This paper aims to categorize early (c. ninth-early tenth century) Arabic psalters based on their codicology as a means to discuss their possible functions in the Christian Arabic communities. It takes special interest in the many bilingual psalters that have survived from this era and suggests that they primarily served scholarly and didactical functions and/or that they may have been used as templates to produce psalters in Arabic only, which in turn were intended for personal use. In addition to the philological approach, the paper elaborates on the concept of ‘linguistic hospitality’, as developed by Emmanuel Levinas and Paul Ricœur, as a means to think about the strong bilingual trends in the source material together with philosophical-hermeneutical theories.