In the Bible, how many psalms make up the Book of Psalms?
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Bible Psalms
The Bible (from Koine Greek τὰ βιβλία, tà biblía, "the books"  ) is a collection of texts sacred in Judaism and Christianity. It is a collection of scriptures written at different times by different authors in different locations. Jews and Christians consider the books of the Bible to be a product of divine inspiration or an authoritative record of the relationship between God and humans.

The canonical Bible varies depending on traditions or groups; a number of Bible canons have evolved, with overlapping and diverging contents.  The Christian Old Testament overlaps with the Hebrew Bible and the Greek Septuagint; the Hebrew Bible is known in Judaism as the Tanakh. The New Testament is a collection of writings by early Christians, believed to be mostly Jewish disciples of Christ, written in first-century Koine Greek. These early Christian Greek writings consist of narratives, letters, and apocalyptic writings. Among Christian denominations there is some disagreement about the contents of the canon, primarily in the Apocrypha, a list of works that are regarded with varying levels of respect.

Attitudes towards the Bible also vary amongst Christian groups. Roman Catholics, Anglicans and Eastern Orthodox Christians stress the harmony and importance of the Bible and sacred tradition, while Protestant churches focus on the idea of sola scriptura, or scripture alone. This concept arose during the Protestant Reformation, and many denominations today continue to support the use of the Bible as the only source of Christian teaching.

With estimated total sales of over 5 billion copies, the Bible is widely considered to be the best-selling book of all time.   It has estimated annual sales of 100 million copies,  and has been a major influence on literature and history, especially in the West where the Gutenberg Bible was the first mass-printed book. It was the first book ever printed using movable type.

Etymology

The English word Bible is from the Latin biblia, from the same word in Medieval Latin and Late Latin and ultimately from Koine Greek  ta biblia "the books" (singular  biblion). 

Medieval Latin biblia is short for biblia sacra "holy book", while biblia in Greek and Late Latin is neuter plural (gen. bibliorum). It gradually came to be regarded as a feminine singular noun (biblia, gen. bibliae) in medieval Latin, and so the word was loaned as a singular into the vernaculars of Western Europe. 
Latin biblia sacra "holy books" translates Greek  ta biblia ta hagia, "the holy books". 

The word  itself had the literal meaning of "paper" or "scroll" and came to be used as the ordinary word for "book".
It is the diminutive of  byblos, "Egyptian papyrus", possibly so called from the name of the Phoenician sea port Byblos (also known as Gebal) from whence Egyptian papyrus was exported to Greece.
The Greek ta biblia (lit. "little papyrus books")  was "an expression Hellenistic Jews used to describe their sacred books (the Septuagint).   Christian use of the term can be traced to c. 223 CE. The biblical scholar F.F. Bruce notes that Chrysostom appears to be the first writer (in his Homilies on Matthew, delivered between 386 and 388) to use the Greek phrase ta biblia ("the books") to describe both the Old and New Testaments together. 

Textual history

	
By the 2nd century BCE, Jewish groups had called the Bible books the "scriptures" and referred to them as "holy," or in Hebrew כִּתְבֵי הַקֹּדֶשׁ (Kitvei hakkodesh), and Christians now commonly call the Old and New Testaments of the Christian Bible "The Holy Bible" (in Greek , tà biblía tà ágia) or "the Holy Scriptures" (, e Agía Graphḗ).  The Bible was divided into chapters in the 13th century by Stephen Langton and into verses in the 16th century by French printer Robert Estienne  and is now usually cited by book, chapter, and verse. 

The oldest extant copy of a complete Bible is an early 4th-century parchment book preserved in the Vatican Library, and known as the Codex Vaticanus. The oldest copy of the Tanakh in Hebrew and Aramaic dates to the 10th century CE. The oldest copy of a complete Latin (Vulgate) Bible is the Codex Amiatinus, dating from the 8th century. 

Development

 

Professor John K. Riches, Professor of Divinity and Biblical Criticism at the University of Glasgow, in an Oxford University Press introduction to the Bible, says that "the biblical texts themselves are the result of a creative dialogue between ancient traditions and different communities through the ages",  and "the biblical texts were produced over a period in which the living conditions of the writers – political, cultural, economic, and ecological – varied enormously".  Timothy H. Lim, a professor of Hebrew Bible and Second Temple Judaism at the University of Edinburgh, says that the Old Testament is "a collection of authoritative texts of apparently divine origin that went through a human process of writing and editing."  He states that it is not a magical book, nor was it literally written by God and passed to mankind.
Parallel to the solidification of the Hebrew canon (c. 3rd century BCE), only the Torah first and then the Tanakh began to be translated into Greek and expanded, now referred to as the Septuagint or the Greek Old Testament. 

In Christian Bibles, the New Testament Gospels were derived from oral traditions in the second half of the first century CE. Riches says that:

Scholars have attempted to reconstruct something of the history of the oral traditions behind the Gospels, but the results have not been too encouraging. The period of transmission is short: less than 40 years passed between the death of Jesus and the writing of Mark's Gospel. This means that there was little time for oral traditions to assume fixed form. 

The Bible was later translated into Latin and other languages. John Riches states that:

The translation of the Bible into Latin marks the beginning of a parting of the ways between Western Latin-speaking Christianity and Eastern Christianity, which spoke Greek, Syriac, Coptic, Ethiopic, and other languages. The Bibles of the Eastern Churches vary considerably: the Ethiopic Orthodox canon includes 81 books and contains many apocalyptic texts, such as were found at Qumran and subsequently excluded from the Jewish canon. As a general rule, one can say that the Orthodox Churches generally follow the Septuagint in including more books in their Old Testaments than are in the Jewish canon.

Hebrew Bible

The Masoretic Text is the authoritative Hebrew text of the Hebrew Bible, or Tanakh.  It defines the books of the Jewish canon, and also the precise letter-text of these biblical books, with their vocalization and accentuation.

The oldest extant manuscripts of the Masoretic Text date from approximately the 9th century CE,  and the Aleppo Codex (once the oldest complete copy of the Masoretic Text, but now missing its Torah section) dates from the 10th century.

The name Tanakh (Hebrew: ) reflects the threefold division of the Hebrew Scriptures, Torah ("Teaching"), Nevi'im ("Prophets") and Ketuvim ("Writings").

Torah

The Torah (תּוֹרָה) is also known as the "Five Books of Moses" or the Pentateuch, meaning "five scroll-cases".   

The Hebrew names of the books are derived from the first words in the respective texts. The Torah consists of the following five books:
* Genesis, Beresheeth (בראשית)
* Exodus, Shemot (שמות)
* Leviticus, Vayikra (ויקרא)
* Numbers, Bamidbar (במדבר)
* Deuteronomy, Devarim (דברים)

The first eleven chapters of Genesis provide accounts of the creation (or ordering) of the world and the history of God's early relationship with humanity. The remaining thirty-nine chapters of Genesis provide an account of God's covenant with the Biblical patriarchs Abraham, Isaac and Jacob (also called Israel) and Jacob's children, the "Children of Israel", especially Joseph. It tells of how God commanded Abraham to leave his family and home in the city of Ur, eventually to settle in the land of Canaan, and how the Children of Israel later moved to Egypt. The remaining four books of the Torah tell the story of Moses, who lived hundreds of years after the patriarchs. He leads the Children of Israel from slavery in Ancient Egypt to the renewal of their covenant with God at Mount Sinai and their wanderings in the desert until a new generation was ready to enter the land of Canaan. The Torah ends with the death of Moses. 

The Torah contains the commandments of God, revealed at Mount Sinai (although there is some debate among traditional scholars as to whether these were all written down at one time, or over a period of time during the 40 years of the wanderings in the desert, while several modern Jewish movements reject the idea of a literal revelation, and critical scholars believe that many of these laws developed later in Jewish history).     These commandments provide the basis for Jewish religious law. Tradition states that there are 613 commandments (taryag mitzvot).

Nevi'im

Nevi'im (, "Prophets") is the second main division of the Tanakh, between the Torah and Ketuvim. It contains two sub-groups, the Former Prophets (, the narrative books of Joshua, Judges, Samuel and Kings) and the Latter Prophets (, the books of Isaiah, Jeremiah and Ezekiel and the Twelve Minor Prophets).

The Nevi'im tell the story of the rise of the Hebrew monarchy and its division into two kingdoms, ancient Israel and Judah, focusing on conflicts between the Israelites and other nations, and conflicts among Israelites, specifically, struggles between believers in "the  God"  and believers in foreign gods,   and the criticism of unethical and unjust behavior of Israelite elites and rulers;    in which prophets played a crucial and leading role. It ends with the conquest of the Kingdom of Israel by the Assyrians followed by the conquest of the Kingdom of Judah by the Babylonians and the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem.

