How Confessions drew on Psalms
A documented line of influence: Augustine of Hippo demonstrably engaged David’s work. The commentary below is Gröblé’s, verbatim from each work’s page.
The source
Psalms
David · c. 500 BCE
BibleThe influenced
Confessions
Augustine of Hippo · c. 398
Ancient RomeRelevance
8/10
On Confessions’s page
- Augustine writes the entire Confessions as one long prayer in the voice of the Psalms
- David's lines are the grammar of the book — its address to God, its lament, its praise are all psalmic; Book 9 records Augustine's delight on first praying the Psalter himself
- Read a handful of Psalms first and the Confessions stops sounding like memoir and starts sounding like what it is: a sinner answering David
On Psalms’s page
- The prayer-book Augustine reaches for when he invents the autobiography
- His Confessions opens inside the Psalter and stays there — David's Psalms are quoted more than every other Old Testament book put together
- Augustine shapes the whole work as psalmic prayer: not a story told about God but one addressed to him, in David's borrowed voice