Download or read book Reading from the Beginning written by Nancy L. DeClaissé-Walford and published by Mercer University Press. This book was released on 1997 with total page 166 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The canonical shape of the Hebrew Bible reveals the footprints of the communities of faith that formed that literature. Nancy deClaisse-Walford explores the process by which the postexilic community selected, appropriated, and shaped various psalms into the Hebrew Psalter. The Psalter, she concludes, tells its own story of the history of ancient Israel and gives its shaping community and subsequent believing communities a rationale for continued existence as a people with God as their king.