The Book of Psalms: A Translation with Commentary

by Robert Alter

1988. This carefully discriminating philological commentary, first published in German in 1978, is still the best available scholarly analysis of Psalms, though it is sometimes too quick to emend the text and has a tendency to conclude its discussion of particular psalms with an odd little Christological flourish. Kugel, James. “Topics in the History of the Spirituality of the Psalms,” in Jewish Spirituality from the Bible through the Middle Ages, edited by Arthur Green. New York: Crossroad, 1988. This essay provides a well-informed, useful summary of the various ways in which Psalms has been thought of over the ages and into the period of modern scholarship. Mowinckel, Sigmund. The Psalms in Israel’s Worship. Oxford: Blackwell, 1962. This book is the central articulation of a once highly influential approach to the sundry psalms that sought to identify them as expressions of specific cultic settings. Sarna, Nahum. Songs of the Heart: An Introduction to the Book of Psalms. New York: Schocken Books, 1993. This book consists of a series of close readings of selected psalms. It provides some nice perceptions of the texts and their relation to ancient Near Eastern contexts, though at times the interpretations reflect an apologetic view. ROBERT ALTER is the Class of 1937 Professor of Hebrew and Comparative Literature at the University of California, Berkeley, where he has taught since 1967. He is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the American Philosophical ...