Biblical Hebrew Forum

["George Athas" <george.athas AT moore.edu.au>]

Hi Harold!
 
I understand your objection. However, the lamed preposition is a tricky
character. As such, I don't think we can say that in the superscriptions of
the Psalms it can *only* be about authorship. The sheer versatility of the
preposition (the Hebrew equivalent of a dative indicator) means we should be
open to a range of possibilities. I agree with you that authorship is one
way to understand it, and it may well be the case that all the instances of
the preposition lamed in the superscription state the Psalm's authorship.
However, as I see it, there are other plausible options, also. As such, I
don't think authorship is the only possibility. Nor am I suggesting that the
lamed can only ever mean one particular thing (whether that be authorship,
tradition, or anything else). Our knowledge of the contextual history of the
Psalms is fairly scant, and when the superscriptions were put into the
Psalms is a purely conjectural thing. In any case, we know the Psalms have a
long transmission history and, as such, I think it plausible to argue the
case that some of the Psalms were understood to have come from certain
traditions rather than certain composers. Thus, there are Psalms which
belong in the tradition of David, others which are in the tradition of
Asaph, etc.
 
When we have a Psalm with a unique superscription (eg, Ps 89, a Maskil of
Ethan), I think it is easier to make the case that the preposition lamed
indicates authorship. In such a case, there may not have been a 'corpus' of
the person's psalms to represent an identifiable tradition, so the name
associated with such a Psalm makes sense as a marker or authorship. But when
we do have a corpus, such as the Psalms of David or the Psalms of Asaph, it
is possible to argue for a certain tradition, such as the Davidic tradition
or Asaphic(?) tradition. Now, an entire corpus may go back to the actual
person named (eg, David or Asaph). But the fact that there is a corpus means
that there is a tradition that can be associated with the corpus. This
provides scope for saying that other authors could compose pieces in the
tradition of the corpus. And the use of the preposition lamed in the
superscriptions would allow for this.
 
I'm not suggesting that this definitely is the case with the Psalms, but I
don't think it's out of the question as a plausible theory.
 
In summary, I'm not denying that David could have written all of the Psalms
with his name in the superscription. Rather, I'm suggesting that since the
term leDawid employs the versatile preposition lamed, it might imply
something more than or something other than authorship, namely a tradition
to which the Psalm belongs.
 
 
Best Regards, 

GEORGE ATHAS
Moore Theological College
1 Kings St, Newtown 2042, Australia
Ph: (+61 2) 9577 9774
 <mailto:george.athas AT moore.edu.au> george.athas AT moore.edu.au