In book two of Saint Augustine’s On Christian Teaching I found that there are many different ways to interpret the Psalms through his examples of interpreting scriptures. Many of the Psalms are kind of ambiguous, therefore we should as he states; “follow the ideas rather than the words”. I really like this concept and for some strange reason it makes a whole lot of sense. I guess I can draw a connection between his ideas and the discussion we had in class on Psalm 18. Many people visualized the speaker in a literal battle, but for me I guess it’s made clear that I was just focusing on the ideas as oppose to the actual words.
“But casual readers are mislead by problems and ambiguities of many kinds, mistaking one thing for another” (Augustine 32). This connects with my personal beliefs while reading the Psalms. The author was more focused on historical context; his interpretation of the Psalms kind of took away from the actual meaning. I found a way to connect most of the Psalms with personal experience to understand them. Augustine’s ideas are very helpful for interpreting the Psalms. I think if Augustine was in our Religious Studies class trying to interpret the Psalms he would say: Ignore Alters translations for they are just words; rather follow your ideas.
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