 13:9 . . . . . . 38 14:4 . . . . . . 185n52 15 . . . . . . 108, 109n59, 118, 124, 150, 155 15:6 . . . . . . 135 15:7 . . . . . . 93n24 15:11 . . . . . . 129n38, 185 15:13 . . . . . . 131n43 15:13–17 . . . . . . 156n47 15:16 . . . . . . 104n46

15:17 . . . . . . 135, 155, 167 15:22–26 . . . . . . 155 16:12 . . . . . . 185 17:7 . . . . . . 154n42 20:2 . . . . . . 185, 185n51 20:20 . . . . . . 158n52 20:24 . . . . . . 81 23:13 . . . . . . 81 25–31 . . . . . . 171 29:46 . . . . . . 185n52 32 . . . . . . 153n38 Leviticus 21:6 . . . . . . 168 21:12 . . . . . . 167 21:23 . . . . . . 168 23:2 . . . . . . 169n7 23:2–4, 7–8, 21, 24, 27, 35–57 . . . . . . 168 23:42–43 . . . . . . 109 26:11 . . . . . . 172 26:31 . . . . . . 167n4 26:42 . . . . . . 80n10 Numbers 3:31 . . . . . . 168 4:15 . . . . . . 168 6:5 . . . . . . 168

215

MEMORIES OF ASAPH

10:21 . . . . . . 168 11:5 . . . . . . 37 18:3 . . . . . . 168 18:19 . . . . . . 168 28:18, 25, 26 . . . . . . 169 29:1, 7, 12 . . . . . . 168 31:6 . . . . . . 168 Deuteronomy 1:34–36 . . . . . . 132n44 4:34 . . . . . . 104n46, 142n1, 149n19 5:1–3 . . . . . . 127 5:15 . . . . . . 104n46 6 . . . . . . 128, 144 6:4b–5 . . . . . . 143, 144n4 6:6–9, 20–25 . . . . . . 38n100 6:16 . . . . . . 128 6:21–23 . . . . . . 128 9:26, 29 . . . . . . 185 12:5 . . . . . . 157, 172 14:23 . . . . . . 172 26:19 . . . . . . 168 28:58 . . . . . . 38 30:10 . . . . . . 38 31:10–13 . . . . . . 38 31:24–26 . . . . . . 38 32:7, 9–10 . . . . . . 148, 188 32:8–9 . . . . . . 136, 187 33:8 . . . . . . 155 Joshua 1:8 . . . . . . 89n21 22:22 . . . . . . 181 23:7 . . . . . . 81 Judges 1 . . . . . . 133 1:29 . . . . . . 133 2:1–2 . . . . . . 133 4:13–16 . . . . . . 106

216

7:22–25 . . . . . . 106 8:4–21 . . . . . . 106 1 Samuel 4 . . . . . . 122, 137 4:1b–11 . . . . . . 175 4–6 . . . . . . 136 13:8 . . . . . . 169n7 31 . . . . . . 133 1 Kings 8:4 . . . . . . 168 14:16 . . . . . . 153, 167 15:30 . . . . . . 153 2 Kings 10:29 . . . . . . 153, 167 17:16–18 . . . . . . 153n38 17:36 . . . . . . 142n1, 149n19 18:4 . . . . . . 166 18:18 . . . . . . 81, 59n38 19:32–36 . . . . . . 138n56 23:19 . . . . . . 166 24:13–14 . . . . . . 166 1 Chronicles 6:18–33 . . . . . . 61 6:31, 39 . . . . . . 48 6:31–43 . . . . . . 59, 60 9:14–16 . . . . . . 59 9:29 . . . . . . 168 15–16 . . . . . . 60 15:17–19 . . . . . . 48, 59, 64, 50n12 16 . . . . . . 68, 112 16:4 . . . . . . 81 16:5, 7, 37 . . . . . . 48 16:5 . . . . . . 60 16:7 . . . . . . 60 16:34 . . . . . . 113 16:41 . . . . . . 113

