Perspectives on the Existence of a Particular Authoritative Book of Psalms in the Late Second Temple Period

1. Introduction

In this study some remarks will be offered on an issue that has needed addressing for some time now. The topic that will be explored here is a statistical illusion frequently used as solid evidence for the importance of the book of Psalms during the Qumran period. The problem relates specifically to the high number of manuscripts containing psalms that eventually ended up in the canonical book of Psalms that were found at Qumran. The number of these so-called Psalms manuscripts is truly high, usually counted between 35 and 39, ¹ and these manuscript finds derive from eight of the eleven Caves. Thus, it is frequently asserted that, based on the number of preserved copies, Deuteronomy, Isaiah and Psalms were the three most important biblical books at Qumran. This is a very common claim even in basic introductions like James C. VanderKam's The Dead Sea Scrolls Today: ‘The book of Psalms is present in the largest number of copies (36)’. ² Such characterizations have led others, perhaps not so familiar with the factual manuscript evidence, to base broad claims on these numbers. Numerous examples could be given, but just to give one illustration to demonstrate the point, Karel van der Toorn argues in his Scribal Culture and the Making of the Hebrew Bible that the ‘popularity’ of the three books, Deuteronomy, Isaiah, and Psalms, evidenced by their great numbers among the Qumran finds, is an indication of their position in the scribal curriculum that was used in the education of the Levitical scribes. ³

In this study it will be demonstrated through several different perspectives that such a use of the manuscript statistics is problematic and it is based on largely non-existing evidence. The topic of the study is wide-ranging and it touches upon many large and fundamental questions in Qumran and Psalms studies. Thus, this study is of necessity limited to some critical notes made from several different perspectives. They will show some of the problems with particular notions that assumptions relying on these statistics presume. The use of these statistics as evidence for the influence of a book of psalms assumes the manuscripts attest to an authoritative book of psalms with clear boundaries, otherwise the arguments would make little sense. Indeed the manuscripts that are counted by scholars as Psalms manuscripts are manuscripts that preserve one or more of the psalms included in the now canonical MT arrangement. ⁴ The problematic nature of this evidence is first analyzed by illustrating what these manuscripts actually contain and then showing how this material is different from the manuscripts preserving parts of Deuteronomy or Isaiah. The second perspective taken up here is the existence of a specific authoritative book of psalms during the Qumran period and particularly at Qumran from where the statistics used as evidence are derived. This question of a definable group of authoritative psalms as opposed to other less authoritative or secondary works is analyzed from the point of view of large collections of ‘canonical’ Psalms, i.e., ‘books’ of Psalms, and from the viewpoint of ‘non-canonical’ collections.

2. Manuscript Evidence of Psalms in the MT Psalter among the Qumran Finds

It is a distinct possibility that none of the so-called Qumran Psalms manuscripts actually contained as many psalms as are now found in the MT Psalter, viz., 150. Rather most of them were probably quite limited collections containing a small number of psalms or even just one psalm. ⁵ It is important to understand just how little is actually preserved in the actual manuscripts, especially in comparison with a large collection such as the mt book of Psalms, in order to judge their value as evidence for the existence of a book of psalms. The following chart demonstrates how many of the 150 MT Psalms are extant in the manuscripts, and it has to be remembered that the preserved remnants are typically not entire psalms, but may in fact contain only a few words from several verses.

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Table 1.

MT Psalms in Manuscripts from Qumran

Number of MT Pss	Total Out of the 36 Mss	Manuscripts
1	14	1QPsc, 3QPs, 4QPsg, 4QPsh, 4QPsl, 4QPsp, 4QPst, 4QPsu, 4QPsv, 4QPsw, 4QPsx, 4QPs122, 5Q5, pap6Q5
2–3	12	1QPsb, 2QPs, 4QPsd, 4QPsf (+3 other compositions), 4QPsj, 4QPsk, 4QPsn, 4QPso, 4QPsq, 4QPsr, 4QPss, 8QPs
4–10	4	1QPsa, 4QPsm, 11QPsb(+2 other compositions), 11QPsc
11–20	5	4QPsa, 4QPsb, 4QPsc, 4QPse, 11QPsd
larger	1	11QPsa 39 Psalms (+ 10 other compositions)