Former Prophets

The Former Prophets are the books Joshua, Judges, Samuel and Kings. They contain narratives that begin immediately after the death of Moses with the divine appointment of Joshua as his successor, who then leads the people of Israel into the Promised Land, and end with the release from imprisonment of the last king of Judah. Treating Samuel and Kings as single books, they cover:
* Joshua's conquest of the land of Canaan (in the Book of Joshua),
* the struggle of the people to possess the land (in the Book of Judges),
* the people's request to God to give them a king so that they can occupy the land in the face of their enemies (in the Books of Samuel)
* the possession of the land under the divinely appointed kings of the House of David, ending in conquest and foreign exile (Books of Kings)

Latter Prophets

The Latter Prophets are divided into two groups, the "major" prophets, Isaiah, Jeremiah and Ezekiel, and the Twelve Minor Prophets, collected into a single book. The collection is broken up to form twelve individual books in the Christian Old Testament, one for each of the prophets:

* Hosea, Hoshea (הושע)
* Joel, Yoel (יואל)
* Amos, Amos (עמוס)
* Obadiah, Ovadyah (עבדיה)
* Jonah, Yonah (יונה)
* Micah, Mikhah (מיכה)
* Nahum, Nahum (נחום)
* Habakkuk, Havakuk (חבקוק)
* Zephaniah, Tsefanya (צפניה)
* Haggai, Khagay (חגי)
* Zechariah, Zekharyah (זכריה)
* Malachi, Malakhi (מלאכי)

Ketuvim

Ketuvim or Kəṯûḇîm (in  "writings") is the third and final section of the Tanakh. The Ketuvim are believed to have been written under the Ruach HaKodesh (the Holy Spirit) but with one level less authority than that of prophecy. 

The poetic books

In Masoretic manuscripts (and some printed editions), Psalms, Proverbs and Job are presented in a special two-column form emphasizing the parallel stichs in the verses, which are a function of their poetry. Collectively, these three books are known as Sifrei Emet (an acronym of the titles in Hebrew, איוב, משלי, תהלים yields Emet אמ"ת, which is also the Hebrew for "truth").

These three books are also the only ones in Tanakh with a special system of cantillation notes that are designed to emphasize parallel stichs within verses. However, the beginning and end of the book of Job are in the normal prose system.

The five scrolls (Hamesh Megillot)

The five relatively short books of Song of Songs, Book of Ruth, the Book of Lamentations, Ecclesiastes and Book of Esther are collectively known as the Hamesh Megillot (Five Megillot). These are the latest books collected and designated as "authoritative" in the Jewish canon even though they were not complete until the 2nd century CE. 

Other books

Besides the three poetic books and the five scrolls, the remaining books in Ketuvim are Daniel, Ezra–Nehemiah and Chronicles. Although there is no formal grouping for these books in the Jewish tradition, they nevertheless share a number of distinguishing characteristics:
* Their narratives all openly describe relatively late events (i.e., the Babylonian captivity and the subsequent restoration of Zion).
* The Talmudic tradition ascribes late authorship to all of them.
* Two of them (Daniel and Ezra) are the only books in the Tanakh with significant portions in Aramaic.

Order of the books

The following list presents the books of Ketuvim in the order they appear in most printed editions. It also divides them into three subgroups based on the distinctiveness of Sifrei Emet and Hamesh Megillot.

The Three Poetic Books (Sifrei Emet)
* Tehillim (Psalms) תְהִלִּים
* Mishlei (Book of Proverbs) מִשְלֵי
* Iyyôbh (Book of Job) אִיּוֹב
The Five Megillot (Hamesh Megillot)
* Shīr Hashshīrīm (Song of Songs) or (Song of Solomon) שִׁיר הַשׁשִׁירִים (Passover)
* Rūth (Book of Ruth) רוּת (Shābhû‘ôth)
* Eikhah (Lamentations) איכה (Ninth of Av) [Also called Kinnot in Hebrew.]
* Qōheleth (Ecclesiastes) קהלת (Sukkôth)
* Estēr (Book of Esther) אֶסְתֵר (Pûrîm)
Other books
* Dānî’ēl (Book of Daniel) דָּנִיֵּאל
* ‘Ezrā (Book of Ezra-Book of Nehemiah) עזרא
* Divrei ha-Yamim (Chronicles) דברי הימים

The Jewish textual tradition never finalized the order of the books in Ketuvim. The Babylonian Talmud (Bava Batra 14b-15a) gives their order as Ruth, Psalms, Job, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, Song of Solomon, Lamentations of Jeremiah, Daniel, Scroll of Esther, Ezra, Chronicles. 

In Tiberian Masoretic codices, including the Aleppo Codex and the Leningrad Codex, and often in old Spanish manuscripts as well, the order is Chronicles, Psalms, Job, Proverbs, Ruth, Song of Solomon, Ecclesiastes, Lamentations of Jeremiah, Esther, Daniel, Ezra. 

Canonization

The Ketuvim is the last of the three portions of the Tanakh to have been accepted as biblical canon. While the Torah may have been considered canon by Israel as early as the 5th century BCE and the Former and Latter Prophets were canonized by the 2nd century BCE, the Ketuvim was not a fixed canon until the 2nd century of the Common Era. 

Evidence suggests, however, that the people of Israel were adding what would become the Ketuvim to their holy literature shortly after the canonization of the prophets. As early as 132 BCE references suggest that the Ketuvim was starting to take shape, although it lacked a formal title.  References in the four Gospels as well as other books of the New Testament indicate that many of these texts were both commonly known and counted as having some degree of religious authority early in the 1st century CE.

Many scholars believe that the limits of the Ketuvim as canonized scripture were determined by the Council of Jamnia c. 90 CE. Against Apion, the writing of Josephus in 95 CE, treated the text of the Hebrew Bible as a closed canon to which "... no one has ventured either to add, or to remove, or to alter a syllable..."  For a long time following this date the divine inspiration of Esther, the Song of Songs, and Ecclesiastes was often under scrutiny. 

Original languages

The Tanakh was mainly written in biblical Hebrew, with some small portions ( and , , ) in biblical Aramaic, a sister language which became the lingua franca for much of the Semitic world. 

Septuagint 

The Septuagint, or LXX, is a translation of the Hebrew Scriptures and some related texts into Koine Greek, begun in the late 3rd century BCE and completed by 132 BCE,   initially in Alexandria, but in time elsewhere as well.  It is not altogether clear which was translated when, or where; some may even have been translated twice, into different versions, and then revised. 

As the work of translation progressed, the canon of the Greek Bible expanded. The Torah always maintained its pre-eminence as the basis of the canon but the collection of prophetic writings, based on the Nevi'im, had various hagiographical works incorporated into it. In addition, some newer books were included in the Septuagint, among these are the Maccabees and the Wisdom of Sirach. However, the book of Sirach, is now known to have existed in a Hebrew version, since ancient Hebrew manuscripts of it were rediscovered in modern times. The Septuagint version of some Biblical books, like Daniel and Esther, are longer than those in the Jewish canon.  Some of these deuterocanonical books (e.g. the Wisdom of Solomon, and the second book of Maccabees) were not translated, but composed directly in Greek.

Since Late Antiquity, once attributed to a hypothetical late 1st-century Council of Jamnia, mainstream Rabbinic Judaism rejected the Septuagint as valid Jewish scriptural texts. Several reasons have been given for this. First, some mistranslations were claimed. Second, the Hebrew source texts used for the Septuagint differed from the Masoretic tradition of Hebrew texts, which was chosen as canonical by the Jewish rabbis.  Third, the rabbis wanted to distinguish their tradition from the newly emerging tradition of Christianity.  
Finally, the rabbis claimed a divine authority for the Hebrew language, in contrast to Aramaic or Greek – even though these languages were the lingua franca of Jews during this period (and Aramaic would eventually be given a holy language status comparable to Hebrew). 

The Septuagint is the basis for the Old Latin, Slavonic, Syriac, Old Armenian, Old Georgian and Coptic versions of the Christian Old Testament.  The Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox Churches use most of the books of the Septuagint, while Protestant churches usually do not. After the Protestant Reformation, many Protestant Bibles began to follow the Jewish canon and exclude the additional texts, which came to be called Biblical apocrypha. The Apocrypha are included under a separate heading in the King James Version of the Bible, the basis for the Revised Standard Version. 

Incorporations from Theodotion

In most ancient copies of the Bible which contain the Septuagint version of the Old Testament, the Book of Daniel is not the original Septuagint version, but instead is a copy of Theodotion's translation from the Hebrew, which more closely resembles the Masoretic Text. The Septuagint version was discarded in favour of Theodotion's version in the 2nd to 3rd centuries CE. In Greek-speaking areas, this happened near the end of the 2nd century, and in Latin-speaking areas (at least in North Africa), it occurred in the middle of the 3rd century. History does not record the reason for this, and St. Jerome reports, in the preface to the Vulgate version of Daniel, "This thing 'just' happened."  One of two Old Greek texts of the Book of Daniel has been recently rediscovered and work is ongoing in reconstructing the original form of the book. 

The canonical Ezra–Nehemiah is known in the Septuagint as "Esdras B", and 1 Esdras is "Esdras A". 1 Esdras is a very similar text to the books of Ezra–Nehemiah, and the two are widely thought by scholars to be derived from the same original text. It has been proposed, and is thought highly likely by scholars, that "Esdras B" – the canonical Ezra–Nehemiah – is Theodotion's version of this material, and "Esdras A" is the version which was previously in the Septuagint on its own.

Final form

Some texts are found in the Septuagint but are not present in the Hebrew. These additional books are Tobit, Judith, Wisdom of Solomon, Wisdom of Jesus son of Sirach, Baruch, the Letter of Jeremiah (which later became chapter 6 of Baruch in the Vulgate), additions to Daniel (The Prayer of Azarias, the Song of the Three Children, Susanna and Bel and the Dragon), additions to Esther, 1 Maccabees, 2 Maccabees, 3 Maccabees, 4 Maccabees, 1 Esdras, Odes, including the Prayer of Manasseh, the Psalms of Solomon, and Psalm 151.

Some books that are set apart in the Masoretic Text are grouped together. For example, the Books of Samuel and the Books of Kings are in the LXX one book in four parts called Βασιλειῶν ("Of Reigns"). In LXX, the Books of Chronicles supplement Reigns and it is called Paralipomenon (Παραλειπομένων—things left out). The Septuagint organizes the minor prophets as twelve parts of one Book of Twelve.

