What Are Noncanonical Psalms?

In the Jewish biblical canon, the book of Psalms comprises 150 poetic prayers, each considered its own chapter of the book. Several additional psalms, sometimes called apocryphal or noncanonical psalms, appear in other versions of the Bible. The Septuagint includes one additional psalm (Psalm 151), and four more psalms (Psalms 152–155) are included in the Peshitta. (Though these psalms are not included in the Jewish, Catholic, or Protestant canons, Psalm 151 is included in the Eastern Orthodox canon and some versions of the Apocrypha.)

Among the Dead Sea Scrolls found at Qumran are several versions of the book of Psalms that differ from the version used in Jewish Bibles today both in the order of the psalms and in some of their content. Within these scrolls, interdispersed with the familiar, canonical psalms, are additional ones, including Hebrew versions of Psalms 151, 154, and 155. (In the scrolls themselves, the psalms are unnumbered.)

Tradition attributed the noncanonical psalms, like the canonical ones, to King David, and the Peshitta associates some of the psalms with particular events in David's life. A passage in the Psalms Scroll from cave 11 at Qumran elaborates on this attribution, describing David as the author of 4,050 psalms.