as a kind of double introduction, a
frontispiece and vignette title-page to the whole collection, the first
book proper only two which are not regarded as David's. The second book
has a much smaller proportion, only eighteen out of thirty-one. The
third book has but one, the fourth two; while the fifth has fifteen,
eight of which (cxxxviii.-cxlv.) occur almost at the close. The
intention is obvious--to throw the Davidic psalms as much as possible
together in the first two books. And the inference is not unnatural that
these may have formed an earlier collection, to which were afterwards
added the remaining three, with a considerable body of alleged psalms of
David, which had subsequently come to light, placed side by side at the
end, so as to round off the whole.

Be that as it may, one thing is clear from the arrangement of the
Psalter, namely, that the superscriptions which give the authors' names
are at least as old as the collection itself; for they have guided the
order of the collection in the grouping not only of Davidic psalms, but
also of those attributed to the sons of Korah (xlii.-xlix.) and to Asaph
(lxxiii.-lxxxiii.)

The question of the reliableness of these superscriptions is hotly
debated. The balance of modern opinion is decidedly against their
genuineness. As in greater matters, so here "the higher criticism" comes
to the consideration of their claims with a prejudice against them, and
on very arbitrary grounds determines for itself, quite irrespective of
these ancient voices, the date and authorship of the psalms. The extreme
form of this tendency is to be found in the masterly work of Ewald, who
has devoted all his vast power of criticism (and eked it out with all
his equally great power of confident assertion) to the book, and has
come to the conclusion that we have but eleven of David's psalms,--which
is surely a result that may lead to questionings as to the method which
has attained it.

These editorial notes are proved to be of extreme antiquity by such
considerations as these: The Septuagint translators found them, and did
not understand them; the synagogue preserves no traditions to explain
them; the Book of Chronicles throws no light upon them; they are very
rare in the two last books of the Psalter (Delitzsch, ii. 393). In some
cases they are obviously erroneous, but in the greater number there is
nothing inconsistent with their correctness in the psalms to which they
are appended; while