ANCIENT SOURCES INDEX

18:15 . . . . . . 81 22:19 . . . . . . 167 25:1 . . . . . . 60, 61, 176 25:1–6 . . . . . . 59 25:2 . . . . . . 48, 59 25:5 . . . . . . 61 25:6 . . . . . . 48, 59 25:7–12 . . . . . . 59 2 Chronicles 5:11–13 . . . . . . 59, 112 5:12 . . . . . . 48, 59, 60n41 7:6 . . . . . . 112 20:13–17 . . . . . . 59 20:21 . . . . . . 48, 112 21:10–11 . . . . . . 167 29:12–13, 15–19 . . . . . . 59 29:30 . . . . . . 48, 59, 61, 176 35:15 . . . . . . 48, 59 Ezra 2:41 . . . . . . 49, 59 2:63 . . . . . . 167 3:10–11 . . . . . . 112 3:10–13 . . . . . . 59 Nehemiah 7:44 . . . . . . 49, 59 11:17 . . . . . . 59 11:22–23 . . . . . . 59 12:31–35 . . . . . . 59 12:46 . . . . . . 48, 59, 112 Job 37:2 . . . . . . 89 37:8 . . . . . . 170 38:40 . . . . . . 170 Psalms 1:2 . . . . . . 89

2:1 . . . . . . 89 2:6 . . . . . . 168 3:5 . . . . . . 168 5:8 . . . . . . 157, 168, 171 8:5 . . . . . . 79 9:2 . . . . . . 91 9:7 . . . . . . 79 10:2 . . . . . . 87 10:9 . . . . . . 170 11:4 . . . . . . 157, 168 12 . . . . . . 3 15:1 . . . . . . 157, 168 18:3 . . . . . . 97 18:34 . . . . . . 171n14 18:51 . . . . . . 140n61, 160n57 20:2 . . . . . . 181 23 . . . . . . 45n126, 96 26:7 . . . . . . 91 26:8 . . . . . . 170, 172 27:5 . . . . . . 170 28:2 . . . . . . 168 31:22 . . . . . . 111 32:2 . . . . . . 88 32:3–5 . . . . . . 68 33:21 . . . . . . 168 35:28 . . . . . . 89 37:30 . . . . . . 89 38 . . . . . . 3, 79 38:1 . . . . . . 79n7 38:13 . . . . . . 89 39 . . . . . . 2, 56, 61, 64 39:12 . . . . . . 64 40:6 . . . . . . 62, 91 40:18 . . . . . . 88 42–83 . . . . . . 182 42 . . . . . . 81 42:4 . . . . . . 80 42:5 . . . . . . 79, 80, 92 42:7 . . . . . . 92, 80n12 42:10 . . . . . . 92

217

MEMORIES OF ASAPH

43:3 . . . . . . 157, 172 44 . . . . . . 62–63, 92, 93, 94, 120n12, 148n15 44:4 . . . . . . 135n52 44:3–4 . . . . . . 63 44:7 . . . . . . 148n15 44:10–17 . . . . . . 94 44:15 . . . . . . 124n26 44:18 . . . . . . 84 44:21 . . . . . . 63, 84 44:23 . . . . . . 87, 93 44:25 . . . . . . 84, 92 45:2 . . . . . . 90n22, 93 45:11 . . . . . . 92 45:18 . . . . . . 81, 83, 92 46 . . . . . . 108, 109 46:5 . . . . . . 172 46:8, 12 . . . . . . 62, 182 47:9 . . . . . . 60n41, 168 48 . . . . . . 108, 109 48:2 . . . . . . 157 48:13 . . . . . . 90n22 48:13–14 . . . . . . 93 49 . . . . . . 63, 124 49:5 . . . . . . 63, 124 49:11 . . . . . . 172 50, 73–83 . . . . . . 1, 48, 50, 50n12, 51n16, 52–54, 191 50 . . . . . . 50, 61, 85, 113, 180, 181 50:1 . . . . . . 166, 181, 184 50:7 . . . . . . 185 50:7–15 . . . . . . 85, 165 50:12–15 . . . . . . 51 50:22 . . . . . . 84, 85 55:3 . . . . . . 86 60 . . . . . . 3 60:8 . . . . . . 168 62 . . . . . . 2, 58, 61, 64 63:3 . . . . . . 168 63:7 . . . . . . 90

