Ebook: Die Psalmen: Stilistische Verfahren und Aufbau; Mit besonderer Berücksichtigung von Ps 1—41

Nic. H. Ridderbos of the Free University of Amsterdam is one of those highly competent and productive scholars who has the misfortune (?) of a lesser known tongue as his first language. His name (to be distinguished from that of his namesake and fellow OT scholar with an initial J.) is known, of course, from a goodly number of articles, especially in OTS, but it is probably safe to say that most of his work remains largely known by title only. In a way, this is doubly regrettable because R. writes from an extremely conservative, although by no means obscurantist, viewpoint, which (if for no other reason initially than because it is not the majority stance) deserves to have wider exposure for the sake of counterbalance. This time, the services of a competent translator (K. Mittring), as well as the work's inclusion in the BZAW series, should redress matters somewhat.

To a certain extent, this work is a sequel to R.'s 1950 Psalmen en Cultus and even more so to his 1962 commentary on Book I of the Psalter. In many respects this study, too, will probably be classified as more of a commentary than anything else, but with accent on stylistic devices and structure, as the title indicates. The main stress, then, is on the form of the psalms, but there could hardly be better demonstration of the artificiality of the common distinction between form and content. In fact, one of R.'s main concerns is to combat the notion that style is only ornamental, etc.

Nearly two-thirds of the book is devoted to specialized commentary on the individual psalms covered, but this is preceded by an important theoretical discussion of the various stylistic devices and the role which R. thinks they play.