Christian Bibles

A Christian Bible is a set of books that a Christian denomination regards as divinely inspired and thus constituting scripture. Although the Early Church primarily used the Septuagint or the Targums among Aramaic speakers, the apostles did not leave a defined set of new scriptures; instead the canon of the New Testament developed over time. Groups within Christianity include differing books as part of their sacred writings, most prominent among which are the biblical apocrypha or deuterocanonical books.

Significant versions of the English Christian Bible include the Douay-Rheims Bible, the Authorized King James Version, the English Revised Version, the American Standard Version, the Revised Standard Version,  the New American Standard Version, the New King James Version, the New International Version, and the English Standard Version.

Old Testament

The books which make up the Christian Old Testament differ between the Catholic (see Catholic Bible), Orthodox, and Protestant (see Protestant Bible) churches, with the Protestant movement accepting only those books contained in the Hebrew Bible, while Catholics and Orthodox have wider canons. A few groups consider particular translations to be divinely inspired, notably the Greek Septuagint and the Aramaic Peshitta.

Apocryphal or deuterocanonical books

In Eastern Christianity, translations based on the Septuagint still prevail. The Septuagint was generally abandoned in favour of the 10th-century Masoretic Text as the basis for translations of the Old Testament into Western languages. Some modern Western translations since the 14th century make use of the Septuagint to clarify passages in the Masoretic Text, where the Septuagint may preserve a variant reading of the Hebrew text. They also sometimes adopt variants that appear in other texts, e.g., those discovered among the Dead Sea Scrolls.  

A number of books which are part of the Peshitta or Greek Septuagint but are not found in the Hebrew (Rabbinic) Bible (i.e., among the protocanonical books) are often referred to as deuterocanonical books by Roman Catholics referring to a later secondary (i.e., deutero) canon, that canon as fixed definitively by the Council of Trent 1545–1563.   It includes 46 books for the Old Testament (45 if Jeremiah and Lamentations are counted as one) and 27 for the New.

Most Protestants term these books as apocrypha. Modern Protestant traditions do not accept the deuterocanonical books as canonical, although Protestant Bibles included them in Apocrypha sections until the 1820s. However, Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox Churches include these books as part of their Old Testament.

The Roman Catholic Church recognizes: 
* Tobit
* Judith
* 1 Maccabees
* 2 Maccabees
* Wisdom
* Sirach (or Ecclesiasticus)
* Baruch
* The Letter of Jeremiah (Baruch Chapter 6)
* Greek Additions to Esther (Book of Esther, chapters 10:4 – 12:6)
* The Prayer of Azariah and Song of the Three Holy Children verses 1–68 (Book of Daniel, chapter 3, verses 24–90)
* Susanna (Book of Daniel, chapter 13)
* Bel and the Dragon (Book of Daniel, chapter 14)

In addition to those, the Greek and Russian Orthodox Churches recognize the following: 
* 3 Maccabees
* 1 Esdras
* Prayer of Manasseh
* Psalm 151

Russian and Georgian Orthodox Churches include:
* 2 Esdras i.e., Latin Esdras in the Russian and Georgian Bibles

There is also 4 Maccabees which is only accepted as canonical in the Georgian Church, but was included by St. Jerome in an appendix to the Vulgate, and is an appendix to the Greek Orthodox Bible, and it is therefore sometimes included in collections of the Apocrypha.

The Syriac Orthodox tradition includes:
* Psalms 151–155
* The Apocalypse of Baruch
* The Letter of Baruch

The Ethiopian Biblical canon includes:
* Jubilees
* Enoch
* 1–3 Meqabyan
and some other books.

The Anglican Church uses some of the Apocryphal books liturgically. Therefore, editions of the Bible intended for use in the Anglican Church include the Deuterocanonical books accepted by the Catholic Church, plus 1 Esdras, 2 Esdras and the Prayer of Manasseh, which were in the Vulgate appendix. 

Pseudepigraphal books 

The term Pseudepigrapha commonly describes numerous works of Jewish religious literature written from about 300 BCE to 300 CE. Not all of these works are actually pseudepigraphical. It also refers to books of the New Testament canon whose authorship is misrepresented. The "Old Testament" Pseudepigraphal works include the following:Harris, Stephen L., Understanding the Bible. Palo Alto: Mayfield. 1985.

* 3 Maccabees
* 4 Maccabees
* Assumption of Moses
* Ethiopic Book of Enoch (1 Enoch)
* Slavonic Book of Enoch (2 Enoch)
* Hebrew Book of Enoch (3 Enoch) (also known as "The Revelation of Metatron" or "The Book of Rabbi Ishmael the High Priest")
* Book of Jubilees
* Syriac Apocalypse of Baruch (2 Baruch)
* Letter of Aristeas  (Letter to Philocrates regarding the translating of the Hebrew Scriptures into Greek)
* Life of Adam and Eve
* Martyrdom and Ascension of Isaiah
* Psalms of Solomon
* Sibylline Oracles
* Greek Apocalypse of Baruch (3 Baruch)
* Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs

Book of Enoch 

Notable pseudepigraphal works include the Books of Enoch (such as 1 Enoch, 2 Enoch, surviving only in Old Slavonic, and 3 Enoch, surviving in Hebrew, c. 5th to 6th century CE). These are ancient Jewish religious works, traditionally ascribed to the prophet Enoch, the great-grandfather of the patriarch Noah. They are not part of the biblical canon used by Jews, apart from Beta Israel. Most Christian denominations and traditions may accept the Books of Enoch as having some historical or theological interest or significance. It has been observed that part of the Book of Enoch is quoted in the Epistle of Jude (part of the New Testament) but Christian denominations generally regard the Books of Enoch as non-canonical or non-inspired.  However, the Enoch books are treated as canonical by the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church and Eritrean Orthodox Tewahedo Church.

The older sections (mainly in the Book of the Watchers) are estimated to date from about 300 BC, and the latest part (Book of Parables) probably was composed at the end of the 1st century BCE. 

Denominational views of Pseudepigrapha 

There arose in some Protestant biblical scholarship an extended use of the term pseudepigrapha for works that appeared as though they ought to be part of the biblical canon, because of the authorship ascribed to them, but which stood outside both the biblical canons recognized by Protestants and Catholics. These works were also outside the particular set of books that Roman Catholics called deuterocanonical and to which Protestants had generally applied the term Apocryphal. Accordingly, the term pseudepigraphical, as now used often among both Protestants and Roman Catholics (allegedly for the clarity it brings to the discussion), may make it difficult to discuss questions of pseudepigraphical authorship of canonical books dispassionately with a lay audience. To confuse the matter even more, Eastern Orthodox Christians accept books as canonical that Roman Catholics and most Protestant denominations consider pseudepigraphical or at best of much less authority. There exist also churches that reject some of the books that Roman Catholics, Orthodox and Protestants accept. The same is true of some Jewish sects. Many works that are "apocryphal" are otherwise considered genuine.

Role of Old Testament in Christian theology

The Old Testament has always been central to the life of the Christian church. Bible scholar N.T. Wright says "Jesus himself was profoundly shaped by the scriptures."  He adds that the earliest Christians also searched those same Hebrew scriptures in their effort to understand the earthly life of Jesus. They regarded the "holy writings" of the Israelites as necessary and instructive for the Christian, as seen from Paul's words to Timothy (2 Timothy 3:15), and as pointing to the Messiah, and as having reached a climactic fulfillment in Jesus himself, generating the "new covenant" prophesied by Jeremiah. 

New Testament

The New Testament is a collection of 27 books  of 4 different genres of Christian literature (Gospels, one account of the Acts of the Apostles, Epistles and an Apocalypse). Jesus is its central figure. The New Testament presupposes the inspiration of the Old Testament. (2 Timothy 3:16) Nearly all Christians recognize the New Testament as canonical scripture. These books can be grouped into:

The Gospels
* Synoptic Gospels
** Gospel According to Matthew
** Gospel According to Mark
** Gospel According to Luke
* Gospel According to John

Narrative literature, account and history of the Apostolic age
* Acts of the Apostles

Pauline Epistles
* Epistle to the Romans
* First Epistle to the Corinthians
* Second Epistle to the Corinthians
* Epistle to the Galatians
* Epistle to the Ephesians
* Epistle to the Philippians
* Epistle to the Colossians
* First Epistle to the Thessalonians
* Second Epistle to the Thessalonians

Pastoral epistles
* First Epistle to Timothy
* Second Epistle to Timothy
* Epistle to Titus
* Epistle to Philemon
* Epistle to the Hebrews

General epistles, also called catholic epistles
* Epistle of James
* First Epistle of Peter
* Second Epistle of Peter
* First Epistle of John
* Second Epistle of John
* Third Epistle of John
* Epistle of Jude

Apocalyptic literature, also called Prophetical
* Revelation, or the Apocalypse

The New Testament books are ordered differently in the Catholic/Orthodox/Protestant tradition, the Slavonic tradition, the Syriac tradition and the Ethiopian tradition.

Original language

The mainstream consensus is that the New Testament was written in a form of Koine Greek,   which was the common language of the Eastern Mediterranean     from the Conquests of Alexander the Great (335–323 BCE) until the evolution of Byzantine Greek (c. 600).

Historic editions

The original autographs, that is, the original Greek writings and manuscripts written by the original authors of the New Testament, have not survived.  But historically  copies exist of those original autographs, transmitted and preserved in a number of manuscript traditions.  There have been some minor variations, additions or omissions, in some of the texts. When ancient scribes copied earlier books, they sometimes wrote notes on the margins of the page (marginal glosses) to correct their text—especially if a scribe accidentally omitted a word or line—and to comment about the text. When later scribes were copying the copy, they were sometimes uncertain if a note was intended to be included as part of the text. Over time, different regions evolved different versions, each with its own assemblage of omissions and additions. 

