Psalm 82 Article

[caspianrex]

I know it's from 2015, so there's a possibility many folks read this back then, but if you haven't read it, I highly recommend @Dan McClellans excellent article from Interpreter: Psalm 82 in Contemporary Latter-day Saint Tradition. Even as a non-member, I found it fascinating, and his scholarship is impeccable. The psalm text is intriguing, and Dan presents an analysis of several perspectives on the text, especially in light of Jesus' reference to the psalm in John 10:34. ("Jesus answered them, Is it not written in your law, I said, Ye are gods?") Give the article a read: you won't be sorry.

In case you haven't read Psalm 82 recently, here's the text of the psalm...

Quote

 

Psalm 82

Thus says the Lord, Ye are gods and children of the Most High.

A Psalm of Asaph.

1 God standeth in the congregation of the mighty; he judgeth among the gods.

2 How long will ye judge unjustly, and accept the persons of the wicked? Selah.

3 Defend the poor and fatherless: do justice to the afflicted and needy.

4 Deliver the poor and needy: rid them out of the hand of the wicked.

5 They know not, neither will they understand; they walk on in darkness: all the foundations of the earth are out of course.

6 I have said, Ye are gods; and all of you are children of the most High.

7 But ye shall die like men, and fall like one of the princes.

8 Arise, O God, judge the earth: for thou shalt inherit all nations.

Psalm 82

Old Testament

Scriptures

 

https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/scriptures/ot/ps/82?lang=eng&verse=#p

 

 

[Dan McClellan]

2 hours ago, caspianrex said:

I know it's from 2015, so there's a possibility many folks read this back then, but if you haven't read it, I highly recommend @Dan McClellans excellent article from Interpreter: Psalm 82 in Contemporary Latter-day Saint Tradition. Even as a non-member, I found it fascinating, and his scholarship is impeccable. The psalm text is intriguing, and Dan presents an analysis of several perspectives on the text, especially in light of Jesus' reference to the psalm in John 10:34. ("Jesus answered them, Is it not written in your law, I said, Ye are gods?") Give the article a read: you won't be sorry.

In case you haven't read Psalm 82 recently, here's the text of the psalm...

Thanks for the mention! It may interest you to know I've since published another article on Psalm 82 in one of the bigger biblical studies journals. 

[Robert F. Smith]

4 hours ago, caspianrex said:

............................

In case you haven't read Psalm 82 recently, here's the text of the psalm................

Thanks for that , Prince Caspian.  Here's another version of it, with my notes, from the New Jerusalem Bible (Roman Catholic):

 

Quote

A Psalm of Asaph

1 God (ʼĔlōhîm) takes his stand in the divine assembly (ˁAdat ’Ĕl),

    surrounded by the gods (ʼĔlōhîm) he gives judgement. [Job 1:6, Isa 3:13-14]

2 'How much longer will you give unjust judgements

    and uphold the prestige of the wicked?  [liturgical pause]

3 Let the weak and the orphan have justice,

    be fair to the wretched and the destitute.

4 'Rescue the weak and the needy,

    save them from the clutches of the wicked.

5 'Ignorant and uncomprehending, they wander in darkness,

    while the foundations of the world are tottering.

6 I had thought, "Are you gods (ʼĔlōhîm),

    are all of you sons of the Most High (bĕnē ˁElîyôn)?" [Jn 10:34]

7 No! you will die as human beings do,

    as one man, princes, you will fall.'

8 Arise, God (ʼĔlōhîm), judge the world,

    for all nations belong to you.

 

Edited March 15, 2020 by Robert F. Smith

[mfbukowski]

17 minutes ago, Robert F. Smith said:

Thanks for that , Prince Caspian.  Here's another version of it, with my notes, from the New Jerusalem Bible (Roman Catholic):

 

 

Great stuff, thanks! One of my favorites

How could anyone NOT be LDS after reading that? 

 

[MiserereNobis]

44 minutes ago, mfbukowski said:

How could anyone NOT be LDS after reading that? 

Um, all of us Catholics, and all of the religious orders who chant that every week/month (depending on their Rule)  

And Prince Caspian @Robert F. Smith... C.S. Lewis played with that (how disappointed Tolkien was that he didn't become Catholic!), and then there's Phish, of course, creating a beautiful song out of it all...  

[pogi]

1 hour ago, MiserereNobis said:

and then there's Phish, of course, creating a beautiful song out of it all...  

The whole album (Billy Breathes) was one of my favorites!

