Encountering the Book of Psalms: A Literary and Theological Introduction

by C. Hassell Bullock

If you’re familiar with the Encountering Biblical Studies series, then you can probably pass on reading this review, as you already know fairly well what you will be getting yourself into with this book. If not, read on.

The Encountering Biblical Studies series is a set of undergraduate-level textbooks designed “to put us back into the world of the biblical text, so that we may understand it as those early believers did and at the same time see it from our own day, thus facilitating the application of its truths to our contemporary situation” (11). I’m not entirely sure that all of the volumes in the series accomplish such a lofty goal, but they do a fair job of introducing the various subjects they cover. This volume fits well into that pattern.

Encountering Psalms is not meant to be a complete exposition of the entire Psalter, nor is it meant to study some of the deeper things concerning ancient Hebrew poetry. It is designed, as the subtitle makes clear, to introduce the important subjects. Its three parts focus on various aspects of the Psalter: literary and hermeneutical dimensions; worship and historical reflection; literary and theological types of psalms.

Whether or not this book will interest you depends largely on where you currently are in relation to studies in the psalms. If you’re a beginner, you might want to track down this book—or one like it—to give you some better tools to help your study. If you’ve already been introduced to some of the more technical aspects of the Psalter or of Old Testament poetry, then you’ll probably do well to skip this volume and find something a little more advanced, unless you’d just like a refresher.