Psalms in the context of Psalm 109

The Bible is a collection of religious texts that are central to Christianity and Judaism, and esteemed in other Abrahamic religions such as Islam. The Bible is an anthology (a compilation of texts of a variety of forms) originally written in Hebrew (with some parts in Aramaic) and Koine Greek. The texts include instructions, stories, poetry, prophecies, and other genres. The collection of materials accepted as part of the Bible by a particular religious tradition or community is called a biblical canon. Believers generally consider it to be a product of divine inspiration, but the way they understand what that means and interpret the text varies.

The religious texts, or scriptures, were compiled by different religious communities into various official collections. The earliest contained the first five books of the Bible, called the Torah ('Teaching') in Hebrew and the Pentateuch (meaning 'five books') in Greek. The second-oldest part was a collection of narrative histories and prophecies (the Nevi'im). The third collection, the Ketuvim, contains psalms, proverbs, and narrative histories. Tanakh (Hebrew: תָּנָ״ךְ‎, romanized: Tanaḵ) is an alternate term for the Hebrew Bible. The Masoretic Text is the medieval version of the Tanakh—written in Hebrew and Aramaic—that is considered the authoritative text of the Hebrew Bible by modern Rabbinic Judaism. The Septuagint is a Koine Greek translation of the Tanakh from the third and second centuries BCE; it largely overlaps with the Hebrew Bible.

Islam is an Abrahamic monotheistic religion based on the Quran and the teachings of Muhammad. Adherents of Islam are called Muslims, who are estimated to number 2 billion worldwide and are the world's second-largest religious population, after Christianity.

Muslims believe that there is a primordial faith that was revealed many times through earlier prophets and messengers, including Adam, Noah, Abraham, Moses, and Jesus, and they believe that Islam is the universal and complete version of this faith. Muslims consider the Quran to be the verbatim word of God and the unaltered, final revelation. Alongside the Quran, Muslims also believe in previous revelations, such as the Tawrat (the Torah), the Zabur (Psalms), and the Injil (Gospel). They believe that Muhammad is the main and final of God's prophets, through whom the religion was completed. The teachings and normative examples of Muhammad, called the Sunnah, documented in accounts called the hadith, provide a constitutional model for Muslims. Islam is based on the belief in the oneness and uniqueness of God (tawhid), and belief in an afterlife (akhirah) with the Last Judgment—wherein the righteous will be rewarded in paradise (jannah) and the unrighteous will be punished in hell (jahannam). The Five Pillars, considered obligatory acts of worship, are the Islamic oath and creed (shahada), daily prayers (salah), almsgiving (zakat), fasting (sawm) in the month of Ramadan, and a pilgrimage (hajj) to Mecca. Islamic law, sharia, touches on virtually every aspect of life, from banking and finance and welfare to men's and women's roles and the environment. The two main religious festivals are Eid al-Fitr and Eid al-Adha. The three holiest sites in Islam are Masjid al-Haram in Mecca, Prophet's Mosque in Medina, and al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem.

The ancient Hebrews identified poetic portions in their sacred texts, as shown by their entitling as "psalms" or as "chants" passages such as Exodus 15:1-19 and Numbers 21:17-20; a song or chant (shir) is, according to the primary meaning of the term, poetry. The question as to whether the poetical passages of the Old Testament show signs of regular rhythm or meter remains unsolved. Many of the features of Biblical poetry are lost when the poems are translated to English.

Muslims (Arabic: المسلمون, romanized: al-Muslimūn, lit. 'submitters [to God]') are people who adhere to Islam, a monotheistic religion belonging to the Abrahamic tradition. They consider the Quran, the foundational religious text of Islam, to be the verbatim word of the God of Abraham (or Allah) as it was revealed to Muhammad, the last Islamic prophet. Alongside the Quran, Muslims also believe in previous revelations, such as the Tawrat (Torah), the Zabur (Psalms), and the Injeel (Gospel). These earlier revelations are associated with Judaism and Christianity, which are regarded by Muslims as earlier versions of Islam. The majority of Muslims also follow the teachings and practices attributed to Muhammad (sunnah) as recorded in traditional accounts (hadith).

