These, then, are my two opening questions: (1) Why do we cling to the Psalter and (2) why do we so aggressively limit the parts of the Psalter to which we cling? Or, put differently, we might ask: why do we have a love-hate relationship with the Psalms? Why are we so ambivalent about this script of faith? I suggest that one answer will suffice for both questions. Because we have a closely held world of sign, symbol, and memory (often unnamed, unacknowledged, and certainly uncriticized) that pertains
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