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thought, regardless of the intermediate steps of development, is here continued. Thus, for example, Albertus Magnus in his commentary (Opp. t. vii.), on the principle: Constat, quod totus liber iste de Christo, at once expounds Beatus vir (Psa 1:1), and the whole Ps., de Christo et ejus corpore ecclesia. But as we find in the Fathers occasional instances of deep insight into the meaning of passages, and occasional flashes of thought of lasting value, so even here the reading, especially of the mystics, will repay one. - The greatest authority in psalm-exposition for the Middle Ages was Augustine. From Augustine, and perhaps we may add from Cassiodorus, Notker Labeo (d. 1022), the monk of St. Gall, drew the short annotations which, verse by verse, accompany his German translation of the Psalms (vol. ii. of H. Hattemer's Denkmahle des Mittelalters). In like manner the Latin Psalter-catena of bishop Bruno of Würzburg (d. 1045), mentioned above, is compiled from Augustine and Cassiodorus, but also from Jerome, Bede and Gregory. And the Syriac annotations to the Psalms of Gregory Barhebraeus (d. 1286), - of which Tullberg and Koraen, Upsala 1842, and Schröter, Breslau 1857, have published specimens, - are merely of importance in connection with the history of exposition, and are moreover in no way distinguished from the mediaeval method.
The mediaeval synagogue exposition is wanting in the recognition of Christ, and consequently in the fundamental condition required for a spiritual understanding of the Psalms. But as we are indebted to the Jews for the transmission of the codex of the Old Testament, we also owe the transmission of the knowledge of Hebrew to them. So far the Jewish interpreters give us what the Christian interpreters of the same period were not able to tender. The interpretations of passages from the Psalms scattered up and down in the Talmud are mostly unsound, arbitrary, and strange. And the Midrash on the Ps., bearing the title טוב שׁוחר (vid., Zunz, Vorträge, 266ff.), and the Midrash-catenae entitled ילקוט, of which at present only ילקוט שׁמעוני (by Simeon Kara ha-Darshan) is known, and ילקוט מכירי (by Machir b. Abba-Mari), contain far more that is limitlessly digressive than what is to the point and usable. This class of psalm-exposition was always employed for the thoroughly practical end