Psalm 29 as Semiotic System: A Linguistic Reading

Abstract

This study is an attempt to read Psalm 29 through the interpretive lens of insights taken from Czech structuralist and Russian Formalist literary theory. These two perspectives on literature share the theoretical perspective that a poetic work may be analyzed on the analogy of a structuralist approach to the study of a natural language. The article advocates a reading of Psalm 29 in which its own internal structure—its own set (Einstellung)—expresses not so much what it means but how it means.