Abstract: Psalms was the favorite Old Testament book at Qumran and in the New Testament; the Book of Mormon contains more than three dozen allusions to Psalms. While Psalms contains both powerful, poetic words of comfort and doctrinal gems, many psalms also seem to careen between praise, warning, comfort, military braggadocio, and humility, sometimes addressing the Lord, sometimes speaking in the voice of the Lord or his prophets. The texts that most strongly exhibit such abrupt shifts may yield greater meaning if they are read as scripts or libretti of a sacred, temple- based drama.

 

 

Psalms was the favorite Old Testament book at Qumran,1 as it was in the earliest centuries of the Christian Church.2 The Book of Mormon contains more than three dozen allusions to Psalms,3 and the New Testament quotes Psalms more than any other Old Testament book.4 Psalms contains powerful, poetic words of comfort and doctrinal gems, but many psalms also seem to careen between praise, warning, instruction, comfort, military braggadocio, and humility; sometimes addressing the Lord, sometimes addressing assembled Israel; speaking in the voice of the Lord, or a prophet, or a priest, or as Israel, or a sufferer, or a victor; sometimes in the plural, sometimes in the singular; sometimes intensely introspectively and sometimes nationally — that is, dealing with the security of the country and the fertility of the land. The texts that most strongly exhibit these abrupt shifts may yield greater meaning to both readers and serious students of scripture when they are placed within the context of sacred drama, as Jeffrey Bradshaw suggests, and read as scripts — the libretti, if you prefer — of a sacred drama.

In his July 3, 2018 “Old Testament KnoWhy,” Jeffrey Bradshaw wrote a thoughtful, close reading of psalms 22, 23, and 24, a reading that focused on the use of these psalms in a proposed sacred drama, as a “ritual journey of the king.”5 The outline of the ritual journey of [Page 260]the king — and the reconstruction of larger sacred drama of which some suggest it is a part — remains a scholarly proposal, a hypothetical construct. The shape of sacred drama, in this view, follows a persistent pattern across a wide range of cultures. Included in this pattern may be the idea of the king as the incarnation of the national god.

Nibley supported this construct, pointing out that “the force of the evidence is cumulative and is based on extensive comparative studies.” He mentions 20 studies and identifies 36 ways in which King Benjamin’s Book of Mormon discourse at the temple follows the pattern of the “Great Assembly at the New Year,” a pattern widely spread across many cultures, including Israel’s neighbors. He notes, however, that in the Book of Mormon “everything takes place on a far higher spiritual plane than that implied in most of the Old World ritual texts.” Nibley writes that, according to this pattern, the “year rite” takes place at a temple and includes coronation and royal marriage, sacrifice and burnt offerings, thanksgiving, the “ritual descent of the king to the underworld — he is ritually overcome by death, and then ritually resurrected.” (This is part of the ritual journey of the king to which Bradshaw refers.) His people are promised victory and prosperity if they will be obedient. They are overcome: “proskynesis was the falling to the earth (literally, “kissing the ground).” The members of the assembled congregation make covenants and receive a “ritual begetting of the human race by a divine parent,