Will Vaus

Today on our journey along Route 66 we are visiting the book of Psalms... Author   The book of Psalms is a collection of Israelite poetic prayers written by numerous authors, brought together in a process that spanned centuries. An ancient and pervasive tradition, going back to the Bible itself, attributes the authorship of Psalms to David. Many of the psalms contain the superscription “a psalm of David”. Other superscriptions link various psalms with specific events from David’s life. (See Psalms 3, 18, 34, 51, and 56.) However, these superscriptions are not original to the psalms. Linguistic and contextual evidence has led many modern scholars to reject the idea of Davidic authorship of the psalms. Of course, not all the psalms are attributed to David. Some are attributed to the sons of Korah (Psalm 42), to Asaph (Psalm 50), to Ethan the Ezrahite (Psalm 89), to Heman the Ezrahite (Psalm 88), to Solomon (Psalm 72) and to Moses (Psalm 90). Other psalms bear no superscriptions at al...

Today in our journey along Route 66 we are visiting the book of Job.   Author   As with the authors of most of most biblical books, the author of Job is anonymous and unknown.   Date   There are many allusions in the book of Job to the exilic and post exilic Isaiah (chapters 40-66). Furthermore, the book of Job uses the Hebrew word, Satan (Adversary), a word that is only used in one other book of the Old Testament, the postexilic Zechariah. Therefore, most modern scholars agree that the book of Job was composed sometime during the period from the mid-6 th  century to the mid-4 th  century BCE.   Despite this late date of composition, there are affinities between the language of this book and earlier biblical literature. Perhaps the author was trying to make the language of this book sound older to suggest a setting from long ago.   Themes   The book of Job deals with the problem of pain which, simply put, is this: If God were good, he would w...