Conclusion
The New Testament was not written in a vacuum, but written to very religious communities, created and maintained through oral tradition and the written word. While not every document used by these communities is considered canonical today by either Judaism or Christianity, they came close to canonical for these communities. We know of the long struggles over Sirach and Enoch, but nothing significant is mentioned of the Psalms of Solomon, not until the 4th century when we find it attached to a historical manuscript. We know that the PssSol is of more ancient origin than that manuscript, finding traces of it in other documents, sometimes confused with the Odes of Solomon. It is a distinctly Jewish work, and belongs squarely in the Pharisaical tradition. Further, it lays in the same genre of hope as Wisdom and other 2nd Temple Jewish documents of the Messiah and the Resurrection.
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I have divided the 18th Psalm into three sections according to the natural pericope of the text. While the Psalm is dedicated the Lord’s Christ/Lord Christ, only the first portion (v1-4) deals exclusively with him. The next section (v5-9) deals with God’s interaction with the righteous and with the Messiah. The final sections (v10-12) are reminiscent of portions of Enoch’s book(s) on the Astronomical wonders and the Watchers.
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Messianic Expectation:
It was a time of sectarian violence, of political intrigue and of the loss of Israel’s mission to the world. God had been silent for hundreds of years and no prophets filled the land. The Temple was rebuilt, but the people were conquered, the heroes of the past figments of the imagination. David was dust, Solomon gone, Josiah with his fathers, and Judah’s kingdom a Roman province. Judaism was suffering on the enterprise of Hellenistic philosophers, with Jews adopting it or coming so close as not to know the difference.
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Concern for the afterlife is not something predominantly found in the Hebrew Scriptures, but as we begin to move into 2nd Temple Judaism, we find that the issue of the resurrection started to become more pronounced. For the Jews under the yoke of foreign rules, it was a means not only of escape but of vindication[1]. We find the maturing of this idea, in which righteous works lead to a righteous vindication expressed clearly in the Maccabean books[2]. In the Psalms of Solomon (PssSol), we find much the same idea that the righteous will rise at some future time, while the unrighteous will perish.
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One of the delights which I discovered upon discovering the Septuagint was the Psalms of Solomon. While most, if not all, of canonical history has never accepted them as canonical, a text of the Psalms was found in the Codex Alexandrinus. (See also here) While some might find the study of the 2nd Temple Judaism a vile enterprise, or at the very least a waste of time, I find that the New Testament was not written in a vacuum, and that by shedding light upon the theological concepts found therein by using the literature which the writers, especially Paul, would have used, we can gain a richer insight into the communities which produced our own scared writings. Admittedly, this will not be concise, nor will it touch every strain of theology in this work.
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Warning – feeble attempt at a pseudo-academic article. It is not meant to be complete, but an addition to the conversation.
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