Book V of the Psalter (Psalms 107-150) divides into three, with the Songs of the Ascents (120-134) as the central section, and the first and third units following parallel structures (historical, Davidic, alphabetical, Hallel psalms). The units are all compositions of the Return period: 107-119 for the reconstruction of the Temple, 120-134 for Nehemiah's wall-building, 135-150 for Ezra's mission. Psalms 120-134 follow the episodes of Nehemiah's 'memoir', in order. All three groups show evidence of evening-morning alternation, and were intended for festal use: 107-118 at the Passover of Ezra 6, 120-134 at the Tabernacles of Nehemiah 12, 135-150 at Ezra's Tabernacles (Neh. 8).>

The Asaph psalms (50, 73-83) are a unity. They often call God 'Elohim' and 'El', and the people 'Joseph', as Amos does; they appeal to Israelite history, the exodus and the covenant; they are written in the face of military catastrophe. In this suggestive and brilliant work, Goulder argues that they were composed in Bethel in the 720s for use as the psalmody for the autumn festival. This gives us vital new evidence for the history of the Pentateuch: there was at Bethel a historical tradition from at least the time of the oppression in Egypt to the Solomonic Empire; the Asaphites took this tradition to Jerusalem and their descendants were the Deuteronomists.>

In the second of his invigorating studies on the Psalms, Goulder builds a fascinating case for a Davidic connection in Psalms 51-72. Goulder argues that the Prayers were composed by one of David's priests, and stand in their historical order. Thus, Psalm 51, with which the sequence opens, is in Jewish tradition David's psalm of contrition for Uriah's murder, and 72 is Karl Barth (1886-1968), the Swiss Reformed professor and pastor, was once described by Pope Pius XII as the most important theologian since Thomas Aquinas. His great contribution to theology, church, and culture will take generations to appropriate and assess. As the principal author of "The Barmen Declaration," he was the intellectual leader of the German Confessing Church, the Protestant group that resisted the Third Reich. Among Barth's many books, sermons and essays, the multivolume Church Dogmatics a closely reasoned, eloquently stated argument in nearly ten thousand pages stands out as the crown of his achievement.. ..". one of the most notable theological publications of our time." Expository Times "He undoubtedly is one of the giants in the history of theology." Christianity Today the psalm for Solomon's coronation-the beginning and end of the 'Succession Narrative'. 'The whole is prefaced by a shrewd and highly entertaining account of Psalm scholarship and a discussion of the character of the "succession narrative," and rounded off by a note suggesting how the present structure of the Psalter developed.' Richard Coggins, Expository Times.