Psalter pscholarship

Open-access journal on Biblical translations on Ancient World Online. This concerns this Psalter.

First up, the Psalter tends to be the most-copied book in any language. From John Lee, the Greek Psalter was late-Ptolemaic, second-century B.C. This is bourne out by its deviations from the Hebrew ("MT") which Emmanuel Tov count as hardly any. They even resist fixing that Elohist nonsense.

Although there do exist some Greek changes; nine years back I'd noted Hebrew Psalm 130 "fear of God" against the Greek #129 "law [*torah] of God". And wasn't there Hellenistic south-Syrian jargon not used in Egypt? If the Psalter be Ptolemaic I think it was, nonetheless, done in the Ptolemaic Judaia. (We are here ignoring the three Christian interpolations; after all, the Ethiopian Christians ignored two of 'em.)

Peshitta started as a translation of the MT, although Christians did 1 Isaiah. Van Peurson notes they did the Psalter too. (When the Jews were called in, they did Matthew - which I find ironic.) Later Peshitta MSS have some "corrections" toward the Greek, although not much changing the Christian elements. Of course meanwhile the "kaige" lads were correcting the Greek toward the MT, although with the Psalter they had little to do.

On topic of Aramaic, this article is Greek-focused - we are not here looking at the Targum, either Palaestinian or Iraqi or Late Jewish Literary. Although I understand the Jews fell under heavy Syriac influence when they got past Torah, especially Proverbs.

The Arabic Psalter was Melkite so done from Greek. Later the Muslims will make a run at Psalm One, possibly from Peshitta. I assume Quranic vocabulary slips into all this. Score another W for Sidney Griffith.

For comparison with the Greek MT, Michael Segal brings the Ode of Hannah. This actually does have variations. Psalm 113 may depend on this.

This brings to mind, what about the "variant Psalter". Emmanuel Tov says there wasn't one. Where we see variants as in Qumran, these weren't competitors to the canon. 11QPsAp/11Q11's use of Psalm 91 is a case-in-point. Van Peurson agrees: those extra psalms found in Syriac like 152-155 may have been dug out of the caves, during Timothy I's papacy/catholicate. Qumran's paraPsalters were done for the liturgy; they could be considered lectionaries. Like the Odes, which the Greeks compiled as separate from the Psalter although sometimes attached. Psalm 151 may well have started as Ode.