I’ve been thinking a bit lately about how the christology of early Christianity appears to have been given shape by the singing of early Christianity: Homes and communities that customarily sang the Davidic psalsms, thereby entering into the story of David’s suffering and vindication, came to hear Jesus as the central voice of this liturgy…
the canonical psalms, as the prayer-book of the local Jewish communities, were also part of that living culture. In fact, it is likely that the psalms played a role in the emerging communal rituals of the followers of Jesus after his death….
If the reading, singing, or chanting of the psalms was part of the communal worship of the followers of Jesus from the time of his death onward, these oral performances of the psalms, perhaps associated with homilies or other forms of teaching, may have been the occasion for the re-reading of the psalms of individual lament with reference to the death of Jesus. (A.Y. Collins, ‘The Appropriation of the Psalms of Individual Lament by Mark’)
Listen to Paul in Romans 15:8-10: “For I tell you that Christ has become a servant of the circumcised on behalf of the truth of God in order that he might confirm the promises given to the patriarchs, and in order that the Gentiles might glorify God for his mercy. As it is written, ‘Therefore I will confess you among the Gentiles, and sing praises to your name’; and again he says, ‘Rejoice, O Gentiles, with his people’“
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