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Originally Posted by aron
Unfortunately my presentational skills aren't up to the job, . . .
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Maybe for this task. But in general you do a right spiffy job of it.
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Originally Posted by aron
. . . but I wanted to put out an idea: Look at the Psalms as a kind of spiritualization of the historical narrative, ...
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Well that makes sense. Then it makes sense that the Psalms can at one moment be soaring within those realms of spiritualization, and then be crying to God to slay my enemies, and being happy bashing babies against the rocks.
I understand why Lee couldn't accept all of the Psalms. You point out NT support of the Psalms, which is clearly true. But much of it, okay some of it -- too much of it -- in the Psalms, strikes as being anti-Christ; in that it's not like Christ found in the NT.
The way I see OT support in the NT is: what else did they have to go on? They were far worse off than we are today, with our limited materials and documentation, to go on. And we're bad off.
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Originally Posted by aron
which spiritualization was picked up and amplified by the NT writers. A classic example is of Melchizedek. A historical character, briefly inserted into the narrative of events. Then the psalmist gives it a kind of mystical spin: "You are a priest forever according to the order of Melchizedek." The NT writer says, "Hey! This is Christ!" and then amplifies it.
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Interesting that Melchizedek was the Pagan King Priest of Salem -- "He was priest of God Most High." But he didn't know the right name for God. Did Abram set him straight, chide him, and condemn him to hell so to speak, for calling God El Elyon, and not Yahweh? No! "Abram gave him a tenth of everything."
We should learn by this, to be careful how we judge and treat others, even those that don't believe like us, or at all ... even pagans, or worse, Unitarian Universalists
... Abram, the father of faith, wasn't dogmatic, so maybe we shouldn't be.
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Originally Posted by aron
We don't know how much of David's original work remains . . .
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As I was saying. We have only what we have. So we're left guessing. And we, and Lee, do and did plenty of that. A'guessing here, a'guessing there, everywhere a'guessing. Even about the Psalms.
Can we really blame Lee for his approach to the Psalms? He was guessing just like the rest of us. The most we can say about Lee, or the worst, is that he was nothing special. In the end he was just like the rest of us ... but with an extraordinary sense of grandiose about himself.
And if we wouldn't have fallen for it Lee would have been just another China man come to America -- which oddly enough he was -- running away from messing in his nest in Taiwan, leaving carnage, if not crimes, in his wake.