[Kenngo1969]

2 hours ago, Robert F. Smith said:

Thanks for that , Prince Caspian.  ...

Ah, but Rex is Latin for King, isn't it?

[Robert F. Smith]

5 hours ago, Kenngo1969 said:

Ah, but Rex is Latin for King, isn't it?

Yes, but that moniker wasn't available, so he went with the next best thing.

[caspianrex]

10 hours ago, MiserereNobis said:

Um, all of us Catholics, and all of the religious orders who chant that every week/month (depending on their Rule)  

And Prince Caspian @Robert F. Smith... C.S. Lewis played with that (how disappointed Tolkien was that he didn't become Catholic!), and then there's Phish, of course, creating a beautiful song out of it all...  

I had forgotten about that Phish song! I gotta go back and listen to that...

[caspianrex]

2 hours ago, Robert F. Smith said:

Yes, but that moniker wasn't available, so he went with the next best thing.

@Robert F. Smith is absolutely right. (I think he asked me about that shortly after I joined this forum.) Back in the AOL days (remember that?), after I'd fired up the dial-up modem, I was trying to come up with a screen name. I tried Caspian and PrinceCaspian, but they were already taken. So I figured I could still give it a twist of royalty with a Latin "Rex." After all, he does become King Caspian by the end of Prince Caspian, and he's King Caspian throughout Voyage of the Dawn Teader (and the little bit that he shows up in The Silver Chair). So I've been CaspianRex ever since. My real name is Cory Howell. And I live in Nashville, TN...not Cair Paravel, Narnia.

[caspianrex]

13 hours ago, Dan McClellan said:

Thanks for the mention! It may interest you to know I've since published another article on Psalm 82 in one of the bigger biblical studies journals. 

Actually, I read that you had published that article in the SBL's journal, but I don't have JSTOR access, so I went and looked up the earlier article on Interpreter!

[caspianrex]

11 hours ago, Robert F. Smith said:

Thanks for that , Prince Caspian.  Here's another version of it, with my notes, from the New Jerusalem Bible (Roman Catholic)...

I always enjoy the New Jerusalem Bible (even though I prefer the Jerusalem Bible just a tiny bit).

In fact, recently I found a beautiful hardcover, slipcased copy of the French Bible de Jerusalem, upon which the Jerusalem Bible was based. Now all I have to do is learn to read French...

[Dan McClellan]

36 minutes ago, caspianrex said:

Actually, I read that you had published that article in the SBL's journal, but I don't have JSTOR access, so I went and looked up the earlier article on Interpreter!

If you message me your email address I'd be happy to send you a PDF. 

[Dan McClellan]

And my above offer is for anyone who'd like to read the article.

[caspianrex]

As I read your article, Dan, I'm struck by the fact that אלהים is rendered in the LXX as θεοι, rather than αγγελοι, as it often is in other psalms (I'm thinking of Psalm 8, off the top of my head). It seems the nuances among "heavenly beings," or what have you, was far more complex in Hebrew (and the Greek Septuagint) than English often allows. I hope to share a few more thoughts once I've finished your article.

[caspianrex]

Wow, @Dan McClellan,so much to digest in that article, "The Gods-Complaint: Psalm 82 as a Psalm of Complaint." Here are some of the thoughts I jotted down as I read. I definitely think I will need to re-read it, to really grapple with everything in it! (I am quoting parts of your article, interspersed with my brief comments.

Quote

Both of these quotations [from Culler and Nasuti] get at the fact that hearers and readers construct meaning for texts by imposing certain expectations and conceptual structures based on the presence of conventionalized literary forms.

This was the first phrase that leapt out for me. It reminded me of some excellent points you made in your article about Wayment's NT translation, where you talked about the function of Bible translations for different audiences. It's a fact about religious texts that is often overlooked by those who treasure them.

Meanwhile, I don't know that I had really considered the difference between complaint psalms and lament psalms. Your description of Broyle's analysis really got me thinking in a different way about those types of psalms. Thanks for that.

Quote

If Job’s antagonists accurately reflect the then-contemporary conventional wisdom regarding the cosmic reciprocity of righteousness up to the exilic period, then those who diligently strive to serve YHWH have an honest case when they demand to know why he has not delivered. YHWH is either withholding what is owed, willfully ignoring the suffering of the righteous, setting his hand against them, or has forgotten his covenant and his people. The petitions and accusatory questions of the psalms of complaint raise all these possibilities and demand that YHWH make his people whole.