The three main textual traditions of the Greek New Testament are sometimes called the Alexandrian text-type (generally minimalist), the Byzantine text-type (generally maximalist), and the Western text-type (occasionally wild). Together they comprise most of the ancient manuscripts.

Development of the Christian canons

The Old Testament canon entered into Christian use in the Greek Septuagint translations and original books, and their differing lists of texts. In addition to the Septuagint, Christianity subsequently added various writings that would become the New Testament. Somewhat different lists of accepted works continued to develop in antiquity. In the 4th century a series of synods produced a list of texts equal to the 39, 46(51),54, or 57 book canon of the Old Testament and to the 27-book canon of the New Testament that would be subsequently used to today, most notably the Synod of Hippo in 393 CE. Also c. 400, Jerome produced a definitive Latin edition of the Bible (see Vulgate), the canon of which, at the insistence of the Pope, was in accord with the earlier Synods. With the benefit of hindsight it can be said that this process effectively set the New Testament canon, although there are examples of other canonical lists in use after this time.

The Protestant Old Testament of today has a 39-book canon—the number of books (though not the content) varies from the Jewish Tanakh only because of a different method of division—while the Roman Catholic Church recognizes 46 books (51 books with some books combined into 46 books) as the canonical Old Testament. The Eastern Orthodox Churches recognise 3 Maccabees, 1 Esdras, Prayer of Manasseh and Psalm 151 in addition to the Catholic canon. Some include 2 Esdras. The Anglican Church also recognises a longer canon. The term "Hebrew Scriptures" is often used as being synonymous with the Protestant Old Testament, since the surviving scriptures in Hebrew include only those books, while Catholics and Orthodox include additional texts that have not survived in Hebrew. Both Catholics and Protestants (as well as Greek Orthodox) have the same 27-book New Testament Canon. 

The New Testament writers assumed the inspiration of the Old Testament, probably earliest stated in , "All scripture is given by inspiration of God".

Ethiopian Orthodox canon

The Canon of the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church is wider than the canons used by most other Christian churches. There are 81 books in the Ethiopian Orthodox Bible. The Ethiopian Old Testament Canon includes the books found in the Septuagint accepted by other Orthodox Christians, in addition to Enoch and Jubilees which are ancient Jewish books that only survived in Ge'ez but are quoted in the New Testament, also Greek Ezra First and the Apocalypse of Ezra, 3 books of Meqabyan, and Psalm 151 at the end of the Psalter. The three books of Meqabyan are not to be confused with the books of Maccabees. The order of the other books is somewhat different from other groups', as well. The Old Testament follows the Septuagint order for the Minor Prophets rather than the Jewish order.

Divine inspiration

The Second Epistle to Timothy says that "all scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness". ()  Various related but distinguisahle views on divine inspiration include:

* the view of the Bible as the inspired word of God: the belief that God, through the Holy Spirit, intervened and influenced the words, message, and collation of the Bible  
* the view that the Bible is also infallible, and incapable of error in matters of faith and practice, but not necessarily in historic or scientific matters
* the view that the Bible represents the inerrant word of God, without error in any aspect, spoken by God and written down in its perfect form by humans

Within these broad beliefs many schools of hermeneutics operate. "Bible scholars claim that discussions about the Bible must be put into its context within church history and then into the context of contemporary culture." Fundamentalist Christians are associated with the doctrine of biblical literalism, where the Bible is not only inerrant, but the meaning of the text is clear to the average reader. 

Jewish antiquity attests to belief in sacred texts,   and a similar belief emerges in the earliest of Christian writings. Various texts of the Bible mention divine agency in relation to its writings.  In their book A General Introduction to the Bible, Norman Geisler and William Nix write: "The process of inspiration is a mystery of the providence of God, but the result of this process is a verbal, plenary, inerrant, and authoritative record."  Most evangelical biblical scholars    associate inspiration with only the original text; for example some American Protestants adhere to the 1978 Chicago Statement on Biblical Inerrancy which asserted that inspiration applied only to the autographic text of Scripture.  Among adherents of Biblical literalism, a minority, such as followers of the King-James-Only Movement, extend the claim of inerrancy only to a particular translation. 

Versions and translations

The original texts of the Tanakh were mainly in Hebrew, with some portions in Aramaic. In addition to the authoritative Masoretic Text, Jews still refer to the Septuagint, the translation of the Hebrew Bible into Greek, and the Targum Onkelos, an Aramaic version of the Bible. There are several different ancient versions of the Tanakh in Hebrew, mostly differing by spelling, and the traditional Jewish version is based on the version known as Aleppo Codex. Even in this version there are words which are traditionally read differently from written, because the oral tradition is considered more fundamental than the written one, and presumably mistakes had been made in copying the text over the generations.

The primary biblical text for early Christians was the Septuagint. In addition, they translated the Hebrew Bible into several other languages. Translations were made into Syriac, Coptic, Ethiopic, and Latin, among other languages. The Latin translations were historically the most important for the Church in the West, while the Greek-speaking East continued to use the Septuagint translations of the Old Testament and had no need to translate the New Testament.

The earliest Latin translation was the Old Latin text, or Vetus Latina, which, from internal evidence, seems to have been made by several authors over a period of time. It was based on the Septuagint, and thus included books not in the Hebrew Bible.

Pope Damasus I assembled the first list of books of the Bible at the Council of Rome in 382 CE. He commissioned Saint Jerome to produce a reliable and consistent text by translating the original Greek and Hebrew texts into Latin. This translation became known as the Latin Vulgate Bible, in the fourth century CE. And in 1546, at the Council of Trent, Jerome's Vulgate translation was declared by the Roman Catholic Church to be the only authentic and official Bible in the Latin Church.

Since the Protestant Reformation, Bible translations for many languages have been made. The Bible continues to be translated to new languages, largely by Christian organisations such as Wycliffe Bible Translators, New Tribes Mission and Bible societies.

Views

John Riches, professor of Divinity and Biblical Criticism at the University of Glasgow, provides the following view of the diverse historical influences of the Bible:

It has inspired some of the great monuments of human thought, literature, and art; it has equally fuelled some of the worst excesses of human savagery, self-interest, and narrow-mindedness. It has inspired men and women to acts of great service and courage, to fight for liberation and human development; and it has provided the ideological fuel for societies which have enslaved their fellow human beings and reduced them to abject poverty. ... It has, perhaps above all, provided a source of religious and moral norms which have enabled communities to hold together, to care for, and to protect one another; yet precisely this strong sense of belonging has in turn fuelled ethnic, racial, and international tension and conflict. 

Other religions

In Islam, the Bible is held to reflect true unfolding revelation from God; but revelation which had been corrupted or distorted (in Arabic: tahrif); which necessitated the giving of the Qur'an to the Islamic prophet, Muhammad, to correct this deviation.

Members of other religions may also seek inspiration from the Bible. For example, Rastafaris view the Bible as essential to their religion  and Unitarian Universalists view it as "one of many important religious texts". 

Biblical studies

Biblical criticism refers to the investigation of the Bible as a text, and addresses questions such as authorship, dates of composition, and authorial intention. It is not the same as criticism of the Bible, which is an assertion against the Bible being a source of information or ethical guidance, or observations that the Bible may have translation errors. 

Higher criticism

In the 17th century Thomas Hobbes collected the current evidence to conclude outright that Moses could not have written the bulk of the Torah. Shortly afterwards the philosopher Baruch Spinoza published a unified critical analysis, arguing that the problematic passages were not isolated cases that could be explained away one by one, but pervasive throughout the five books, concluding that it was "clearer than the sun at noon that the Pentateuch was not written by Moses . . ."  

Archaeological and historical research

Biblical archaeology is the archaeology that relates to and sheds light upon the Hebrew Scriptures and the Christian Greek Scriptures (or "New Testament"). It is used to help determine the lifestyle and practices of people living in biblical times. There are a wide range of interpretations in the field of biblical archaeology. One broad division includes biblical maximalism which generally takes the view that most of the Old Testament or Hebrew Bible is based on history although it is presented through the religious viewpoint of its time. It is considered the opposite of biblical minimalism which considers the Bible a purely post-exilic (5th century BCE and later) composition. Even among those scholars who adhere to biblical minimalism, the Bible is a historical document containing first-hand information on the Hellenistic and Roman eras, and there is universal scholarly consensus that the events of the 6th century BCE Babylonian captivity have a basis in history.

The historicity of the biblical account of the history of ancient Israel and Judah of the 10th to 7th centuries BCE is disputed in scholarship. The biblical account of the 8th to 7th centuries BCE is widely, but not universally, accepted as historical, while the verdict on the earliest period of the United Monarchy (10th century BCE) and the historicity of David is unclear. Archaeological evidence providing information on this period, such as the Tel Dan Stele, can potentially be decisive. The biblical account of events of the Exodus from Egypt in the Torah, and the migration to the Promised Land and the period of Judges are not considered historical in scholarship.  

