Israel's Praise: Doxology against Idolatry and Ideology
Brueggemann's account of what Israel's worship language actually does — and his working distinction between thanksgiving, which names a concrete deed just done, and praise, which celebrates character in general. His warning runs the same way: praise that loses touch with concrete, nameable thanks drifts into ideology. Goodreads 4.10.
Walter Brueggemann’s 1988 study of Israel’s doxology is cited in this directory for one load-bearing distinction: biblical thanksgiving is concrete — it names what was done, by whom, for whom — while praise celebrates who God is in general. That distinction, and his argument about what happens when worship loses the concrete deed, is the scholarly spine of the directory’s teaching page on gratitude in the Bible.
One influential Old Testament scholar's socio-critical reading, from a broadly Protestant, liberation-adjacent school — not a consensus statement of "the" biblical view, and devotional traditions read the same psalms differently. Scholarship about worship language, not evidence that any practice produces any outcome.
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