These are the actual numbers of Psalms found for the most part only partially preserved in the 36 manuscripts usually counted as Psalms manuscripts, and they are to be judged scant evidence for a 150-psalm book of psalms. But why could the manuscripts not all have originally contained 150 psalms? First of all, the sheer number of manuscripts that only have 1–3 psalms strongly suggests that the manuscripts did not all contain 150 psalms. Such would be something of a statistical miracle. More likely is that all of these 25 or so manuscripts with 1–3 psalms contained only a few psalms. Furthermore, some of the manuscripts with parts of only one psalm may not have been psalm manuscripts at all, but compositions having a psalm or parts of it among other compositions. Examples of this might be 4QPs^x, and certainly 4QPs122. ⁶ The three manuscripts only preserving parts of Psalm 119 (4QPs^g, 4QPs^h, 5Q5) further suggest that Psalm 119 was frequently copied alone, probably for meditational purposes. ⁷

From the manuscripts preserving two or three psalms comes some further evidence that many of the collections may have been rather short and made for liturgical purposes. For example, Flint suggests that 1QPs^b originally contained only the MT Psalms of Ascents (Pss. 120–134), ⁸ and 2QPs preserves parts of both barkhi nafshi type hymns in the MT Psalter, Psalms 103 and 104, partly written with red ink, which may imply that the collection only had these two psalms in a liturgical arrangement. ⁹ Even the manuscripts that currently preserve more than three psalms were probably not complete books of psalms, at least as we know it, as evidenced by 4QPs^b, which probably ended in Psalm 118. ¹⁰ Furthermore, even the largest extant arrangement of psalms preserved in 11QPs^a is usually considered to have begun with either MT Psalms 90 or 101, and thus contained between 50 to 60 compositions. ¹¹

Yet another important sign for the original size of these manuscripts is the material indicators preserved in the manuscripts themselves. For instance, many of these manuscripts have narrow and rather short columns, and/or the psalms are in a stichometric arrangement. ¹² If all 150 MT Psalms were placed in such an arrangement the resulting scroll would be enormously long and very impractical if not altogether impossible to use. ¹³ In practical terms, in order to fit all 150 MT Psalms into a single scroll it would have to be a tall scroll of 30+ lines in a column, with broad columns written in prose format, and even then the resulting book of psalms would probably be close to ten meters long, i.e., comparable to the longest extant scroll from the Judean desert, viz. the Temple Scroll. It is not self-evident that any of the preserved Qumran Psalms manuscripts were originally of such size in column width and height.

Thus, it is undisputable that these manuscripts contained different numbers of psalms, with most manuscripts almost certainly containing relatively few psalms. The primary reasons for these variant numbers are the many different purposes for which the psalms were used. All the different functions of the psalms have probably not yet even been grasped (and they may well have changed over time), but during the first centuries BCE and CE the psalms were used both in private and in communal gatherings, and they functioned at least as prayers, sources of spiritual meditation, and as liturgies, but also as sources of historical knowledge, as prophecy and as ethical instructions. These different functions of psalms required collections of diverse sizes and in different material formats, and the Qumran psalm manuscripts are clear evidence of this plurality of use.

Therefore, these distinct collections cannot just be equated and grouped together only because they happen to preserve one or more of the psalms that later became canonical. They are not copies of a specific book of psalms and cannot be used as direct evidence for the existence of such an authoritative book. But could the manuscripts be used as more circumstantial evidence of the existence of a book of psalms that could have served as some kind of master copy behind all the different arrangements? This question is approached from different perspectives in the remainder of this study, but what the material evidence can reveal is whether the order of the psalms in the manuscripts follows that of a known larger arrangement and whether they mostly had psalms contained in that arrangement. Because most (though by no means all) scholars equate the book of psalms the Qumran Psalms supposedly give evidence of with the MT Psalter, the following table lists all the manuscripts where the MT arrangement of the preserved psalms in a manuscript would be possible, albeit in no way proven, and the manuscripts where direct evidence of a different arrangement is found. Only the manuscripts with parts of two or more psalms are included in the table.