218

64 . . . . . . 3 66 . . . . . . 51n17 66:1–2, 20 . . . . . . 82 66:5–6 . . . . . . 70 66:6 . . . . . . 2, 41 67 . . . . . . 51n17 68:6 . . . . . . 168, 170 68:7 . . . . . . 2 68:8–11 . . . . . . 71–72 68:18, 25 . . . . . . 168 68:30 . . . . . . 171 70 . . . . . . 79 71 . . . . . . 83, 51n17 71:16 . . . . . . 81 71:16–17 . . . . . . 82 71:22 . . . . . . 181n40 71:24 . . . . . . 89 73 . . . . . . 1, 5n7, 50n11, 53, 88, 95, 113, 172–76, 178, 180, 193 73:1–4 . . . . . . 176 73:2 . . . . . . 95 73:6 . . . . . . 95 73:11 . . . . . . 88 73:13 . . . . . . 88 73:16 . . . . . . 88, 93 73:17 . . . . . . 53, 157, 167, 168, 168n5, 169, 177, 179 73:18 . . . . . . 95 73:20 . . . . . . 95 73:22 . . . . . . 95 73:26 . . . . . . 95 73:28 . . . . . . 166, 176, 177, 183 74 . . . . . . 1, 45, 52–54, 102–4, 172–76, 180, 200 74:1 . . . . . . 96, 98 74:2 . . . . . . 77, 145, 148, 158, 182 74:3 . . . . . . 73, 157, 167, 178, 74:3–7 . . . . . . 145, 156–58, 165 4:3–9 . . . . . . 77 74:4–7 . . . . . . 160

ANCIENT SOURCES INDEX

4:4, 8 . . . . . . 169 74:7 . . . . . . 167, 172, 179 74:8 . . . . . . 53, 156, 157, 165, 168, 171, 173 74:9 . . . . . . 56, 165, 175–76, 179, 176n30 74:10 . . . . . . 149 74:11–13 . . . . . . 135 74:12–17 . . . . . . 178 74:18 . . . . . . 166 74:18–23 . . . . . . 77 74:19 . . . . . . 84, 96 74:22 . . . . . . 178 75 . . . . . . 1, 52–53, 61, 70, 111, 112, 180, 200, 126n32, 195n5 75:2 . . . . . . 91, 111, 142, 179 75:3 . . . . . . 64, 169 75:4 . . . . . . 94 75:5–6 . . . . . . 95 75:8 . . . . . . 64 75:9 . . . . . . 165 75:10 . . . . . . 161, 166 75:11 . . . . . . 95 76 . . . . . . 1, 52–53, 108–12, 180, 200 76:1 . . . . . . 87n17 76:2 . . . . . . 179 76:3–10 . . . . . . 77, 158–59 76:3 . . . . . . 170 76:4 . . . . . . 130n40 76:7–8 . . . . . . 53 76:7 . . . . . . 161 76:12 . . . . . . 56, 183 77 . . . . . . 1, 45, 53–54, 57, 58, 61, 64, 70–71, 79, 80, 83, 100, 107–8, 113, 132, 155, 162, 164, 180, 193, 196, 200 77:2 . . . . . . 13, 21, 71 77:4 . . . . . . 77, 78, 79, 80, 86–87 77:5 . . . . . . 95 77:6 . . . . . . 88, 107, 148n15

