Born Again Skeptic

In another thread, Diogenes the Cynic saidI'm not challenging this claim, I'm just curious who actually wrote the Psalms (and some substantiation for it) because my mother who "adores" both David and the Psalms loves to throw a few at me whenever I see her. It would be great if I could inform her that David actually didn't write the Psalms. I know this really isn't the greatest thing to do, but usually I keep my opinions to myself and get a lot of biblical and Christian bullshit thrown at me from her and some other family members - and it would be nice for once to give her something to chew on for a little while. Thanks.

Dean Anderson

I'm no expert, but from what I've read the Psalms are a disparate collection of devotional hymns, poems and prose snippets with a wide variety of ages and sources.

Whilst most appear to be from a 1st-2nd century BCE (Maccabean?) period, which is when I am led to believe they were collected together, but many could be much older - and indeed some may be remnants of pre-Biblical oral traditions or songs.

And now I wait for one of the heavyweights to come in and tell me I'm talking rubbish...

butswana

There isn't any evidence that David was a real dude. A couple of mentions on stele fragments that may or may not be forgeries, if memory serves me. Possibly some tribal leader, but not some big bad ass king ruling over a unified nation.
Wasn't the OT cobbled together circa 700 BCE, possibly under the reign of Josiah?

Dean Anderson

Yep, that about sums up the current archaeological position (although I am not sure most archaeologists would refer to David as a "dude", real or otherwise).

The basics (the Torah, the Deuteronomic history, and some of the earlier Prophets) were, but many of the other books in the OT weren't written until centuries later.

Amaleq13

This is from Peter's "other" website, Early Jewish Writings. It looks like you are little behind in the dating-Psalms trend.

Only the cool ones.