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Table 2.

mt Arrangement of Psalms and the Qumran Psalms Manuscripts

Masoretic Order of Preserved Pss Possible	Direct Evidence for an Order Differing from mt
1QPsa, 1QPsb, 2QPs, 4QPsc, 4QPsj, 4QPsm, 4QPso, 4QPsr, 4QPss, 8QPs, 11QPsc, 11QPsd	4QPsa, 4QPsb, 4QPsd, 4QPse, 4QPsf, 4QPsk, 4QPsn, 4QPsq, 11QPsa, 11QPsb

What this table reveals is that the order of the psalms varied and was frequently at odds with the MT arrangement. Enough variance is shown in the manuscripts to demonstrate that there is no single order of psalms that all the manuscripts would follow. Regarding the MT arrangement, it is significant that so many of the manuscripts directly contradict the order of the MT Psalter. Furthermore, even among the manuscripts where no direct contradictions exist, only a few actual transitions from psalm to psalm are preserved that verify that the same order as in the MT was used for those psalms. Thus, none of the manuscripts gives strong evidence for the existence of a MT-type Psalter among the Qumran finds. Perhaps the best evidence of a partial collection conforming to the MT arrangement is 4QPs^c from 50–68 CE. ¹⁴ Importantly, however, its stichometric arrangement suggests it was not a complete 150-psalm Psalter, and even in this manuscript only six transitions from one psalm to another are extant, meaning that it is quite possible that it too might have originally had a different order from the MT at some point. A further complication regarding these statistics is that if the 11QPs^a-type arrangement, probably also found at least in 11QPs^b and 4QPs^e, was originally a large collection comparable to the MT Psalter, there is no extant manuscript that would reveal the order of psalms in its beginning. If the arrangement of the beginning of the compilation was largely similar to the MT order, then manuscripts like 4QPs^c that only preserve psalms from the first parts of the now canonical Psalter, might come from the 11QPs^a-type collection instead of a MT-type compilation. In fact, only two of the Qumran psalm collections, viz., 2QPs and 4QPs^m, may contain actual evidence of two psalms in the MT order rather than in the 11QPs^a arrangement, but in neither is the actual transition point extant.

Thus, to use this manuscript data as somehow unified evidence for the importance of a book of psalms at Qumran seems to be rather questionable. To equate this supposed book of psalms with the MT Psalter makes the gap between the evidence and the theory even greater. There is no real evidence that would point towards the importance of a MT-type Psalter among the Qumran psalm manuscripts. Rather, some of the manuscripts even have psalms not found in the MT—note 4QPs^f, 11QPs^a, and 11QPs^b—and arrangements diverging from the MT Psalter are well in evidence even among the partially preserved data. If there is evidence for a book of psalms in some of these manuscripts, it is not the MT book of Psalms, but perhaps another large arrangement ending in a sequence of psalms like that found in 11QPs^a. But even if this were so, only a few of the Psalms manuscripts would be significant copies having large parts of such a book and probably none of them had the entire 11QPs^a-type book of psalms, if there ever was one.

3. The Difference between a Book and a Collection

Before moving on to examine other evidence for the existence of a definable book of psalms during the Qumran period, it is necessary to offer an interpretation of where scholars could have taken the wrong turn when using the above statistics as evidence of a book of psalms. As noted at the beginning, the psalm manuscripts are usually counted rather similarly to manuscripts preserving parts of Isaiah or Deuteronomy. What is conceivably not recognized by scholars who equate these numbers is the difference between a more or less unified, but nevertheless clearly definable book, and a collection of more than one composition. Unlike the manuscripts of Deuteronomy or Isaiah, the psalm manuscripts are not parts of a particular book, but compositions that are arranged in collections of different sizes with quite varied purposes. Thus, whereas a fragment of Deuteronomy is fairly certain to come from a copy of the entire book even if it is from a slightly divergent form of the book, and a fragment of Isaiah from the book of Isaiah, the collections of compositions are different in this respect. A comparable example can be taken from the prophetic books. A manuscript made up of fragments containing parts of Amos does not automatically indicate that the fragments came from a scroll that contained the whole collection of twelve ‘minor’ prophets. ¹⁵ It only indicates that the fragments probably come from a copy of a book of Amos or in the case of a single small fragment also possibly from a pesher or some other text using Amos. Whether that copy of the book of Amos was originally in turn part of a collection of prophetic books numbering twelve or fewer is a question the evidence may not be able to answer, but it is not a necessary assumption. While a collection of twelve prophets was probably already extant during the Qumran period, it did not mean that all subsequent manuscripts of these prophetic books necessarily contained all twelve books. Rather, the individual books could be copied and used by themselves or combined in variant orders and in collections of different sizes. Similarly, a fragment of a particular psalm only means that the specific psalm or parts of it was certainly contained in that manuscript. What else may or may not have been included in the manuscript may never be known. Larger collections of psalms certainly existed, but not every manuscript containing a psalm is evidence for a particular book of psalms. Collections of compositions are much more fluid and easily adaptable to different uses than books in this respect. They also seem inherently resistant to a standardized collection form because the compositions in a collection can so easily be placed in different orders for diverse uses or emphases. Treating a single book in a similar fashion is much more complex.

