Mistake in Psalms Explorer?

Mitch Davis

I'm not a scholar regarding the Psalms so I'm throwing this out there if a change needs to be updated in the Psalms Explorer.

All places I've read mention David being the author of 73 of the 150 psalms, yet Psalms Explorer states that David is the author of 74 psalms. Also, when I add the authors from Psalms Explorer with the rest of the authors (excluding the LXX authors) there is a total of 151 psalms, which leads me to think the mistake is with Psalms Explorer. 

There is one other minor discrepancy: when I click on David (author of 74 psalms), then break it down to structure...the math tells me he is the author of 78 psalms. Either the math is wrong or a psalm has multiple structures applied to it? 

Graham Criddle

Mitch Davis said:

All places I've read mention David being the author of 73 of the 150 psalms, yet Psalms Explorer states that David is the author of 74 psalms

If you filter on "Attribution:David" you get - as you point out - 74 but one of them is tagged as "Anonymous (LXX)"

Selecting that filter shows this is Ps 124

So, unless there is something in the LXX, that suggests it should be seen as anonymous it looks like this is the tagging problem.

Mitch Davis said:

Also, when I add the authors from Psalms Explorer with the rest of the authors (excluding the LXX authors) there is a total of 151 psalms, which leads me to think the mistake is with Psalms Explorer. 

But my suggestion above doesn't address this issue!

Mitch Davis said:

Either the math is wrong or a psalm has multiple structures applied to it? 

Three psalms of David do have multiple structures associated with them

Mark Barnes

Mitch Davis said:

All places I've read mention David being the author of 73 of the 150 psalms, yet Psalms Explorer states that David is the author of 74 psalms. Also, when I add the authors from Psalms Explorer with the rest of the authors (excluding the LXX authors) there is a total of 151 psalms, which leads me to think the mistake is with Psalms Explorer. 

I don't think Graham's right about why the Explorer says there are 74 Davidic Psalms.

I think the issue is that Psalm 10 is tagged as Davidic, even though there's not superscription say that it is. That's probably because Psalms 9 and 10 form an acrostic, so most scholars agree that Psalms 9 and 10 were once joined together.

So although 73 Psalms are ascribed to David, its very likely that he also wrote what we call Psalm 10, and that (rightly or wrongly) is the position taken by Psalms Explorer.

Mitch Davis

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/974123#Comment_974123

Thanks for the possible explanations, that's further along than I was able to figure out.

Mitch Davis

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/974123#Comment_974123

Mark Barnes said:

I think the issue is that Psalm 10 is tagged as Davidic, even though there's not superscription say that it is. That's probably because Psalms 9 and 10 form an acrostic, so most scholars agree that Psalms 9 and 10 were once joined together.

This makes sense. Could it be that many (majority?) of the authors I read base their psalm authorship on the LXX vs. the MT (where 9 & 10 are grouped)?

Mark Barnes

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/974156#Comment_974156

Mitch Davis said:

Could it be that many (majority?) of the authors I read base their psalm authorship on the LXX vs. the MT (where 9 & 10 are grouped)?

I think it's more likely that the people you're reading are saying something like "73 psalms are attributed/ascribed to David", rather than "73 psalms were written by David". The former is true regardless of how you view the relationship between Psalm 9 and 10.