This position has been steadily resisted by some in the interests of tradition, but without any real religious reason being adduced; for the idea that this decision denies the authority of Christ and His Apostles is disposed of by the simple fact that in the New Testament, David is simply a name for the Psalter (Ps. ii. is ascribed to David in Acts ii. 34; it is anonymous in the Psalter. Heb. iv. 7 has "in" David; this does not refer to authorship, for the author of this Epistle never quotes the Scriptures save anonymously). To others it will perhaps come as a great relief to feel that the writer of some of the most spiritual utterances of personal religion need not be identified with the historical David. There are awful possibilities of failure in the most religious men, but the problem here is more difficult than that: it would compel us to think of David as displaying in public no hint of the secrets of his inner religious life, but very much that contradicts them. The traditional idea of the authorship of the Psalms has done grave injustice to the sincere if passionate character of the historical David. The origin of such a tradition is due as much to the spiritual blindness as to the careless historic judgment of later Judaism, and its acceptance by generations of Christian students speaks a greater reverence for tradition than for religious insight. To be compelled to date the great majority of the Psalms within the period 500-150 B.C., is indeed a comforting interpretation of Jewish history; for it shows that the barren ground of post-exilic times was not without its tender flowers of piety and an appreciation of the prophetic religion far beyond that of the Prophets' contemporaries. The gloss of legalism, which can be traced in the Psalter, and which was inevitable when these private devotions were adapted to the Levitical worship of the Temple, has not succeeded in obscuring, but rather brings into greater clearness the spiritual elements in the Psalms.