In order to demonstrate the point further, it would perhaps be helpful to put the collections of psalms and other evidence of ‘biblical’ books on a comparable scale. As a collection, the psalms are more like the five books of the Torah or all the books counted among the Prophets rather than individual books like Deuteronomy or Isaiah. Who then would count all the manuscripts containing something now in the prophetic books of the Hebrew Bible and say that the Prophets as a specific fixed compilation were very important in Qumran? This analogy with prophets reveals something important about the psalms. Much as prophets as a group of books was considered authoritative, so were the psalms, i.e., a particular collection of psalms may not have held sole authority, but the psalms as a group of writings were considered authoritative. However, the analogy between psalms and other collections of compositions actually extends further. Just as the psalms manuscripts vary in size and content, so do the Torah and the Prophets. The manuscripts of the books of the Torah at Qumran did not contain all the books of the Torah every time, if at all, and it is debated whether the Reworked Pentateuch manuscripts or Jubilees should be counted among them and so forth. Similarly, there is not even a claim that all the books of the prophets would have been on a single scroll, but even if they were, what exactly would the collection have included? Nevertheless, the analogies only take one so far before differences arise, and the main difference between the psalms and, for example, the collection of the twelve prophets in my opinion is that the psalms had more diverse uses that were best served by different compilations.

The point that is well demonstrated by the Psalms manuscripts from Qumran is that, when dealing with manuscript evidence, fragments of parts of a collection cannot be used as direct evidence for the entire collection. A manuscript of Genesis is not automatically evidence of the entire Torah, a fragment of Jonah is not proof of the Twelve as a collection, and a psalm or several psalms are not a confirmation of the existence of a book of psalms. Importantly, however, neither can the evidence be used the other way around. A different sequence among some books also found in the collection of twelve prophets or among psalms is not evidence for the non-existence of the otherwise known arrangement or whether it was more original than the other arrangement. It only demonstrates that there was no single normative collection of those compositions that all other manuscripts should imitate. This does not in any way diminish the authority of the individual books of the prophets or psalms, but it does show that the order and exact content of these collections was not yet written in stone.

Therefore, while the above psalm manuscripts from Qumran do not testify to the influence of a specific book of psalms, they certainly reveal something of the importance of psalms in general. However, someone might still argue that even if the Qumran psalm manuscripts are not manuscript copies of a book of psalms, they nevertheless attest to the use of a book of psalms, i.e., people used this book as a reference work for compiling these various collections. Is there, then, during the Qumran period a definable authoritative book of psalms looming in the background from which individual psalms could be drawn to form compilations of different sizes that were by the status of these psalms somehow distinct from other lesser psalmody left outside the large ‘canonical’ compilation? This seems to be a frequent scholarly assumption that rarely surfaces in explicit arguments, but is perceivable in the choice and division of material in studies, and may in part be due to the classic view of the Psalter as the hymn book of Second Temple Judaism from which psalms could be drawn for various liturgical purposes. One exception where such an idea is actually voiced is in Eileen Schuller's suggestion that the manuscripts labeled as 4QNon-Canonical Psalms A+B (4Q380–381) might have been meant as supplements to the canonical Psalter. ¹⁶ But was there an authoritative Psalter in the Qumran period, and were there ‘supplements’ intentionally written for it? In other words, are there collections that excluded MT Psalms because they were somehow set apart by their authority/canonicity from the compositions included in a collection? These questions will be analyzed one after the other in the following.

4. Authoritative Psalter(s)

There are no unambiguous references to a book of psalms ascribed to David in the Qumran manuscripts, ¹⁷ and more obvious mentions are only found later in the New Testament. ¹⁸ Thus, there is no explicit evidence for an authoritative collection of psalms during the Qumran period, but if there still was one, what was its content? Before the Qumran finds the situation seemed quite simple. To be sure, the Septuagint Psalter had one more Psalm than the MT Psalter, but it was at the very end of the collection and consequently seemed like an addition. Similarly, the four further Psalms that were found in Syriac manuscripts after Psalm 151 were labeled as Psalms 152–155 (or Syriac Psalms I–IV). ¹⁹ Because these five Psalms were only found in translations and they were furthermore placed after the canonical 150-psalm arrangement, they appeared to be some sort of appendices to the canonical Psalter and were termed ‘apocryphal psalms’. Likewise the differences in the Septuagint Psalter's superscripts in comparison to the MT were seen as additions to an already authoritative Psalter.