77:6–7 . . . . . . 89 77:7 . . . . . . 79, 80, 86–87, 88, 93 77:8–11 . . . . . . 147 77:10 . . . . . . 84 77:12 . . . . . . 79, 81, 107, 111, 148 77:12–13 . . . . . . 90, 107, 149, 163 77:13 . . . . . . 86–87, 90 77:14–21 . . . . . . 135, 145, 146–51 77:14 . . . . . . 84, 166 77:15 . . . . . . 111, 129n38, 184 77:17–21 . . . . . . 77 77:16 . . . . . . 107, 142, 152, 161, 142n1 77:21 . . . . . . 95, 104, 131, 161 78 . . . . . . 1, 41, 50, 52, 54, 55, 57, 65–66, 78, 93, 100, 102, 105, 114, 117–40, 142, 145, 162–64, 173, 180, 193–96, 198–200, 49n9, 96n26 78:1–7 . . . . . . 202 78:2 . . . . . . 63, 148 78:3, 8 . . . . . . 91 78:4 . . . . . . 63, 91, 111 78:5 . . . . . . 54, 77, 109, 114, 185, 200 78:5–8 . . . . . . 154 78:6 . . . . . . 91 78:6–8 . . . . . . 104 78:7 . . . . . . 67, 85, 200 78:9–10 . . . . . . 77 78:9–11 . . . . . . 192 78:10 . . . . . . 86 78:10–11 . . . . . . 84, 85, 92 78:10–14 . . . . . . 77, 143, 145, 146, 192 78:11 . . . . . . 84 78:12 . . . . . . 111 78:14–43 . . . . . . 52–54, 77, 143, 154, 192 78:21 . . . . . . 95 78:25 . . . . . . 95

219

MEMORIES OF ASAPH

78:27 . . . . . . 95 78:28 . . . . . . 172 78:32 . . . . . . 111 78:33 . . . . . . 95 78:35 . . . . . . 166 78:39 . . . . . . 95 78:41 . . . . . . 166 78:50 . . . . . . 95 78:52 . . . . . . 96, 98, 104, 105 78:54 . . . . . . 155, 168 78:55–58 . . . . . . 143, 192 78:56 . . . . . . 166 78:57 . . . . . . 95 78:58 . . . . . . 144, 171 78:58–60 . . . . . . 174 78:60 . . . . . . 77, 171, 172 78:65 . . . . . . 64, 95 78:67–72 . . . . . . 114, 162 78:68–69 . . . . . . 158, 167 78:70 . . . . . . 125 78:71 . . . . . . 96, 161 79 . . . . . . 1, 45, 50, 54, 73, 77, 97, 104–5, 113, 174–75, 178, 180, 195, 200, 50n11 79:1 . . . . . . 157, 168, 171, 128n36 79:1–4 . . . . . . 77 79:1–7 . . . . . . 146, 160, 165 79:3 . . . . . . 95 79:4 . . . . . . 104 79:5 . . . . . . 95 79:7 . . . . . . 161 79:8 . . . . . . 77, 104 79:11 . . . . . . 160, 142n1 79:11–13 . . . . . . 91, 93, 98 79:13 . . . . . . 77, 96, 98, 104, 131, 160 80 . . . . . . 1, 54, 78, 100, 105, 106, 113, 180, 193 80:2 . . . . . . 64, 96, 98, 104, 131, 151, 161 80:3 . . . . . . 151, 161

220

80:5 . . . . . . 166 80:5–7 . . . . . . 105 80:8 . . . . . . 166, 182 80:9 . . . . . . 114, 145, 182 80:9–17 . . . . . . 96 80:9–10 . . . . . . 105, 155 80:14 . . . . . . 156 80:15 . . . . . . 77, 86, 182 80:16, 18 . . . . . . 135 80:19 . . . . . . 182 81 . . . . . . 1, 50, 54, 57–58, 61, 72, 78, 109–11, 113, 143–44, 153, 181, 193–94, 196, 198, 200 81:1–4 . . . . . . 56 81:2 . . . . . . 161 81:4–5 . . . . . . 77 81:5 . . . . . . 57, 161 81:5–6 . . . . . . 77, 182 81:5–10 . . . . . . 77 81:6 . . . . . . 161 81:6–11 . . . . . . 110, 145, 152 81:7 . . . . . . 77, 143 81:8 . . . . . . 145, 154–55, 192 81:10 . . . . . . 63, 143, 144, 192 81:11 . . . . . . 184, 185n51 81:11–16 . . . . . . 192 82 . . . . . . 1, 54, 65, 144n4, 148n57, 153, 176, 181, 187, 189 82:1 . . . . . . 165, 186–88 82:5 . . . . . . 111 82:6–7 . . . . . . 54 83 . . . . . . 1, 50, 54, 61, 77, 78, 102, 106–7, 113, 181, 200, 195n5 83:4–12 . . . . . . 185 83:9–11 . . . . . . 11 83:11 . . . . . . 95, 96 83:13 . . . . . . 96 83:10–18 . . . . . . 54 83:19 . . . . . . 54, 183, 185 84:2 . . . . . . 172

