transferred metaphorically to the songs that are sung with its accompaniment. Psalms are songs for the lyre, and therefore lyric poems in the strictest sense.
III. THE HISTORY OF PSALM COMPOSITION.
Before we can seek to obtain a clear idea of the origin of the Psalm-collection we must take a general survey of the course of the development of psalm writing. The lyric is the earliest kind of poetry in general, and the Hebrew poetry, the oldest example of the poetry of antiquity that has come down to us, is therefore essentially lyric. Neither the Epos nor the Drama, but only the Mashal, has branched off from it and attained an independent form. Even prophecy, which is distinguished from psalmody by a higher impulse which the mind of the writer receives from the power of the divine mind, shares with the latter the common designation of נַבָּא (1 Chron. xxv. 1 — 3), and the psalm-singer, משׁרר, is also as such called הֹזֶה (1 Chron. xxv. 5; 2 Chron. xxix. 30, xxxv. 15, cf. 1 Chron. xv. 19 and freq.); for just as the sacred lyric often rises to the height of prophetic vision, so the prophetic epic of the future, because it is not entirely freed from the sub-
καὶ μὴ συνεφγούμενον εἰς ἦχον ἐκ τῶν κατωτάτω μερῶν, ἀλλ' ἄνωθεν ἔχων τὸν ὑπηχοῦντα χαλκόν. Augustine describes this instrument still more clearly in Ps. xlii and elsewhere: Psalterium istud organum dicitur quod de superiore parte habet testudinem, illud scilicet tympanum et concovum lignum cui chordœ innitentes resonant, cithara vero id ipsum lignum cavum et sonorum ex inferiore parte habet. In the cithern the strings pass over the sound-board, in the harp and lyre the vibrating body runs round the strings which are left free (without a bridge) and is either curved or angular as in the case of the harp, or encompasses the strings as in the lyre. Harps with an upper sounding body (whether of metal or wood, viz. lignum concavum i. e. with a hollow and hence sonorous wood, which protects the strings like a testudo and serves as a tympanum) are found both on Egyptian and on Assyrian monuments. By the psalterium described by Augustine, Cassiodorus and Isidorus understand the trigonum, which is in the form of an inverted sharp-cornered triangle; but it cannot be this that is intended because the horizontal strings of this instrument are surrounded by a three-sided sounding body, so that it must be a triangular lyre. Moreover there is also a trigon belonging to the Macedonian era which is formed like a harp (vid. Weiss’ Kostümkunde, Fig. 347) and this further tends to support our view.
