Week 5: On Christian Teaching

Augustine's first step, in interpreting the psalms, would be to first learn the original Hebrew that the text was written in, so that he could understand it directly without the danger of losing any meaning in translation. Then he would proceed to read and memorize the entirety of the psalms. By reading them, he would get a sense of them as a whole; by memorizing them he would create a network of connections between interrelated and referential psalms, making the later stages of understanding easier.

His first task of analysis would be to find the most obvious and direct passages of the psalms, and interpret them. He could easily disover by this that god punishes the wicked and rewards the just. Next he would attempt to interpret the more unclear passages- when he encountered enemies saying "hurrah hurrah" of the speaker of the prayer, he might be initially confused. But by referencing this to the body of the work, he would find that this is a traditional thing for enemies to say when their foe (the prayer reader) is faltering. Thus it would be clarified that these enemies are not, in fact, counter-intuitively celebrating their enemy.

He would also in this same manner resolve conflicting ideas within the text. For example, when he reads in psalm 60 that god made his people "drink poison wine", or the entirety of psalm 44, he might reference to psalm 66, wherein this phenomenon is explained- "For You tested us, God, You refined us as silver refined". Thus, all instances of god causing suffering for his people can be interpreted as testing and refining.