Psalm 24: Reading from right to left and from back to front¹

 

 

Sakkie^I; Spangenberg^II

^II.J.J.
^IIUNISA

Correspondence

 

 

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ABSTRACT

The heading of the article "Reading from right to left and from back to front" is a play on the words of David A. Clines - "Reading from left to right. " The phrase "and from back to front" is added to emphasise the cultural difference existing between people living in the twenty first century and the writers and first readers of biblical texts. It is deliberately different form Clines' reading. The writer of the article claims to have been influenced by scholars working within the historical-critical paradigm of biblical studies. His is thus a historical-critical reading of Ps 24 taking into account the ancient context in which the text originated, but with a slant-it was read in the South African context.

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Correspondence:
Izak J. J. Spangenberg
Department of Old Testament and Ancient Near Eastern Studies
University of South Africa
P.O. Box 392, 0003
Email: spangijj@unisa.ac.za

 

 

James Alfred Loader, in celebration of his 65th birthday.
1 The title of the article is a play on the title of David J.A. Clines' article "The Ten Commandments, Reading from Left to Right," in Interested Parties: The Ideology of Writers and Readers of the Hebrew Bible (ed. David J.A. Clines; JSOTSup 205; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1995), 26-45. He also published an article concerning Psalm 24 in the same monograph: "A World Established on Water (Psalm 24): Reader-Response, Deconstruction and Bespoken Interpretation," in Interested Parties, 172-186.