History Meets Emotion

Form Criticism is an important school in the study of the Bible,whose earliest period can be traced back to Julius Wellhausen.It's main representatives are Hermann Gunkel,Sigmund Mowinckel and Claus Westermann.Form Criticism is a prominent discipline in western Bible studies,but relatively few studies have been done in Chinese.This dissertation aims to fill the blank of this research field in the domestic academic circle.Chapter one introduces the concept of Form Criticism,sorts out the academic context of the main characters of Form Criticism,and presents the overall characteristics of Form Criticism to highlight the unique contribution of Claus Westermann.Chapter two analyzes Claus Westermann's classification of Psalms,comparing the Babylonian psalms with the Biblical psalms.Chapter three sorts out the feelings of praise in Claus Westermann's psalms according to categorical classification.Chapter four clarifies the feelings of Lamentation in Claus Westermann's psalms.Chapter five points out that Claus Westermann's unique contribution lies in the combination of the “representation” of history and the psalms.