ANCIENT SOURCES INDEX

84:9 . . . . . . 62, 182 86:10 . . . . . . 62 87:1 . . . . . . 168 87:2 . . . . . . 172 87:4 . . . . . . 81, 82, 92 87:6 . . . . . . 90n22, 92, 93 88 . . . . . . 2, 48, 51, 61, 64 88:5 . . . . . . 87, 93 88:6 . . . . . . 92 88:11, 13 . . . . . . 62 88:11–12 . . . . . . 93 88:12 . . . . . . 90n22 89 . . . . . . 2, 51, 58, 64–65, 66, 140n61, 189 89:6 . . . . . . 62 89:6–8 . . . . . . 187, 188 89:7 . . . . . . 65 89:9 . . . . . . 65, 182 89:11 . . . . . . 65 89:48 . . . . . . 79n8, 92 90:1 . . . . . . 170 90:9 . . . . . . 89 91:9 . . . . . . 170 94:7 . . . . . . 182 95 . . . . . . 96 96:3 . . . . . . 91 97:12 . . . . . . 168 99 . . . . . . 72 99:6 . . . . . . 161n57 99:6–7 . . . . . . 2, 41, 72 99:9 . . . . . . 168 100 . . . . . . 96 102:1 . . . . . . 86n16 102:14 . . . . . . 169 103:1 . . . . . . 168 103:7 . . . . . . 161n57 103:19–22 . . . . . . 187 104:19 . . . . . . 168 104:22 . . . . . . 169 104:34 . . . . . . 86

105 . . . . . . 1, 41, 44, 55, 58, 65–68, 100–101, 117, 130 105:3 . . . . . . 168 105:5 . . . . . . 65, 79, 111 105:16 . . . . . . 65 105:17 . . . . . . 65 105:23–45 . . . . . . 65 105:28–36 . . . . . . 121n15 105:33 . . . . . . 105n50 106 . . . . . . 1, 41, 44, 55, 58, 65–68, 100–101, 117, 130 106:4–7 . . . . . . 67 106:7 . . . . . . 79 106:9–12 . . . . . . 66, 68 106:13, 21 . . . . . . 67, 85 106:16–23 . . . . . . 66 106:34–39 . . . . . . 66 106:41 . . . . . . 41, 67 106:47 . . . . . . 67, 168 106:47–48 . . . . . . 68 108:8 . . . . . . 168 109:15 . . . . . . 79 111:4 . . . . . . 79 114 . . . . . . 72–73, 150 114:1 . . . . . . 2, 41 115:7 . . . . . . 89 115:10, 12 . . . . . . 161n57 119 . . . . . . 117 119:15 . . . . . . 86 119:18, 129 . . . . . . 111 132:5, 7 . . . . . . 172 135 . . . . . . 1, 41, 44, 55, 58, 69, 70, 100, 110, 117 135:13 . . . . . . 79 136 . . . . . . 1, 41, 44, 55, 58, 69, 70, 100, 117 136:3–4, 10–11 . . . . . . 70 137 . . . . . . 80, 120n12 138:2 . . . . . . 168, 171 139:14 . . . . . . 111