Bibles Gallery

File:Bibel Kloster Paleokastritsa.jpg|Old Bible from a Greek monastery
File:Imperial Bible.jpg|  Imperial Bible, or Vienna Coronation Gospels from Wien (Austria), c 1500.
File:Kennicott Bible.jpg |The Kennicott Bible, 1476
File:A religious Baroque Bible - 7558.jpg|A Baroque Bible
File:Lincoln inaugural bible.jpg |The bible used by Abraham Lincoln for his oath of office during his first inauguration in 1861
File:Bible and Key Divination.jpg|A miniature Bible
File:19th century Victorian living room, Auckland - 0843.jpg|19th century Victorian Bible
File:Bizzell Bible Collection.jpg |Shelves of the Bizzell Bible Collection at Bizzell Memorial Library 

Illustrations

Most old Bibles were illuminated, they were  manuscripts in which the text is supplemented by the addition of decoration, such as decorated initials, borders (marginalia) and miniature illustrations. 
Up to the twelfth century, most manuscripts were produced in monasteries in order to add to the library or after receiving a commission from a wealthy patron. Larger monasteries often contained separate areas for the monks who specialized in the production of manuscripts called a scriptorium, where “separate little rooms were assigned to book copying; they were situated in such a way that each scribe had to himself a window open to the cloister walk.”   
By the fourteenth century, the cloisters of monks writing in the scriptorium started to  employ laybrothers from the urban scriptoria, especially in Paris, Rome and the Netherlands.    
Demand for manuscripts grew to an extent that the Monastic libraries were unable to meet with the demand, and began employing secular scribes and illuminators.  These individuals often lived close to the monastery and, in certain instances, dressed as monks whenever they entered the monastery, but were allowed to leave at the end of the day. 

The manuscript was “sent to the rubricator, who added (in red or other colors) the titles, headlines, the initials of chapters and sections, the notes and so on; and then – if the book was to be illustrated – it was sent to the illuminator.”  In the case of manuscripts that were sold commercially, the writing would “undoubtedly have been discussed initially between the patron and the scribe (or the scribe’s agent,) but by the time that the written gathering were sent off to the illuminator there was no longer any scope for innovation.” 

File:Bible chartraine - BNF Lat116 f193.jpg|Bible from 1150, from Scriptorium de Chartres, Christ with angels
File:Bible of St Louis detail.jpg |Blanche of Castile and Louis IX of France Bible, 13th century
File:Bible moralisée - Vienne Cod.1179 -frontispice.jpg| Bible moralisée : Christ  the architect of the Universe. 
File:Maciejowski Bible Leaf 37 3.jpg| Maciejowski Bible, Leaf 37, the 3rd image, Abner (in the center in green) sends Michal back to David.

File:Jephthah's daughter laments - Maciejowski Bible.JPG|Jephthah's daughter laments - Maciejowski Bible (France, ca. 1250)
File:Whore-babylon-luther-bible-1534.jpg|Colored version of the Whore of Babylon illustration from Martin Luther's 1534 translation of the Bible. 
File:Malnazar - Bible - Google Art Project.jpg |An Armenian Bible, illuminated by Malnazar, Armenian) illuminator.

File:Foster Bible Pictures 0031-1.jpg|Fleeing Sodom and Gomorrah, Foster Bible The Book of Psalms ( or , Tehillim, "praises"), commonly referred to simply as Psalms or "the Psalms", is the first book of the Ketuvim ("Writings"), the third section of the Hebrew Bible, and a book of the Christian Old Testament. The title is derived from the Greek translation, ψαλμοί psalmoi, meaning "instrumental music" and, by extension, "the words accompanying the music." The book is an anthology of individual psalms, with 150 in the Jewish and Western Christian tradition and more in the Eastern Christian churches. Many of the psalms are linked to the name of King David, although his authorship is not accepted by modern Bible scholars.

Structure

Benedictions

The Book of Psalms is divided into five sections, each closing with a doxology (i.e., a benediction) – these divisions were probably introduced by the final editors to imitate the five-fold division of the Torah:
* Book 1 (Psalms 1–41)
* Book 2 (Psalms 42–72)
* Book 3 (Psalms 73–89)
* Book 4 (Psalms 90–106)
* Book 5 (Psalms 107–150)

Superscriptions and attributions

Many psalms (116 of the 150) have individual superscriptions (titles), ranging from lengthy comments to a single word. Over a third appear to be musical directions, addressed to the "leader" or "choirmaster," including such statements as "with stringed instruments" and "according to lilies." Others appear to be references to types of musical composition, such as "A psalm" and "Song," or directions regarding the occasion for using the psalm ("On the dedication of the temple," "For the memorial offering," etc.). Many superscriptions carry the names of individuals, the most common (73 psalms) being of David, and thirteen of these relate explicitly to incidents in the king's life. Others named include Moses (1), Asaph (12), the Sons of Korah (11) and Solomon (2). A natural way of understanding these attributions is as a claim to authorship,Geoffrey Grogan, [https://books.google.com/books?id
_DAbZDo4cucC&pg=PA34 Psalms], p. 34. but it could also mean "to David" or "for David". 

Numbering

Psalms are usually identified by a sequence number, often preceded by the abbreviation "Ps."
Numbering of the Psalms differs—mostly by one digit, see table—between the Hebrew (Masoretic) and Greek (Septuagint) manuscripts. Protestant translations (Lutheran, Anglican, Calvinist) use the Hebrew numbering, but other Christian traditions vary:
* Catholic official liturgical texts follow the Greek numbering
* Catholic modern translations often use the Hebrew numbering (noting the Greek number)
* Eastern Orthodox translations use the Greek numbering (noting the Hebrew number)

For the remainder of this article, the Hebrew numbering is used, unless otherwise noted.

The variance between Massorah and Septuagint texts in this numeration is likely enough due to a gradual neglect of the original poetic form of the Psalms; such neglect was occasioned by liturgical uses and carelessness of copyists. It is admitted by all that Pss. 9 and 10 were originally a single acrostic poem; they have been wrongly separated by Massorah, rightly united by the Septuagint and Vulgate. On the other hand, Ps. 144 is made up of two songs — verses 1–11 and 12–15.  Pss. 42 and 43 are shown by identity of subject (yearning for the house of Jahweh), of metrical structure and of refrain (cf. Heb. Ps. 42:6, 12; 43:5), to be three strophes of one and the same poem. The Hebrew text is correct in counting as one Ps. 146 and Ps. 147. Later liturgical usage would seem to have split up these and not a few other psalms. Zenner combines into what he deems were the original choral odes: Pss. 1, 2, 3, 4; 6 + 13; 9 + 10; 19, 20, 21; 56 + 57; 69 + 70; 114 + 115; 148, 149, 150.  A choral ode would seem to have been the original form of Pss. 14 + 70. The two strophes and the epode are Ps. 14; the two antistrophes are Ps. 70.  It is noteworthy that, on the breaking up of the original ode, each portion crept twice into the Psalter: Ps. 14 53, Ps. 70 
 40:14–18. Other such duplicated psalms are Ps. 108:2–6 Ps. 57:8–12; Ps. 108:7–14 
 Ps. 60:7–14; Ps. 71:1–3 = Ps. 31:2–4. This loss of the original form of some of the psalms is allowed by the Biblical Commission (1 May 1910) to have been due to liturgical uses, neglect of copyists, or other causes.

Additional psalms

The Septuagint bible, present in Eastern Orthodox churches, includes a Psalm 151; a Hebrew version of this was found in the Psalms Scroll of the Dead Sea Scrolls. Some versions of the Peshitta (the bible used in Syriac churches in the Middle East) include Psalms 152–155. There are also the Psalms of Solomon, which are a further 18 psalms of Jewish origin, likely originally written in Hebrew, but surviving only in Greek and Syriac translation. These and other indications suggest that the current Western Christian and Jewish collection of 150 psalms were selected from a wider set.

Summary

Hermann Gunkel's pioneering form-critical work on the psalms sought to provide a new and meaningful context in which to interpret individual psalms – not by looking at their literary context within the Psalter (which he did not see as significant), but by bringing together psalms of the same genre (Gattung) from throughout the Psalter. Gunkel divided the psalms into five primary types:

# Hymns, songs of praise for God's work in creation or in history. They typically open with a call to praise, describe the motivation for praise, and conclude with a repetition of the call. Two sub-categories are "enthronement psalms," celebrating the enthronement of Yahweh as king, and Zion psalms, glorifying Mount Zion, God's dwelling-place in Jerusalem. Gunkel also described a special subset of "eschatological hymns"  which includes themes of future restoration (Psalm 126) or of judgment (Psalm 82). 
# Communal laments, in which the nation laments some communal disaster. Both communal and individual laments typically but not always include the following elements: 1) address to God, 2) description of suffering, 3) cursing of the party responsible for suffering, 4) protestation of innocence or admission of guilt, 5) petition for divine assistance, 6) faith in God's receipt of prayer, 7) anticipation of divine response, and 8) a song of thanksgiving.  In general, the difference between the individual and communal subtypes can be distinguished by the use of the singular "I" or the plural "we".  However, the "I" could also be characterizing an individual's personal experience that was reflective of the entire community. 
# Royal Psalms, dealing with such matters as the king's coronation, marriage and battles. None of them mentions any specific king by name, and their origin and use remain obscure; several psalms, especially ps.93–99, concern the kingship of God, and might relate to an annual ceremony in which Yahweh would be ritually reinstated as king. 
# Individual laments lamenting the fate of the particular individual who utters them. They are by far the most common type of psalm. They typically open with an invocation of Yahweh, followed by the lament itself and pleas for help, and often ending with an expression of confidence. A subset is the psalm of confidence, in which the psalmist expresses confidence that God will deliver him from evils and enemies.
# Individual thanksgiving psalms, the obverse of individual laments, in which the psalmist thanks God for deliverance from personal distress.