But the Qumran finds drastically changed the situation, and made the tranquil picture into a much messier mixture of colors. Not only were multiple manuscripts with different orders of psalms than in the MT Psalter, even including previously unknown psalm compositions, found in the caves, but also there were what appeared to be remnants of another large arrangement of psalms differing significantly from the MT Psalter. After these finds, regardless of how the relationship between the MT Psalter and the Qumran material is evaluated as regards the status of individual manuscripts, there is no possibility of returning to the previous serene image, and scholars must be content with trying to make sense of a much more complicated development before one specific Psalter can be recognized as emerging as the authoritative book of Psalms. There has been a long debate among scholars concerning 11QPs^a and whether it is a true Psalter comparable to the MT Psalter or a secondary arrangement. ²⁰ The debate has become somewhat entrenched and too much weight has been placed on arguing about chronological primacy or whether one collection is directly dependent on the other. The question of chronological order appears relatively straightforward in the current research situation, as will be demonstrated shortly. However, the much more important question is what the existence of three different Psalters as well as the other Qumran psalm manuscripts means for a theory of the existence of a single definable authoritative book of psalms during the Qumran period. This question merits much more study and only some preliminary thoughts will be given on it after dealing with the chronology.

The three largest available collections of psalms are the MT Psalter, the Septuagint Psalter and the Psalter represented by 11QPs^a. Of these the MT Psalter is virtually certain to have been chronologically the first, although it too continued to develop somewhat, as shown, for example, by a couple of the differences from the Septuagint Psalter in which the current MT arrangement is obviously secondary. The Septuagint Psalter is probably the second, but it is very difficult to evaluate the chronological order of the Septuagint Psalter and the 11QPs^a arrangement. The two collections may have originated chronologically quite close to each other, but possibly representing the development of the Psalter(s) in different regions and/or groups. However, both the Septuagint Psalter and 11QPs^a seem to be aware of the ‘final’ (proto-)MT arrangement or an arrangement very close to it.

Although there is very little that can be suggested as evidence for a specific Psalter, some scholars consider Ben Sira 14.20–15.10 to be a reference to the Psalter in its Masoretic order, ²¹ which would mean the MT Psalter was ready or near its ‘final’ form early in the second century BCE. A more unambiguous but substantially later link with a particular form of the collection is the Septuagint Psalter, which follows the order of psalms found also in the MT. Other evidence for dating the MT Psalter is more circumstantial, but most scholars date the MT Psalter somewhere between 200 and 100 BCE, ²² which seems plausible. ²³ Alongside noting the number of Qumran psalm manuscripts, the growing use of psalms in other compositions, ²⁴ the explicit use of psalms as authoritative texts in the Qumran pesharim, ²⁵ and the New Testament's use of Psalms, which are frequently brought up as attestations of the existence and influence of a specific book of psalms, it must be admitted at this point that although these are all important aspects, they testify to the growing influence of psalms in general, not to a specific Davidic Psalter.

The Septuagint Psalter is chronologically secondary to the (proto-)MT Psalter and obviously dependent on it, because the translation has the same Psalms (plus Ps. 151) and in the same order as in the MT Psalter. Furthermore, there are altogether 37 superscripts in the Septuagint Psalter, which have either additions or expansions in comparison to the MT Psalter. ²⁶ Many of these changes are additions of a Davidic superscription to a Psalm that does not have one in the MT Psalter (e.g., Pss. 33; 43; 71; 91; 94; 95, etc.), and others add liturgical notices to Psalms (cf. Pss. 24; 48; 81; 94). ²⁷ Thus, the Septuagint Psalter is chronologically secondary to a slightly earlier form of the MT Psalter, but what makes it particularly interesting is that it shows that the existence of the MT Psalter did not mean a cessation of the editing process(es) of the large collections of psalms. Since the Greek translation was certainly not meant to be based on a secondary Psalter, it means the MT-type arrangement was not considered the one and only official and unchangeable book of Psalms at the outset. Indeed, with the addition of Psalm 151 and many of the superscripts, the Septuagint Psalter is more explicitly Davidic than the MT Psalter, which is a development also visible in 11QPs^a. The dating of the Septuagint Psalter depends in large part on how scholars date the MT Psalter, but it is to be put somewhere between the second half of the second century BCE, ²⁸ and the beginning of the first century BCE. ²⁹