Thought-provoking in the extreme. Job has always been one of my favorites in the Hebrew Scriptures, and I think we often miss the point of lament and complaint in our effort to find "comfort" in the Scriptures. This is something I hear from believers all the time: "I find the Psalms so I." I then wonder what they make of psalms like Psalm 82!

Quote

The gods are therefore condemned to mortality in short order in verses 6–7.

Which gets me thinking about the topic you brought up earlier in the article: WHO is the narrator in verse 8? (I think you make deal with that elsewhere in the article.)

Quote

Here is the rhetorical payoff of the psalm: YHWH alone will rule over the nations of the earth. This combination of divine-council scene and gods-
complaint takes a new approach to the suffering of the poor and the orphan, shifting the blame to the gods of the nations for the breakdown in the stabilizing structures of cosmic justice and deposing them, finally achieving the reorientation sought by so many laments.

This is an amazing poetic device, when you break it down like this. YHWH condemning the gods of the nations must have been a powerful and unique image. In our time, with our assumptions of monotheism and such, we may not really get the rhetorical punch of this point of view.

Again, thanks for sharing the article. Maybe I'll share a few more thoughts when I re-read it later!

[MiserereNobis]

2 hours ago, caspianrex said:

@Robert F. Smith is absolutely right. (I think he asked me about that shortly after I joined this forum.) Back in the AOL days (remember that?), after I'd fired up the dial-up modem, I was trying to come up with a screen name. I tried Caspian and PrinceCaspian, but they were already taken. So I figured I could still give it a twist of royalty with a Latin "Rex." After all, he does become King Caspian by the end of Prince Caspian, and he's King Caspian throughout Voyage of the Dawn Teader (and the little bit that he shows up in The Silver Chair). So I've been CaspianRex ever since. My real name is Cory Howell. And I live in Nashville, TN...not Cair Paravel, Narnia.

Voyage of the Dawn Treader was my favorite when I was young. I read it so many times. Looking back on it, I think I liked the episodic nature of the story. It also has lovely moments when the narrator/author inserts his voice into the story, a novelistic breaking of the 4th wall.

[Dan McClellan]

18 hours ago, caspianrex said:

As I read your article, Dan, I'm struck by the fact that אלהים is rendered in the LXX as θεοι, rather than αγγελοι, as it often is in other psalms (I'm thinking of Psalm 8, off the top of my head). It seems the nuances among "heavenly beings," or what have you, was far more complex in Hebrew (and the Greek Septuagint) than English often allows. I hope to share a few more thoughts once I've finished your article.

I wrote a master's thesis and now a doctoral dissertation on just how complex the conceptualization of deity is in the Hebrew Bible. The former is available online (here), but I'll make the latter available after I defend it next month. 

[Dan McClellan]

18 hours ago, caspianrex said:

Wow, @Dan McClellan,so much to digest in that article, "The Gods-Complaint: Psalm 82 as a Psalm of Complaint." Here are some of the thoughts I jotted down as I read. I definitely think I will need to re-read it, to really grapple with everything in it! (I am quoting parts of your article, interspersed with my brief comments.

This was the first phrase that leapt out for me. It reminded me of some excellent points you made in your article about Wayment's NT translation, where you talked about the function of Bible translations for different audiences. It's a fact about religious texts that is often overlooked by those who treasure them.

Meanwhile, I don't know that I had really considered the difference between complaint psalms and lament psalms. Your description of Broyle's analysis really got me thinking in a different way about those types of psalms. Thanks for that.

Thought-provoking in the extreme. Job has always been one of my favorites in the Hebrew Scriptures, and I think we often miss the point of lament and complaint in our effort to find "comfort" in the Scriptures. This is something I hear from believers all the time: "I find the Psalms so I." I then wonder what they make of psalms like Psalm 82!

Which gets me thinking about the topic you brought up earlier in the article: WHO is the narrator in verse 8? (I think you make deal with that elsewhere in the article.)

This is an amazing poetic device, when you break it down like this. YHWH condemning the gods of the nations must have been a powerful and unique image. In our time, with our assumptions of monotheism and such, we may not really get the rhetorical punch of this point of view.

Again, thanks for sharing the article. Maybe I'll share a few more thoughts when I re-read it later!

I appreciate your very close and sensitive reading! I'm trying to impress upon the writers of our curriculum manuals just how important it is to let genres like the lament and complaint have their time in the sun, too. We'll see how it goes.