In addition to these five major genres, Gunkel also recognised a number of minor psalm-types, including: communal thanksgiving psalms, in which the whole nation thanks God for deliverance; wisdom psalms, reflecting the Old Testament wisdom literature; pilgrimage psalms, sung by pilgrims on their way to Jerusalem; entrance and prophetic liturgies; and a group of mixed psalms which could not be assigned to any category.

Composition

Origins

The composition of the psalms spans at least five centuries, from Psalm 29, probably adapted from an entire Canaanite hymn to Baal which was transposed into a hymn to Yahweh,  to others which are clearly from the post-Exilic period. The majority originated in the southern kingdom of Judah and were associated with the Temple in Jerusalem, where they probably functioned as libretto during the Temple worship. Exactly how they did this is unclear, although there are indications in some of them: "Bind the festal procession with branches, up to the horns of the altar," suggests a connection with sacrifices, and "Let my prayer be counted as incense" suggests a connection with the offering of incense.

King David and the Psalms

Seventy-three of the 150 psalms in the Bible are attributed to King David. One of the Dead Sea Scrolls (11QPsa) attributes 3600 tehilim (songs of praise) plus other compositions to him. Nevertheless, there is no hard evidence for Davidic authorship of any of them. "Davidic authorship is not accepted as historical fact by modern scholars," note Adele Berlin and Marc Zvi Brettler in the Jewish Study Bible, but is seen rather as the way in which the ancients "confirm[ed] the divine inspiration and authority" of the writings by linking them to well-known biblical figures.

Nine Psalms are attributed to David elsewhere in the Bible:
*  contains parts of Psalms 96, 105 and 106, and this passage is stated to be by David.
*  states that Psalm 2 is by David.
*  states that Psalm 16 is by David.
*  contains parts of Psalms 32 and this passage is stated to be by David.
*  contains part of Psalm 69, the apostle Paul stated that it is by David
*  states that Psalm 95 is by David.
* ,  and  Jesus attributes part of Psalm 110 to David.
*  also states that Psalm 110 is by David.

Poetic characteristics

The biblical poetry of Psalms uses parallelism as its primary poetic device. Parallelism is a kind of rhyme, in which an idea is developed by the use of repetition, synonyms, or opposites.   Synonymous parallelism involves two lines expressing essentially the same idea. An example of synonymous parallelism:
* The LORD is my light and my salvation; whom shall I fear? The LORD is the stronghold of my life; of whom shall I be afraid? (Psalm 27:1)
Two lines expressing opposites is known as antithetic parallelism. An example of antithetic parallelism:
* The LORD watches over the way of the righteous, but the way of the wicked will perish. (Psalm 1:6)

Editorial Agenda

Many scholars believe the individual Psalms were redacted into a single collection in second-temple times. It had long been recognized that the collection bore the imprint of an underlying message or 'meta-narrative', but that this message remained concealed, as Augustine said, 'The sequence of the Psalms seems to me to contain the secret of a mighty mystery, but its meaning has not been revealed to me.' (Enarr. on Ps. 150.1) Others pointed out the presence of concatenation, that is, adjacent Psalms sharing similar words and themes. In time, this approach developed into recognizing overarching themes shared by whole groups of psalms. 

In 1985, Gerald H. Wilson's The Editing of the Hebrew Psalter proposed, by parallel with other ancient eastern hymn collections, that psalms at the beginning and end (or "seams") of the five books of Psalms have thematic significance, corresponding in particular with the placement of the royal psalms. He pointed out that there was a progression of ideas, from adversity, through the crux of the collection in the apparent failure of the covenant in Psalm 89, leading to a concert of praise at the end. He concluded that the collection was redacted to be a retrospective of the failure of the Davidic covenant, exhorting Israel to trust in God alone in a non-messianic future.  Walter Brueggemann suggested that the underlying editorial purpose was oriented rather towards wisdom or sapiential concerns, addressing the issues of how to live the life of faith. Psalm 1 calls the reader to a life of obedience; Psalm 73 (Brueggemann's crux psalm) faces the crisis when divine faithfulness is in doubt; Psalm 150 represents faith's triumph, when God is praised not for his rewards, but for his being.  In 1997, David. C. Mitchell's The Message of the Psalter took a quite different line. Building on the work of Wilson and others,  Mitchell proposed that the Psalter embodies an eschatological timetable like that of Zechariah 9–14.  This programme includes the gathering of exiled Israel by a bridegroom-king; his establishment of a kingdom; his violent death; Israel scattered in the wilderness, regathered and again imperilled, then rescued by a king from the heavens, who establishes his kingdom from Zion, brings peace and prosperity to the earth and receives the homage of the nations. Such a timetable is confirmed by parallels from the Baal Cycle to Roman-period midrashim.

These three views—Wilson's non-messianic retrospective of the Davidic covenant, Brueggemann's sapiential instruction, and Mitchell's eschatologico-messianic programme—all have their followers, although the sapiential agenda has been somewhat eclipsed by the other two. Shortly before his untimely death in 2005, Wilson modified his position to allow for the existence of messianic prophecy within the Psalms' redactional agenda.  Mitchell's position remains largely unchanged, although he now sees the issue as identifying when the historical beginning of the Psalms turns to eschatology. 

The ancient music of the Psalms

The Psalms were written not merely as poems, but as songs for singing. More than a third of the psalms are addressed to the Director of Music. Some psalms exhort the worshipper to sing (e.g. Pss. 33:1-3; 92:1-3; 96:1-3; 98:1; 101:1; 150). Some headings denote the musical instruments on which the psalm should be played (Pss. 4, 5, 6, 8, 67). Some refer to singing at the sheminit or octave (Pss. 6, 12). And others preserve the name for ancient eastern modes, like mut la-ben (Death of the son; Ps. 9), ayelet ha-shachar (hind of the dawn; Ps. 22); shoshanim (Lilies; Ps. 45); or alamoth (Maidens?; Ps. 46).

Despite the frequently-heard view that their ancient music is lost, the means to reconstruct it still exist. Fragments of temple psalmody are preserved in ancient church and synagogue chant, particularly in the tonus peregrinus melody to Psalm 114.  Cantillation signs, to record the melody sung, were in use since ancient times; evidence of them can be found in the manuscripts of the oldest extant copies of Psalms in the Dead Sea Scrolls and are even more extensive in the Masoretic text, which dates to the Early Middle Ages and whose Tiberian scribes claimed to be basing their work on temple-period signs. (See Moshe ben Asher's 'Song of the Vine' colophon to the Codex Cairensis). However, any knowledge of how to read these signs was lost in ancient times, and modern Bible translations do not include any musical notation. 

Several attempts have been made to decode the Masoretic cantillation, but the most successful is that of Suzanne Haïk-Vantoura (1928–2000) in the last quarter of the 20th century.  Although some have dismissed Haïk-Vantoura's system, Mitchell has repeatedly defended it, showing that, when applied to the Masoretic cantillation of Psalm 114, it produces a melody recognizable as the tonus peregrinus of church and synagogue.  Mitchell includes musical transcriptions of the temple psalmody of Psalms 120–134 in his commentary on the Songs of Ascents.

Themes

Most individual psalms involve the praise of God – for his power and beneficence, for his creation of the world, and for his past acts of deliverance for Israel. The psalms envision a world in which everyone and everything will praise God, and God in turn will hear their prayers and respond. Worst of all is when God "hides his face" and refuses to respond, because this puts in question the efficacy of prayer which is the underlying assumption of the Book of Psalms.

Some psalms are called "maskil" (maschil) because in addition they impart wisdom. Most notable of these is Psalm 142 which is sometimes called the "Maskil of David", others include Psalm 32 and Psalm 78.  The term derives from maskil meaning "enlightened" or "wise".

Later interpretation and influence

Overview

Individual psalms were originally hymns, to be used on various occasions and at various sacred sites; later, some were anthologised, and might have been understood within the various anthologies (e.g., ps.123 as one of the Psalms of Ascent); finally, individual psalms might be understood within the Psalter as a whole, either narrating the life of David or providing instruction like the Torah. In later Jewish and Christian tradition, the psalms have come to be used as prayers, either individual or communal, as traditional expressions of religious feeling.

Use of the Psalms in Jewish ritual

Some of the titles given to the Psalms in their ascriptions suggest their use in worship:
* Some bear the Hebrew designation shir (שיר; Greek ode, a song). Thirteen have this title. It means the flow of speech, as it were, in a straight line or in a regular strain. This title includes secular as well as sacred song.
* Fifty-eight Psalms bear the designation mizmor (מזמור; Greek ψαλμός psalmos, a psalm), a lyric ode, or a song set to music; a sacred song accompanied with a musical instrument.
* Psalm 145, and many others, have the designation tehillah (תהילה; Greek hymnos, a hymn), meaning a song of praise; a song the prominent thought of which is the praise of God. Tehillah is also the singular of the name of the book in Hebrew, Tehillim.
* Six Psalms (16, 56–60) have the title  michtam (מכתם; "gold").  Rashi suggests that "michtam" refers to an item that a person carries with him at all times, hence, these Psalms contain concepts or ideas that are pertinent at every stage and setting throughout life, deemed vital as part of day-to-day spiritual awareness. 
* Psalm 7 (along with Habakkuk ch. 3)  bears the title  shigayon (שיגיון). There are three interpretations:  (a) According to Rashi and others, this term stems from the root shegaga, meaning "mistake" –  David committed some sin and is singing in the form of a prayer to redeem himself from it; (b) shigayon was a type of musical instrument;  (c) Ibn Ezra considers the word to mean 'longing,' as in the verse in Proverbs 5:19  "tishge tamid."

