Psalms

The Book of Psalms, also known by its traditional Hebrew title tehillim (praises), belongs to the Wisdom literature of the Hebrew Scriptures and the Old Testament of the Christian canon. Comprising 150 individual psalms (from the Greek word psalmoior songs sung to a harp), the Book of Psalms is both the longest and most varied in tone, content, and message of its individual religious lyrical poems. While authorship of the psalms is attributed to King David, biblical scholars note that the period of their composition spanned half a millennium (c. 1000 BCE–c. 500 BCE) and its compilation most likely took place after the end of the Babylonian captivity (c. 537 BCE), with reference to the Book of Psalms as an entity around the first century CE, in the New Testament books of the Gospel of Luke (20:42) and the Acts of the Apostles (1:20). The psalms have been classified under different genres, such as praise; thanksgiving; supplication psalms; individual and communal lament psalms; songs...