Day 3 preview

We are midway through day 3 and I will report in greater detail from Cambridge next week. We had a wonderful 7 step diachronic approach to the psalter given by Prof Klaus Seybold. I can see how German scholarship demands evidence and enjoys its careful thought. We had a short and rather elementary session on translating poetry. I will report it later and critique it in a separate post. Then we had 3 short papers excellently read by students - a very hopeful trend. This afternoon Prof Frank-Lothar Hossfeld whom I met at lunch will sum up. The session is dedicated to Prof Erich Zenger who so recently died.

To the left is a miniature of the fool from Psalm 53 (52 vulgate). We were shown many of these yesterday. The first letter is often adorned with a scene from the life of Jesus. The image then provides a frame based on the life of Jesus for interpretation of the words. Not somewhere that we need or even ought to go all the time. (But I must come back to this for the psalms provide the living ground of method for a child of God whether it is be an individual or elect Israel or the anointed Jesus.) Susan Gillingham in her lecture noted that only 40 of the 150 psalms are referenced directly in the NT and the fathers - this needs testing. I suspect there are more allusions that are justifiable - but there is no competition here either.