Psalms are used throughout traditional Jewish worship. Many complete Psalms and verses from Psalms appear in the morning services ("Shacharit"). The pesukei dezimra component incorporates Psalms 30, 100 and 145 – 150. Psalm 145 (commonly referred to as "Ashrei", which is really the first word of 2 verses appended to the beginning of the Psalm), is read three times every day: once in shacharit as part of pesukei dezimrah, as mentioned, once, along with Psalm 20, as part of the morning's concluding prayers, and once at the start of the Afternoon service. On Festival days and Sabbaths, instead of concluding the morning service, it precedes the Mussaf service. Psalms 95–99, 29, 92, and 93, along with some later readings, comprise the introduction ("Kabbalat Shabbat") to the Friday night service. Traditionally, a different "Psalm for the Day" – Shir shel yom –  is read after the morning service each day of the week (starting Sunday, Psalms: 24, 48, 82, 94, 81, 93, 92). This is described in the Mishnah (the initial codification of the Jewish oral tradition) in the tractate "Tamid".  According to the Talmud, these daily Psalms were originally recited on that day of the week by the Levites in the Temple in Jerusalem. From Rosh Chodesh Elul until Hoshanah Rabbah, Psalm 27 is recited twice daily following the morning and evening services.  There is a Minhag (custom) to say Psalm 30 each morning of Chanukkah after Shacharit: some say this "instead" of the regular "Psalm for the Day", others say this additionally.

When a Jew dies, a watch is kept over the body and Tehillim (Psalms) are recited constantly by sun or candlelight, until the burial service. Historically, this watch would be carried out by the immediate family – usually in shifts – but in contemporary practice, this service is provided by an employee of the funeral home or Chevra kadisha.

Many Jews complete the Book of Psalms on a weekly or monthly basis. Each week, some also say a Psalm connected to that week's events or the Torah portion read during that week. In addition, many Jews (notably Lubavitch, and other Chasidim) read the entire Book of Psalms prior to the morning service, on the Sabbath preceding the calculated appearance of the new moon.

The reading of psalms is viewed in Jewish tradition as a vehicle for gaining God's favor. They are thus often specially recited in times of trouble, such as poverty, disease, or physical danger; in many synagogues, Psalms are recited after services for the security of the State of Israel.  Note that Sefer ha-Chinuch  states that this practice is designed not to achieve favor, as such, but rather to inculcate belief in Divine Providence into one's consciousness – as consistent with Maimonides' general view on Providence. (Relatedly, the Hebrew verb for prayer – hitpalal התפלל – is in fact the reflexive form of palal פלל, to judge. Thus, "to pray" conveys the notion of "judging oneself": ultimately, the purpose of prayer – tefilah תפלה – is to transform ourselves; for the relationship between prayer and psalms – "tehillah and tefillah" – see S. R. Hirsch, Horeb §620. See also under Jewish services.)

The Psalms in Christian worship

New Testament references show that the earliest Christians used the Psalms in worship, and the Psalms have remained an important part of worship in most Christian Churches. The Eastern Orthodox, Catholic, Presbyterian, Lutheran and Anglican Churches have always made systematic use of the Psalms, with a cycle for the recitation of all or most of them over the course of one or more weeks. In the early centuries of the Church, it was expected that any candidate for bishop would be able to recite the entire Psalter from memory, something they often learned automatically  during their time as monks.

Paul the Apostle quotes psalms (specifically Psalms 14 and 53, which are nearly identical) as the basis for his theory of original sin, and includes the scripture in the Epistle to the Romans, chapter 3.

Several conservative Protestant denominations sing only the Psalms (some churches also sing the small number of hymns found elsewhere in the Bible) in worship, and do not accept the use of any non-Biblical hymns; examples are the Reformed Presbyterian Church of North America, the Presbyterian Reformed Church (North America) and the Free Church of Scotland (Continuing).

Some Psalms are among the best-known and best-loved passages of Scripture, with a popularity extending well beyond regular church-goers.

* Psalm 22 is of particular importance during the season of Lent as a Psalm of continued faith during severe testing.
* Psalm 23, The LORD is My Shepherd, offers an immediately appealing message of comfort and is widely chosen for church funeral services, either as a reading or in one of several popular hymn settings;
* Psalm 51, Have mercy on me O God, called the Miserere from the first word in its Latin version, is by far the most sung Psalm of Orthodoxy, in both Divine Liturgy and Hours, in the sacrament of repentance or confession, and in other settings;
* Psalm 82 is found in the Book of Common Prayer as a funeral recitation.
* Psalm 103, Bless the Lord, O my soul, is one of the best-known prayers of praise. The psalm was adapted for the musical Godspell;
* Psalm 137, By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat down and wept, is a moody meditation upon living in slavery, and has been used in at least one spiritual, as well as one well-known reggae song;  the Orthodox church often uses this hymn during Lent.  This psalm was adapted for the song On the Willows in the musical Godspell.

New translations and settings of the Psalms continue to be produced. An individually printed volume of Psalms for use in Christian religious rituals is called a Psalter.

Eastern Orthodox Christianity

Orthodox Christians and Greek-Catholics (Eastern Catholics who follow the Byzantine rite), have long made the Psalms an integral part of their corporate and private prayers. The official version of the Psalter used by the Orthodox Church is the Septuagint. To facilitate its reading, the 150 Psalms are divided into 20 kathismata (Greek: καθίσματα; Slavonic: каѳисмы, kafismy; lit. "sittings") and each kathisma (Greek: κάθισμα; Slavonic: каѳисма, kafisma) is further subdivided into three stases (Greek: στάσεις, staseis lit. "standings", sing. στάσις, stasis), so-called because the faithful stand at the end of each stasis for the Glory to the Father ....

At Vespers and Matins, different kathismata are read at different times of the liturgical year and on different days of the week, according to the Church's calendar, so that all 150 psalms (20 kathismata) are read in the course of a week. During Great Lent, the number of kathismata is increased so that the entire Psalter is read twice a week. In the twentieth century, some lay Christians have adopted a continuous reading of the Psalms on weekdays, praying the whole book in four weeks.

Aside from kathisma readings, Psalms occupy a prominent place in every other Orthodox service including the services of the Hours and the Divine Liturgy. In particular, the penitential Psalm 50 is very widely used. Fragments of Psalms and individual verses are used as Prokimena (introductions to Scriptural readings) and Stichera. The bulk of Vespers would still be composed of Psalms even if the kathisma were to be disregarded; Psalm 119, "The Psalm of the Law", is the centerpiece of Matins on Saturdays, some Sundays, and the Funeral service. The entire book of Psalms is traditionally read out loud or chanted at the side of the deceased during the time leading up to the funeral, mirroring Jewish tradition.

Oriental Christianity

Several branches of Oriental Orthodox and those Eastern Catholics who follow one of the Oriental Rites will chant the entire Psalter during the course of a day during the Daily Office. This practice continues to be a requirement of monastics in the Oriental churches.

Roman Catholic usage

The Psalms have always been an important part of Catholic liturgy. The Liturgy of the Hours is centered on chanting or recitation of the Psalms, using fixed melodic formulas known as psalm tones. Early Catholics employed the Psalms widely in their individual prayers also; however, as knowledge of Latin (the language of the Roman Rite) became uncommon, this practice ceased among the unlearned. However, until the end of the Middle Ages, it was not unknown for the laity to join in the singing of the Little Office of Our Lady, which was a shortened version of the Liturgy of the Hours providing a fixed daily cycle of twenty-five psalms to be recited, and nine other psalms divided across Matins.

The work of Bishop Richard Challoner in providing devotional materials in English meant that many of the psalms were familiar to English-speaking Catholics from the eighteenth century onwards. Challoner translated the entirety of the Lady Office into English, as well as Sunday Vespers and daily Compline. He also provided other individual Psalms such as 129/130 for prayer in his devotional books. Challoner is also noted for revising the Douay-Rheims Bible, and the translations he used in his devotional books are taken from this work.

Until the Second Vatican Council the Psalms were either recited on a one-week or, less commonly (as in the case of Ambrosian rite), two-week cycle. Different one-week schemata were employed: most secular clergy followed the Roman distribution, while Monastic Houses almost universally followed that of St Benedict, with only a few congregations (such as the Benedictines of St Maur) following individualistic arrangements. The Breviary introduced in 1974 distributed the psalms over a four-week cycle. Monastic usage varies widely. Some use the four-week cycle of the secular clergy, many retain a one-week cycle, either following St Benedict's scheme or another of their own devising, while others opt for some other arrangement.

Official approval was also given to other arrangements (see [http://kellerbook.com "Short" Breviaries in the 20th and early 21st century America] for an in-progress study) by which the complete Psalter is recited in a one-week or two-week cycle. These arrangements are used principally by Catholic contemplative religious orders, such as that of the Trappists (see for example [http://newmelleray.org?menu=psalms the Divine Office schedule at New Melleray Abbey]).

The General Instruction of the Liturgy of the Hours, 122 sanctions three modes of singing/recitation for the Psalms:
* directly (all sing or recite the entire psalm);
* antiphonally (two choirs or sections of the congregation sing or recite alternate verses or strophes); and
* responsorially (the cantor or choir sings or recites the verses while the congregation sings or recites a given response after each verse).
Of these three the antiphonal mode is the most widely followed.

Over the centuries, the use of complete Psalms in the liturgy declined. After the Second Vatican Council (which also permitted the use of vernacular languages in the liturgy), longer psalm texts were reintroduced into the Mass, during the readings. The revision of the Roman Missal after the Second Vatican Council reintroduced the singing or recitation of a more substantial section of a Psalm, in some cases an entire Psalm, after the first Reading from Scripture. This Psalm, called the Responsorial Psalm, is usually sung or recited responsorially, although the General Instruction of the Roman Missal, 61 permits direct recitation.