I'd love to hear what you think after coming back to it later. It was quite a labor of love, and I enjoy looking back at it, but I enjoy hearing other people's takes on it even more. 

[caspianrex]

I noticed a major copy-and-past error in my comments above! I have a sentence that makes absolutely NO sense: "This is something I hear from believers all the time: "I find the Psalms so I." I then wonder what they make of psalms like Psalm 82!"

It was supposed to read thus: "This is something I hear from believers all the time: "I find the Psalms so comforting." I then wonder what they make of psalms like Psalm 82!"

That makes way more sense.

😊 

[Dan McClellan]

On 3/16/2020 at 6:21 AM, caspianrex said:

I noticed a major copy-and-past error in my comments above! I have a sentence that makes absolutely NO sense: "This is something I hear from believers all the time: "I find the Psalms so I." I then wonder what they make of psalms like Psalm 82!"

It was supposed to read thus: "This is something I hear from believers all the time: "I find the Psalms so comforting." I then wonder what they make of psalms like Psalm 82!"

That makes way more sense.

😊 

That or the imprecatory psalms, like the beatitude for the one who crushes infant heads on the rocks. 

[caspianrex]

5 hours ago, Dan McClellan said:

That or the imprecatory psalms, like the beatitude for the one who crushes infant heads on the rocks. 

Yes, not a whole lot of contemporary Christian pop songs using that "crushing infants on rocks" verse (Ps. 137:9) as their inspiration...doesn't really get that "praise and worship" vibe going.

(Wait, do they have that praise and worship music in worship services in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints? If not, count yourselves as lucky. Traditional church music guys like myself have a natural aversion to that stuff.)

Anyway, no traditional hymns based on Psalm 137:9 that I'm aware of either! 🎵

[Islander]

On 3/15/2020 at 6:51 AM, Robert F. Smith said:

Yes, but that moniker wasn't available, so he went with the next best thing.

Curious as to why you rendered verse 6 as a question. Neither R. A. Mohler or L. Berkhof rendered that verse in the inquisitive from the Hebrew. It throws verse 7 into a tailspin, I believe. The consensus seems to be that those verses read:

 אֲנִי-אָמַרְתִּי, אֱלֹהִים אַתֶּם;    וּבְנֵי עֶלְיוֹן כֻּלְּכֶם

v.6 I said: Ye are gods (elohim), and all of you sons of the Most High (‘el·yō·wn). 

ז  אָכֵן, כְּאָדָם תְּמוּתוּן;    וּכְאַחַד הַשָּׂרִים תִּפֹּלוּ.

v.7 Nevertheless, ye shall die like men, and fall like one of the princes.'

I suggest that the above rendering adds depth to the passage. I know the thread has been quiet for some time but I am fairly new to the forum. It is taking me a bit to catch up. My apologies for not being able to edit the copy/paste from the other apps better. It is hard to do on my mobile device. 

[Robert F. Smith]

2 hours ago, Islander said:

Curious as to why you rendered verse 6 as a question. Neither R. A. Mohler or L. Berkhof rendered that verse in the inquisitive from the Hebrew. It throws verse 7 into a tailspin, I believe. ..........................................

That was not my rendering, but rather that of the New Jerusalem Bible:

6 I had thought, "Are you gods (ʼĔlōhîm),

    are all of you sons of the Most High (bĕnē ˁElîyôn)?" [Jn 10:34]

7 No! you will die as human beings do,

    as one man, princes, you will fall.'

[Islander]

7 minutes ago, Robert F. Smith said:

That was not my rendering, but rather that of the New Jerusalem Bible:

6 I had thought, "Are you gods (ʼĔlōhîm),

    are all of you sons of the Most High (bĕnē ˁElîyôn)?" [Jn 10:34]

7 No! you will die as human beings do,

    as one man, princes, you will fall.'

Agreed. I believe that Hebrew scholars have not been able to successfully make heads or tails of that passage. The notion that it relates to pagan deities or even Jewish leaders strikes me as a stretch. Again, renditions in modern translations (even literal translations), verse 6 is not posed as a question. The rendition of :’ā·ḵên  [אָ֭כֵן] as "No!" in verse 7 is also a stretch and clearly changes the meaning of the passage. Most recent translations (I only referenced three readily available editions) from BHS (Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia) agrees with the view I proposed. Just my thoughts. For most it remains a very enigmatic portion of the scriptures. The discussions are always quite interesting. 

 

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