Colloquia Maruliana, Vol. 12 , 2003.
Izvorni znanstveni članak
The Psalmic Motivation in Judith's "Canticle or Song"
Istvan Lokos
Sažetak
A short and selective catalogue of the reception of the psalmic texts in the Book of Judith tells us that the author of this deuterocanonical text of the Bible used the psalmody tradition a great deal. The Book of Psalms contains 150 psalms and the actual collection of psalms according to the doxologies is divided into five “books”; the Book of Psalms contains various literary kinds, such as: complaints, songs of praise, hymns, royal psalms and so-called shorter literary kinds. In these literary kinds we can find a historical orientation, didacticism, wisdom and so on. Perhaps the most important characteristic of the psalms is the teaching. Teaching in the Book of Psalms is divided into three thematic wholes: God; the believer and suffering; sin, repentance, forgiveness of sins. A separate theological analysis confirms to us that God as creator of the world and order in the world was in the history of the people of Israel always the defender of his people, i.e., of the people of Israel. Testimony is found in the so-called historical psalms, when the author of the psalms, in a framework of praise and learning, brings to life all those great themes that are known to us from the Pentateuch. If we consider the Biblical text of the history of Judith and Holofernes, we have to conclude that the psalmist’s theme of God, the believer and suffering and repentance and forgive-ness of sins appears numbers of times in the Book of Judith in a theological sense. All this appears several times, symbolically, manifoldly and out of scale in the segment of the Book of Judith in which Achior leaves his pagan faith and con-verts to the faith of Israel: “Then Achior, seeing the strength that had been shown by the God of Israel, left his false laws, believed in God, made his way…, and was entered into the number of the people of Israel, as his descendants are to this day”. After this it is logical to conclude that Jehovah is the only and almighty god that can defeat the ungodly forces and always have the power to defend his nation in the severest of situations. The people of Bethulia, knowing this, and being convinced of the power of God, at the end of the Assyrian campaign, see that the deed of Judith is a paradigm of faith and trust in God and for this reason have to thank him. After the victory of Judith over the Assyrians, the people of Bethulia celebrate the victrix, Judith, who sings the song of gratitude to God, in the form of the Biblical text the psalmic paraphrase.
Ključne riječi
Hrčak ID:
7981
URI
Datum izdavanja:
22.4.2003.
Posjeta: 2.273 *