Abstract
‘By the Rivers of Babylon, there we sat down, yea, we wept, when we remembered Zion.’ This is the beginning of Psalm 137, probably the Song of Exile among the Psalms, a text often referenced and referred to, and many times set to music, e.g., by Don McLean or Boney M). Psalm 137 has become one of the most lyrical texts of the Hebrew Bible and represents a desperate manifestation of human grief, if not the most desperate at all. David W. Stowe from Michigan State University focusses on the widespread reception of this Psalm but does not stop somewhen in late antiquity or the Middle Ages. Moreover, he concentrates on more modern examples of the Psalms’s reception history, e.g., the American Revolution and the Civil Rights Movement, and its sociocultural stratification among immigrants to the United States from diverse parts of the world, who often link the lyrics of the Psalm with their own experiences of colonialism or unfreedom. Stowe successfully utilizes his own personal approach—he writes from a first-person point of view (by employing ‘I’ or ‘we’ repeatedly)—to combine the Psalm’s reception in modern art and culture with its historical and socio-cultural background and usage. It is especially this way of writing that makes the book a very attractive and diverting read. Nonetheless, the pieces of information Stowe presents are correct and reliable, the conclusions he draws from the interviews he conducted with musicians, writers, theologians and others are sound and reasonable. The three main chapters of the book manifest its core themes: history—memory—forgetting. Especially, the last represents a quest for an answer to the question why this Psalm does not occur in liturgy and has generally been ignored by scholarship. Is it because the lyrical verses are a manifestation of some of the saddest and most horrible experiences of humankind in modern times (e.g., the Shoah and/or other genocides, slavery, colonialism, suppression, or the desperate fight of Native Americans)? Stowe does not provide the answer to the question why the Psalm fell into oblivion, but his references to and narratives of concrete and specific human experiences, the dialogues he had with individuals, and his sensitive and cautious conclusions allow his readerships to form their own opinion and formulate their own answers. The book does not have a bibliography but the author interacts with literature in his endnotes. An index of names, authors, and subjects help the reader to navigate in the book easily. Although this book is certainly not intended for students and researchers of the Book of Psalms, Stowe succeeds in shedding light on a very attractive and essential text of the Bible, a text that literally expresses feelings and experiences of humans, in particular and in general.