CATECHETICAL MOMENTS IN THE BIBLICAL PSALMS AND THE ANCIENT ORIENTAL LYRIC POETRY
CATECHETICAL MOMENTS IN THE BIBLICAL PSALMS AND THE ANCIENT ORIENTAL LYRIC POETRY

Summary/Abstract: In the Ancient Orient, a real sapiential literature had existed ever since the third-second millennium BC. This cultural and religious context could not miss the psalmic model, frequently used in the royal courts and temples dedicated to various deities. Hebrew poetry developed based on the literary structure of the Oriental lyric poetry, with some Orientalists claiming that many fragments of past lyric poetry had metamorphosed into biblical psalms. However, biblical psalms represent a distinct production from the literature of the time, having a special theme and spiritual significance, even opposed to those of the Oriental psalms. Religion has not been a barrier to psycho-social development, but rather a framework in which man expressed his belief that the world and the universe could not have emerged from nothing, and that all the earthly and celestial harmony was the work of a superior entity. As an autodidact of cosmogony, man has known how to lyrically penetrate the secrets of gods and intuit his own divine spark. It remains our duty to cultivate these universal values for the common good, regardless of the obstacles of today's postmodernism, and to believe that truth, good, and beauty will prevail forever.

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