With an estimated population of almost 2 billion followers, Muslims comprise around 26% of the world's total population. In descending order, the percentage of people who identify as Muslims on each continental landmass stands at: 45% of Africa, 25% of Asia and Oceania collectively, 6% of Europe, and 1% of the Americas. Additionally, in subdivided geographical regions, the figure stands at: 91% of the Middle East–North Africa, 90% of Central Asia, 65% of the Caucasus, 42% of Southeast Asia, 32% of South Asia, and 42% of sub-Saharan Africa.

Prophets in Islam (Arabic: ٱلْأَنْبِيَاء فِي ٱلْإِسْلَام, romanized: al-anbiyāʾ fī al-islām) are individuals in Islam who are believed to spread God's message on Earth and serve as models of ideal human behaviour. Some prophets are categorized as messengers (Arabic: رُسُل, romanized: rusul; sing. رَسُول, rasool), those who transmit divine revelation, most of them through the interaction of an angel. Muslims believe that many prophets existed, including many not mentioned in the Quran. The Quran states: "And for every community there is a messenger." Belief in the Islamic prophets is one of the six articles of the Islamic faith.

Muslims believe that the first prophet was also the first human being Adam, created by God. Many of the revelations delivered by the 48 prophets in Judaism and many prophets of Christianity are mentioned as such in the Quran with the Arabic versions of their names; for example, the Jewish Elisha is called Alyasa', Job is Ayyub, Jesus is 'Isa, etc. The Torah given to Moses (Musa) is called Tawrat, the Psalms given to David (Dawud) is the Zabur, the Gospel given to Jesus is Injil.

The holy books are a number of religious scriptures that are regarded by Muslims as having valid divine significance, in that they were authored by God (Allah) through a variety of prophets and messengers, all of which predate the Quran. Among scriptures considered to be valid revelations, three that are named in the Quran are: the Tawrat (Arabic for Torah), received by prophets and messengers amongst the Israelites; the Zabur (Psalms), received by David; and the Injil (Arabic for the Gospel), received by Jesus. Additionally, the Quran mentions the Scrolls of Abraham and the Scrolls of Moses, as well as individual revelations and guidance to specific Messengers.

Muslims hold the Quran, as it was revealed to Muhammad, to be God's final revelation to mankind, and therefore a completion and confirmation of previous scriptures, such as the Bible. Despite the primacy that Muslims place upon the Quran in this context, belief in the validity of earlier Abrahamic scriptures is one of the six Islamic articles of faith. However, for most self-identified Muslims, the level of this belief is restricted by the concept of tahrif.

Zabur (Arabic: ٱلزَّبُورِ, romanized: az-zabūr) is, according to Islam, the holy book of David, one of the holy books revealed by Allah before the Quran, alongside others such as the Tawrāh (Torah) and the Injīl (Gospel). Muslim tradition maintains that the Zabur mentioned in the Quran is the Psalms of Dawud (David in Islam).

The Christian monks and ascetics of pre-Islamic Arabia may be associated in pre-Islamic Arabic poetry with texts called mazmour, which in other contexts may refer to palm leaf documents. This has been interpreted by some as referring to psalters.

Injil (Arabic: إنجيل, romanized: ʾInjīl, alternative spellings: Ingil or Injeel; pl. ʾanājīl (أناجيل)) is the Arabic name for the Gospel of Jesus (Isa). This Injil is described by the Quran as one of the four Islamic holy books which was revealed by Allah, the others being the Zabur (traditionally understood as being the Psalms), the Tawrat (the Torah), and the Quran itself. The word Injil is also used in the Quran, the hadith and early Muslim documents to refer to both a book and revelations made by God to Jesus.

Religious music (also sacred music) is a type of music that is performed or composed for religious use or through religious influence. It may overlap with ritual music, which is music, sacred or not, performed or composed for or as a ritual. Religious songs have been described as a source of strength, as well as a means of easing pain, improving one's mood, and assisting in the discovery of meaning in one's suffering. While style and genre vary broadly across traditions, religious groups still share a variety of musical practices and techniques.