The dating of the 11QPs^a Psalter and its relationship to the MT Psalter are connected and highly controversial issues. For example, Armin Lange suggests a date before 150 BCE, ³⁰ but others, such as Ulrich Dahmen, ³¹ support a Qumran provenance of the arrangement and date the collection accordingly. All three manuscripts probably attesting to the 11QPs^a Psalter (4QPs^e, 11QPs^a, and 11QPs^b) are dated to the Common Era, ³² but the collection in all probability derives from the first century BCE. ³³ However, it is important to keep in mind that such a dating need not automatically mean a Qumran or Essene provenance for the 11QPs^a collection. The relative chronology between 11QPs^a and the (proto-)MT Psalter can be established by observing some of the differences between the two collections. It seems that there are three types of changes in 11QPs^a in comparison to the current MT Psalter. These are the three scribal activities that are usually part of an intentional editing process—namely, adding, revising, and omitting. In the following some examples are given for each of the categories, but a more extensive treatment of the subject will have to be left for the future.

5. ‘Non-Canonical’ Psalm Collections

This section will explore whether psalms not included in the large known Psalters were considered somehow secondary or less authoritative than the psalms in these collections. The key material in this respect consists of psalm collections where no now canonical psalms have been preserved. The exception to this rule is 11Q11, which contains Psalm 91 among other previously unknown psalm compositions. This manuscript is sometimes counted among the Psalms manuscripts and sometimes not, but already its official title 11QApocryphal Psalms shows that the psalms on the manuscript are considered different from the ones categorized under Psalms manuscripts. The collections of ‘apocryphal’ psalms explored here include 11QapocrPs (11Q11), 4QNon-Canonical Psalms A and B (4Q380–4Q381), 4QBarkhi Nafshi (4Q434–438), 4QShir^a-b (4Q510–511), the Hodayot (1QH^a-b, 4QH^a-f), and the Psalms of Solomon. Some further collections, such as the Songs of the Sabbath Sacrifice, might be included, but they would only strengthen the overall picture the other collections reveal.

The idea that the psalms in these collections should be somehow secondary to the psalms in the MT Psalter is not often voiced aloud, but is revealed, for example, by the nomenclature used for them. While 11Q11 and 4Q380–381 are said to contain psalms, they are given further anachronistic labels as somehow non-canonical or apocryphal. The psalms in the other explored collections are in turn usually called songs or hymns. The label ‘song’ is just another general label parallel with ‘psalm’, but its use makes a conscious or unconscious division between the earlier psalms and the later songs. The psalms designated by scholars as ‘hymns’ on the other hand should be form-critically definable as hymns, which is true for the barkhi nafshi type hymns, but does not fit the Hodayot. Thus, the recent edition of the Hodayot in DJD 40 encourages the use of the label ‘psalms’ for the Hodayot instead of hymns. But are there grounds for this type of evaluation concerning these psalms in comparison to the MT Psalms?

One indication of a lesser status would be that ‘apocryphal’ psalms were not quoted or alluded to in other compositions whereas ‘canonical’ psalms frequently have been. However, 4Q370 i 1–2 alludes to the Hymn to the Creator (11QPsa 26.9–15), ⁴³ 4Q448 quotes Psalm 154, ⁴⁴ the psalm in 4Q380 1i–ii 8 is used in Psalm 106 and possibly in the CD as well, ⁴⁵ the psalm in 4Q381 IV is apparently alluded to in two consecutive Hodayot psalms (15.6–25 and 15.26–33), ⁴⁶ Josephus may have been aware of 4Q381 Penitential Prayer of Manasseh, ⁴⁷ and finally the penultimate psalm in 11Q11 is referred to in several late texts ⁴⁸ that show the psalm had authority even after the canon was closed and it was left excluded from it. Therefore, there is nothing that would indicate that these psalms had a somehow inherent lesser status than the Psalms in the MT Psalter.

