are pre-exilic. It should also be noted that some scholars who accept a temple setting for psalms generally make an exception of the wisdom and torah psalms, locating them in a school context, but even this is somewhat doubtful (see Chapter 4). As a book of cultic songs the Psalter has sometimes been referred to in the past as ‘the hymn book of the second temple’, i.e. of the post-exilic period. This is fair enough, provided that we remember that a considerable part of it was also the ‘hymn book’