Something in class that we have discussed in class is the context of these psalms. Who used them? Why did they read them, how did they interpret them? How were they used for beneficial purposes?
For this entry I would like to focus on the different uses of the psalms, specifically for the pilgrims. For the Christians who first landed in the new world, it is quite viable to believe that these psalms provided a great sense of security to the pilgrims who first came to America.
Going outside our text to, these peoples were confronted with the conflicts with the local Indian populations, famine, water shortage, not to mention that the true civilization that they knew was thousands of miles away across the Atlantic Ocean[1]. The Bay Psalm Book, was first printed in 1640 in Cambridge, Massachusetts, just over 30 years after the first permanent British settlement in Jamestown, Virginia was started[2]. As a central guideline to the settlers, principles of the bible provided strict guidelines for those living and praising god in the new world[3]. The book of psalms, specifically the Bay Psalm Book provided the puritan settlers an outlet to both praise the lord and come together as a community to recite the poetic verses that were also labeled as “singsong”[4].
From off these facts, it is evident that these Psalms served a different purpose than they do in our current Robert Alter text, which simply makes the psalms easier for us to understand. From a religious standpoint, the Bay Psalm Book is more literal and shows what was read and possibly(up to our understanding) how it sounded for the Pilgrims. In my opinion it is possible that those who read them did so for security, comfort, and to constitute a feeling of togetherness among the settlers.
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