However, there is a general difference in the age of these compositions. Many of the ‘apocryphal’ psalms are later than the now ‘canonical’ psalms, but there are exceptions that go both ways. For example, the Hymn to the Creator and the 4Q380 psalm are probably older than some of the MT Psalms, and some late ‘canonical’ psalms such as Pss 106 and 110 are probably younger than some of the ‘apocryphal’ pieces. But there are no age labels in these psalms, and already the data given above show that at least the ‘apocryphal’ psalms claiming to be works written by famous ‘biblical’ figures received authority quite equal to other psalms and sometimes in a surprisingly short amount of time. But there may be a difference in that the compositions probably deriving from the Qumran movement, that did not make such claims, were not treated as authoritative, at least outside the movement. The main reason why more of these ‘non-canonical’ psalms were not included in the canonical book of Psalms is that most of them are from the second and first century BCE and thus were not composed in time to be included in the MT-type arrangement that was later accorded that status, and they were also in many instances group-specific, which implies that they may not have initially disseminated outside the particular group that produced them.

In my recent extensive study of this ‘non-canonical’ psalmody, however, I explored the above collections in detail in order to determine the principles of their compilation. I investigated whether there is any indication that knowledge of a book of Psalms influenced the choice of material in these compilations. Some results of his study are given in the following table, but for the detailed analysis one is directed to the original study. ⁴⁹

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Table 3.

Features in Common among Individual Psalms in a Compilation ⁵⁰

	11Q11	4Q380	4Q381	4QBarkhi	4QShir	Hodayot	PsSol
Superscripts	—	×	—	—	×	—	—
Group	—	—	×	×	×	×	×
Category	—	—	—	×	×	×	—
Topic	×	?	×	—	×	—	×
Function	×	?	×	?	×	?	×

What my fuller investigation showed is that there were factors that united the individual psalms in a single collection and made them a purposeful compilation. It could be that all the psalms were ascribed to prophets (4Q380) or to the Maskil (4QShir), or the psalms were all written by and for a specific group (4Q381, 4QBarkhi, 4QShir, Hodayot, PsSol), or they might all be similar compositions in terms of their poetic category (4QBarkhi, 4QShir, Hodayot), or they might have a common central topic that all the individual psalms center on and explore (11Q11, 4Q381, 4QShir, PsSol), or they could have a common function as a collection that all the different psalms were a part of in the sequence in which they are now found—they could, for instance, have functioned as a ritual (11Q11, 4QShir) or as a lesson/admonition on a specific issue (4Q381, PsSol).

What can be concluded from these collections is that the label ‘non-canonical’ or ‘apocryphal’ does not do justice to them. The main reason why these collections do not have any of the now canonical Psalms is that most of these compilations are either the works of single authors and/or the compositions of a particular group. Thus, the ‘canonical’ Psalms would not have fitted in these collections or for their purposes, which are mostly group oriented. The Hodayot, the Songs of the Sage, the Barkhi Nafshi, 4Q381, and the Psalms of Solomon are all intended for a specific group. These collections connect with the identity of the intended group of addressees and shape it further in ways that the now ‘canonical’ Psalms would not be able to do. ⁵¹ This is shown in practice by the existence of the pesharim on the Psalms. In order to be meaningful for the specific setting of the Qumran movement and for their group identity, the Psalms needed to be reinterpreted from the group's own point of view. Thus, the ‘canonical’ Psalms were probably excluded from these psalm collections not because they were more authoritative, but because they were not as directly relevant for the group in the same sense as their own works were.

Two of the collections of ‘apocryphal’ psalms are different in this sense, and they are both most likely compilations made up of individual earlier psalms that have been secondarily collected together. For 11QapocrPs the designation ‘apocryphal’ is not really fitting because at least Psalm 91 of the now canonical Psalms was included in the scroll. Furthermore, the penultimate psalm apparently gained enough authority to leave its mark in later traditions, which means that it was probably not seen as particularly different in status from Psalm 91. The reason why there are no other ‘canonical’ Psalms in 11QapocrPs beside Psalm 91 is probably to be found in the collection's specialized ritual function as an exorcism. There are not many ‘canonical’ Psalms that would be fitting for such a function. The last collection is 4Q380, which seems to be made up of psalms of the prophets. Once more, the reason for compiling the collection was not the production of a ‘canonical’ Davidic collection of psalms. The psalm in 4Q380 1 was probably used as a source by the authors of Psalm 106 and the CD, which means that it evidently enjoyed some status and was in all likelihood no less authoritative than the now canonical psalms during the investigated time period. Collecting together psalms ascribed to different prophets may have been prompted by the exclusion of these psalms from the prophetic corpus or by a more general eagerness for psalms possibly composed by various prophets, as the additions of the names of the prophets Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Haggai and Zechariah in the Septuagint Psalter's superscripts illustrate.