Religious music takes on many forms and varies throughout cultures. Religions such as Islam, Judaism, and Sinism demonstrate this, splitting off into different forms and styles of music that depend on varying religious practices. Sometimes, religious music uses similar instruments across cultures. The use of drums (and drumming), for example, is seen commonly in numerous religions such as Rastafari and Sinism, while wind instruments (the horn, saxophone, trumpet and variations of such) can be commonly found in Islam and Judaism.

A hymnwriter (or hymn writer, hymnist, hymnodist, hymnographer, etc.) is someone who writes the text, music, or both of hymns. The Christian tradition views the composition of hymns as dating back to before the time of David, who is traditionally believed to have composed many of the Psalms. The term hymnodist, in the United States more than in other regions, broadens the scope to include the study of hymns.

Leviathan (/lɪˈvaɪ.əθən/ le-VIE-ə-thən; Hebrew: לִוְיָתָן, romanized: Livyāṯān; Greek: Λεβιάθαν) is a sea serpent demon noted in theology and mythology. It is referenced in the Hebrew Bible, as a metaphor for a powerful enemy, notably Babylon. It is referred to in Psalms, the Book of Job, the Book of Isaiah, and the pseudepigraphical Book of Enoch. Leviathan is often an embodiment of chaos, threatening to eat the damned when their lives are over. In the end, it is annihilated. Christian theologians identified Leviathan with the demon of the deadly sin envy. According to Ophite Diagrams, Leviathan encapsulates the space of the material world.

In Gnosis, it encompasses the world like a sphere and incorporates the souls of those who are too attached to material things, so they cannot reach the realm of God's fullness beyond, from which all good emanates. In Hobbes, Leviathan becomes a metaphor for the omnipotence of the state, which maintains itself by educating children in its favour, generation after generation. This idea of eternal power that 'feeds' on its constantly self-produced citizens is based on a concept of conditioning that imprints the human's conscience in a mechanical manner. It deals in a good and evil dualism: a speculative natural law according to which man should behave towards man like a ravenous wolf, and the pedagogically transmitted laws of the state as Leviathan, whose justification for existence is seen in containing such frightening conditions.

A rubric is a word or section of text that is traditionally written or printed in red ink for emphasis. The word derives from the Latin rubrica, meaning red ochre or red chalk, and originates in medieval illuminated manuscripts from the 13th century or earlier. In these, red letters were used to highlight initial capitals (particularly of psalms), section headings and names of religious significance, a practice known as rubrication, which was a separate stage in the production of a manuscript.

Rubric can also mean the red ink or paint used to make rubrics, or the pigment used to make it. Although red was most often used, other colours came into use from the late Middle Ages onwards, and the word rubric was used for these also. Medievalists can use patterns of rubrication to help identify textual traditions.

The original Jewish and Christian bibles did not have chapter and verse divisions—such divisions forming part of the paratext of the Bible. Since the early 13th century, most copies and editions of the Bible have presented all but the shortest of the scriptural books with divisions into chapters, generally a page or so in length. Since the mid-16th century, editors have further subdivided each chapter into verses – each consisting of a few short lines or of one or more sentences. Sometimes a sentence spans more than one verse, as in the case of Ephesians 2:8–9, and sometimes there is more than one sentence in a single verse, as in the case of Genesis 1:2. The Jewish divisions of the Hebrew text differ at various points from those used by Christians. For instance, Jewish tradition regards the ascriptions to many Psalms as independent verses or as parts of the subsequent verses, whereas established Christian practice treats each Psalm ascription as independent and unnumbered, resulting in 116 more verses in Jewish versions than in the Christian texts. Some chapter divisions also occur in different places, e.g. Hebrew Bibles have 1 Chronicles 5:27–41 where Christian translations have 1 Chronicles 6:1–15.

The Poetic Books, also called the Sapiential Books, are a division of the Christian Bible grouping five or seven books (depending on the canon) in the Old Testament. The term "Sapiential Books" refers to the same set, although not all the Psalms are usually regarded as belonging to the Wisdom tradition.

In terms of the Tanakh, it includes the three poetic books of Ketuvim, as well as Ecclesiastes and the Song of Songs from the Five Megillot. Wisdom and Sirach are also part of the Poetic Books, but are not part of the Hebrew Bible, and are seen by Protestant Christians as apocryphal, for which reason they are excluded from Protestant Bibles.