Terry Pruitt's Blog

The Idea of Hebrew Poetry By Terry L. Pruitt Introduction Americans dislike poetry, or at least claim that it is inaccessible. However, most parents do recite nursery rhymes to their children. Most children and parents seem to enjoy this ritual. While some of the words are crazy, like a cow jumping over the moon, few people find them inaccessible. Poets are not generally known to make a lot of money, however, when poetry is set to music it becomes a multi-billion dollar industry. Poetry is involved in the stables of these sections of the music industry: sheet music, radio stations, music recording CDs, DVDs of music videos, digital music such as iTunes and live concerts. The American culture does not care much about poetry for poetry sake but embraces poetry with outstretched arms and open wallets when presented with the right social context. In discussing poetry in the Bible, we may find ourselves lacking the right context to use as an excuse for embracing the literary form. ...

Reconciling two concepts or two facts that seem incompatible is common in most academic fields. The classic example in physics is reconciling the fact that light acts like a wave with the contrary fact that light also acts like a particle. Some scholars who study Old Testament (OT) literature however take the approach that ancient writers of the Scriptures used diverse sources and did not reconcile the sources even if they disagree significantly. With this approach, rather than attempting to see how or why two different accounts can be reasonably reconciled, the scholar assumes that one or both of the stories are not entirely true. The stories of Saul's death in 1 Samuel 31 and 2 Samuel 1 are two accounts that may be seen as either contradictory or as part of a cohesive single story. The most reasonable way to take the two stories of Saul's death is that the original author intended the audience to understand that the Amalekite was lying about having killed Saul. Some sc...

My wife turned me onto this site. They have MP3 down loads of Psalms chanted. I have only used the site today but I can already recommend it. The site belongs to the Lutheran Liturgical Brotherhood Page, but it is somewhat confusing what the page is called since the name on the title bar of the browswer does not match what is written on the page. So you may called it either "Old Testament Canticles and the Entire Psalter with Antiphons" or "Psalm Tones" . Anther site that gives resources to learn to sing the Psalms from a different approach is called "Psalm Singing - Metrical Psalters and Tunes to Sing Psalms" or again double titled "Psalters" . The first website approaches the Psalms as sung by chanting while the second approaches it by putting the Psalm in the form of a hymn tune. My first exposure to singing Scripture was to sing it as a praise and worship song. So guitars and youth leaders singing Psalm 100 was my first exposure to sing...