Therefore, the designations ‘apocryphal’ and ‘non-canonical’ are not fitting for these diverse collections of psalms, and the distinguishing of now canonical Psalms as a distinct group is problematic. Thus, there is no evidence for a specific book of Psalms to be found in the Qumran psalm manuscripts. Likewise there was no generally approved official Psalter during the Qumran period, and finally, the division between the now ‘canonical’ Psalms and other ‘lesser’ psalms is not something that can find support in the sources. It can be noted that if the MT-type Psalter existed in something approaching its final form early in the second century BCE, it did not mean an immediate end to making new psalm compositions ascribed to David and other ‘biblical’ figures, and that these compositions eventually gained some authority at least in certain groups. This is shown by the ‘apocryphal’ psalms in 11QapocrPs, and some of the royal psalms in 4Q381, but also by at least a few of the ‘apocryphal’ psalms found in 11QPs^a. Psalm 154 serves as an example of this, as it was evidently composed at the earliest in the middle of the second century BCE but was still accepted into a large Davidic arrangement of the Psalms as found in 11QPs^a. If the MT-type Psalter had not been retained and spread by some faction of Judaism, there would in all likelihood be many more psalms in the book of Psalms.

Nevertheless, some sort of change, at least in attitudes, may have arisen from roughly the first century BCE onwards. The new psalm compositions from this period apparently no longer seek recognition as works of famous figures from hallowed antiquity. They do not appear to have had original pseudepigraphic superscripts to ‘biblical’ figures. None of the psalms of the Qumran movement has such a title and other psalms found in the literature of this time are similar in this respect. The phenomenon of pseudepigraphic attribution of psalms to ‘biblical’ figures did not stop at this point, as shown for example by the probably later added titles in Psalms of Solomon, and the ascribing of Psalms 154 and 155 to Hezekiah in the Syriac manuscripts. However, there is a significant difference in that this phenomenon is a continuance of a practice of giving old, already known psalms roots in ‘biblical’ traditions, a practice Moshe Bernstein has aptly termed ‘decorative pseudepigraphy’, ⁵² whereas some of the second-century BCE or slightly older psalms were specifically composed as psalms of David, Manasseh, etc. ⁵³ This is of course part of a much larger question with many nuances to it, but it seems safe to say that at least the Qumran movement avoided making explicit pseudepigraphic attributions to ‘biblical’ figures in their own compositions. ⁵⁴ Thus, if there is a need to make divisions among the psalm material preserved from before the Common Era, then something like this observation would be a possible place to start. Yet it is not a division into ‘canonical’ and ‘non-canonical’ material, but instead a separation of material intended for different discourses. The Qumran movement's own psalms were meant for the movement, not outside it. They did not seek recognition as authorities for a larger audience, but instead as a means to promulgate the identity of the group who produced them. Many of the other compositions from this period are similar in this sense. Thus, they are a reflection of the fragmentation of the society and also that fewer people were trying to extend their influence to the whole nation by their compositions; instead, they were nurturing the special character of their own group use.

6. Conclusions

Several openings for further discourse and ideas concerning Psalters and the collections of so-called non-canonical psalms have been offered in this article, but its main thrust has been to make scholars question the use of the statistics of the Qumran psalm manuscripts to argue for the importance of a particular book of psalms. The psalm manuscripts have enormous value in providing testimony for the importance of psalms. However, taking into account the so-called non-canonical psalms also affords a glimpse of the influence and varied usage of psalm compositions in this period. The arguments using the high total number of Psalms manuscripts as unified evidence fail to note the great diversity in these different collections and their functions. Also, the labeling and distinction made between Psalms manuscripts and other ‘lesser’ songs and psalms serves to cloud the overall picture that requires all of the psalm collections to be equally appreciated in order to gain understanding, for example, on the different functions psalm compositions had in the late Second Temple period. Therefore, each psalm collection should be studied individually and in the same way, regardless of whether it contains ‘canonical’ or ‘non-canonical’ psalms. Only then can it be truly evaluated how a book of Psalms came to be included in the later canon of Scripture.