221

MEMORIES OF ASAPH

139:18 . . . . . . 90n22 143:4 . . . . . . 87n17 143:5 . . . . . . 90, 148n15, 163 145:5 . . . . . . 86 145:21 . . . . . . 168 150:1 . . . . . . 168 Isaiah 6:2–3 . . . . . . 187 12:4 . . . . . . 81 26:13 . . . . . . 81 36:3, 22 . . . . . . 59n38 43:25 . . . . . . 80n10 51 . . . . . . 150 57:17, 21 . . . . . . 165 63:7 . . . . . . 81 63:7–14 . . . . . . 82–83 63:11 . . . . . . 148 Jeremiah 5:14 . . . . . . 182n45 7 . . . . . . 175 16:14–15 . . . . . . 39 23:7–8 . . . . . . 39 23:27 . . . . . . 89n20 25:15, 17, 27–28 . . . . . . 165 25:38 . . . . . . 170 31:34 . . . . . . 80n10

222

Hosea 6:6 . . . . . . 85, 165 Amos 4:13 . . . . . . 182n45 5:14–16, 27 . . . . . . 182n45 5:21–24 . . . . . . 85 6:8 . . . . . . 182n45 6:10 . . . . . . 81 7:9 . . . . . . 167n4 Jonah 2:5, 8 . . . . . . 171 Micah 2:12 . . . . . . 98n32 6:6–8 . . . . . . 85, 165 7:14–15 . . . . . . 148 Habakkuk 3 . . . . . . 150 1 Esdras 1:15 . . . . . . 48n2, 59 5:27–29 . . . . . . 59 Kuntillet ‘Ajrud . . . . . . 152–53

Memory as the shaper of tradition Jacobson

Although the Psalms of Asaph (Psalms 50, 73‒83) contain a concentration of historical referents unparalleled in the Psalter, they have rarely attracted sustained historical interest. Karl N. Jacobson identifies these psalms as containing cultic historiography, historical narratives written for recitation in worship, and explores them through mnemohistory, attending to how the past is remembered and to the rhetorical function of recitation in the cultic setting. Asaph “remembers” the past as a movement from henotheism to Yahwism—the core memory that informs a new historical situation for worship participants. Praise for Memories of Asaph “Karl N. Jacobson has written a solid critical study that gives access and illumination to the Psalter. He has two goals. First, to help us read the Psalms of Asaph knowingly. Second, to let us better understand the dynamics and strategies at work in cultic remembering. He has accomplished both goals effectively. He calls us to attend to the work of remembering that requires imaginative, constructive engagement.” Walter Brueggemann | emeritus, Columbia Theological Seminary

Beth LaNeel Tanner | New Brunswick Theological Seminary

“Going beyond a traditional historical-critical method, mnemohistory reaches back to the actual events, considers them in their contemporary setting (which for Israel is the cult), and then points ahead to their implications for the future. Jacobson is fully aware of critical scholarship on the psalms, carrying on a discussion with Gunkel, Westermann, Mowinckel, Nasuti, Zenger, Brown, and others. The writing is crisp and clear, reflecting the author’s years as a scholar, teacher, and preacher on the psalmic material. Anyone dealing with these psalms in a classroom or a pulpit will want to begin—and end—with Memories of Asaph.” James Limburg | emeritus, Luther Seminary

“Karl N. Jacobson’s Memories of Asaph is an important study of one of the lesser-known collections that make up Psalms. His approach, which explores the intersection of memory and history in the Psalms of Asaph, is an example of the rich multiplicity of ways that scholars read and appropriate the biblical text. I anticipate that this work will provide a valuable contribution to the twenty-first-century study of the shape and shaping of the Psalter.”

Memories of Asaph Memories of Asaph

“Jacobson introduces a way through the stalemate in the study of the historical psalms. By engaging in an extensive study of the Asaph collection, he applies the concept of mnemohistory, or remembered history, in an innovative way, a method that has applications beyond the Psalms of Asaph. This is an important volume for anyone who wants to better understand how the writers of the psalms used the known and remembered past to shape the identity and faith of the people of God in the present.”

Mnemohistory and the Psalms of Asaph

Nancy L. deClaissé-Walford | McAfee School of Theology, Mercer University

Karl N. Jacobson is teaching pastor at Lutheran Church of the Good Shepherd in Minnea­ polis. He completed his dissertation at Providence Theological School.

Karl N. Jacobson

Old Testament

e m e r g i n g

s c h o l a r s