Protestant usage

Following the Protestant Reformation, versified translations of many of the Psalms were set as hymns. These were particularly popular in the Calvinist tradition, where in the past they were typically sung to the exclusion of hymns. Calvin himself made some French translations of the Psalms for church usage, but the completed Psalter eventually used in church services consisted exclusively of translations by Clément Marot and Théodore de Bèze, on melodies by a number of composers, including Louis Bourgeois and a certain Maistre Pierre. Martin Luther's A Mighty Fortress Is Our God is based on Psalm 46. Among famous hymn settings of the Psalter were the Scottish Psalter and the paraphrases by Isaac Watts. The first book printed in North America was a collection of Psalm settings, the Bay Psalm Book (1640).

By the 20th century, they were mostly replaced by hymns in church services. However, the Psalms are popular for private devotion among many Protestants and still used in many churches for traditional worship.  There exists in some circles a custom of reading one Psalm and one chapter of Proverbs a day, corresponding to the day of the month.

Metrical Psalms are still very popular among many Reformed Churches.

Anglican usage

Anglican chant is a method of singing prose versions of the Psalms.

In the early 17th century, when the King James Bible was introduced, the metrical arrangements by Thomas Sternhold and John Hopkins were also popular and were provided with printed tunes. This version and the New Version of the Psalms of David by Tate and Brady produced in the late seventeenth century (see article on Metrical Psalter) remained the normal congregational way of singing psalms in the Church of England until well into the nineteenth century.

In Great Britain, the Coverdale psalter still lies at the heart of daily worship in Cathedrals and many parish churches.  The new Common Worship service book has a companion psalter in modern English.

The version of the Psalter in the American Book of Common Prayer prior to the 1979 edition is a sixteenth-century Coverdale Psalter. The Psalter in the American Book of Common Prayer of 1979 is a new translation, with some attempt to keep the rhythms of the Coverdale Psalter.

Psalms in the Rastafari movement

The Psalms are one of the most popular parts of the Bible among followers of the Rastafari movement.  Rasta singer Prince Far I released an atmospheric spoken version of the psalms, Psalms for I, set to a roots reggae backdrop from The Aggrovators.

Psalms in Islam

In the Quran Allah (God) says that he had given David Psalms: "And your Lord is most knowing of whoever is in the heavens and the earth. And We have made some of the prophets exceed others [in various ways], and to David We gave the Zabur [Psalms]". 17:55 (Surat Al Isra/The Night Journey)  

Psalms set to music

Multiple psalms as a single composition

Psalms have often been set as part of a larger work. The psalms feature large in settings of Vespers, including those by Claudio Monteverdi, Antonio Vivaldi, and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, who wrote such settings as part of their responsibilities as church musicians. Psalms are inserted in Requiem compositions, such as Psalm 126 in A German Requiem of Johannes Brahms and Psalms 130 and 23 in John Rutter's Requiem.

* Psalmi Davidis poenitentiales (6, 32, 38, 51, 102, 130, 143) by Orlande de Lassus – 1584
* Melodie na psałterz polski by Mikołaj Gomółka – c. 1600
* Psalmen Davids and Becker Psalter by Heinrich Schütz – 1619 and 1661
* Le Roi David by Arthur Honegger – 1921
* Symphony of Psalms (38, 39, 150) by Igor Stravinsky – 1930
* Chichester Psalms by Leonard Bernstein – 1965
* Tehillim by Steve Reich – 1981
* Four Psalms (114, 126, 133, 137) by John Harbison – 1998
* Biblické písně by Antonín Dvořák — 1894

Individual psalm settings

There are many settings of individual psalms, which are generally mentioned in the article devoted to the particular psalm. They include:

* Psalms 100, 121 and 124 by Loys Bourgeois (c. 1500–1559)
* Psalm 38 and Levavi oculos meos (Psalm 121) by Orlando di Lasso (1532–1594)
* Psalms 112 and 137 by Marc-Antoine Charpentier (1643–1704)
* Beatus vir (Psalm 112) by Antonio Vivaldi (1678–1741)
* Psalm 126 In convertendo Dominus by Jean-Philippe Rameau (1683–1764).
* Psalm 100 (in Utrecht Te Deum and Jubilate) and others by George Frideric Handel (1685–1750)
* Psalm 148 by William Billings (1746–1800)
* Psalm 111 by Samuel Wesley (1766–1837)
* Psalm 42 (1837) by Felix Mendelssohn (1809–1847)
* Psalms 13, 18, 23, 116, 129 and 137 by Liszt (1811–1886)
* Psalm 150 by César Franck (1822–1890)
* Psalms 23, 113, 116, 147 and 150 by Bruckner (1824–1896)
* Psalm 13 by Johannes Brahms (1833–1897)
* Psalm 18 by Camille Saint-Saëns (1835–1921)
* Psalm 148 by Ralph Vaughan Williams (1872–1958)
* Psalm 148 by Gustav Holst (1874–1934)
* Psalms 14, 24, 25, 42, 54, 67, 90, 100, 135 and 150 by Charles Ives (1874–1954)
* Psalms 121 and 150 by Zoltán Kodály (1882–1967)
* Psalm 126 ' and seven others by Jules Van Nuffel (1883–1953)
* Psalm 121 by Darius Milhaud (1892–1974)
* Psalm 24, 129 and 130 by Lili Boulanger (1893–1918)
* Psalm 121 and Psalm 150 by Howard Hanson (1896–1981)
* Psalms 147, 148 and 150 by Roger Sessions (1896–1985)
* Psalm 121 by Henry Cowell (1897–1965)
* Psalm 150 by Roy Harris (1898–1979)
* Two Motets (including Psalm 121) by Gerald Finzi (1901–1956)
* Psalm 29 and 92 by Eric Zeisl (1905–1959)
* Psalm 28 by Alan Hovhaness (1911–2000)
* Psalm 29 by Hugo Weisgall (1912–1997)
* Psalm 150 (1962, op. 67) by Benjamin Britten (1913–1976)
* Psalm 150 by George Rochberg (1918–2005)
* I Was Glad (Psalm 122) by Daniel Pinkham (1923–2006)
* A Psalm (13) and a Proverb by Ned Rorem (b. 1923)
* A Psalm of David (Psalm 13) by Robert Starer (1924–2001)
* Psalms 24, 40, 121 and 150 by Samuel Adler (b. 1928)
* Psalm 95 by Kamilló Lendvay (b. 1928)
* Three settings of Psalm 13 by Edwin London (b. 1929)
* Psalm 143 by Yehudi Wyner (b. 1929)
* Psalm 4 by Alexander Goehr (b. 1932)
* Psalm 150 by William Mathias (1934–1992)
* Psalm 8 by John Corigliano (b. 1938)
* Psalms 1–48, 51, 55, 57, 92, 109, 110, 112, 121, 126, 137 and 144 by Mark Alburger (b. 1957)
* I Was Glad (Psalm 122) by Howard Goodall (b. 1958)
* House of God, Forever (Psalm 23) by Jon Foreman (b. 1976)
* Psalm 73 by BarlowGirl
* Psalm 40 and Psalm 116 by U2
* Psalm 50 by Underoath
* Psalm 63: 2–3 by Matisyahu
* Psalm 130 by Jan Dismas Zelenka
* Psalm 23 (Shadow of Deth)  by Megadeth  
* Psalms 23, 46, 67, 100, 111, 121 by Victoria Slemmons
* The Hope (Psalm 27) by Frederik Magle

Bach

Johann Sebastian Bach used lines from psalms in several of his cantatas, often in the opening chorus:

*Psalm 19:1,3 in Die Himmel erzählen die Ehre Gottes, BWV 76
*Psalm 22:26 in Die Elenden sollen essen, BWV 75
*Psalm 29:1 in Bringet dem Herrn Ehre seines Namens, BWV 148
*Psalm 38:4 in Es ist nichts Gesundes an meinem Leibe, BWV 25
*Psalm 50:23 in Wer Dank opfert, der preiset mich, BWV 17
*Psalm 75:1 in '
*Psalm 103:2 in Lobe den Herrn, meine Seele, BWV 69a
*Psalm 104:28–29 in Es wartet alles auf dich, BWV 187
*Psalm 130 in Aus der Tiefen rufe ich, Herr, zu dir, BWV 131
*Psalm 149:1 in Singet dem Herrn ein neues Lied, BWV 190
*Psalm 150:4,6 in Singet dem Herrn ein neues Lied, BWV 190

Bach treated complete psalms in German paraphrasing as chorale cantatas:
*Psalm 124 in
*Wo Gott der Herr nicht bei uns hält, BWV 178 (1724)
*Wär Gott nicht mit uns diese Zeit, BWV 14 (1735)

Psalm verses

Carl Nielsen set in Tre Motetter three verses from different psalms as motets for unaccompanied chorus, first performed in 1930.

Contemporary popular music

There are also multiple contemporary popular artists, including Soul-Junk, Robbie Seay Band, Shane and Shane, Enter the Worship Circle, Sons of Korah and Jon Foreman (lead singer of the Christian band Switchfoot) who have set multiple psalms to music on various albums.

In the musical Godspell the song Bless The Lord is based on Psalm 103, and On the Willows is based on Psalm 137.

French singer-songwriter Léo Ferré wrote and recorded a 151st psalm on his album Amour Anarchie (1970).
150 one hundred and fifty
150 one hundred and fifty
150
Numerical
150
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