Ancient Hebrew Poetry

A Truly Ecumenical Study Bible

Philip Sumpter has information to the effect that the forthcoming École Biblique study Bible will be but Roman Catholic in scope, as in “the Council of Trent.” If so, that’s too bad.

I was hoping for a study Bible that is Catholic and Orthodox in scope.

Building bridges to the past and present of historic Christian churches other than the one in communion with the bishop of Rome must not be considered a calling of the École Biblique. There are of course other Catholic institutions who concentrate on doing this.

A study Bible Catholic and Orthodox in scope would include far more books than those sanctioned at Trent. For example, it would include the Epistle to the Laodiceans, since it was treated as Scripture in the Latin West in various times and places. It would include 1 Enoch and Jubilees insofar as they are part of the Ethiopian Orthodox canon.

The Finest Biblical Scholars Come From Europe, Not North America

That’s because it is very hard to learn the biblical languages at a tender age in North American schools.

There are exceptions to this rule, and of course there are also individuals who learn languages very well through dint of effort at 30, 40, and even 70 years of age. With God all things are possible, but that does not change the fact that the ideal time to learn languages is when one is young, the younger the better. I touch on the topic at greater length in this and related posts.

In many European countries, a network of schools offer Greek and Latin beginning in what in North America is referred to as the 7^th or 8^th grade. For an example of how that can benefit a Bible scholar, I refer the reader to the example of Peter Williams. He recounts his own education, his goals for Tyndale House,  and the need for high standards, in a delightful interview conducted by Justin Taylor.

If Hebrew and Aramaic and Greek and Latin do not become second nature to a scholar, his or her grasp of the literatures written in those languages will be severely limited. This is a cold, hard truth if you wish, but it is a truth.

If the biblical languages one is interested in are limited to Hebrew and Aramaic, the best thing to do is to get oneself born into an Orthodox Jewish family which believes in raising children in the languages of Torah from a tender age. That is not easy to arrange, but it is possible to compensate a little bit and attend synagogue and learn prayerbook Hebrew. Jew or Gentile, it does not matter, no one will turn you away, at least not in many  North American contexts.

Psalm 19:8-15: Text, Translation, and Notes

.Psalm 19:8-15: text, translation, and notes

Psalm 19:5c-7: Text, Translation, and Notes

 For an explanation of the format of this post, go here.

לַשֶּׁמֶשׁ שָׂם־אֹהֶל בָּהֶם

וְהוּא כְּחָתָן

יֹצֵא מֵחֻפָּתֹו

 

יָשִׂישׂ כְּגִבּוֹר

לָרוּץ אֹרַח

 

מִקְצֵה הַשָּׁמַיִם מוֹצָאֹו

וּתְקוּפָתֹו עַל־קְצוֹתָם

וְאֵין נִסְתָּר מֵחַמָּתֹו

God has made a home in the heavens for the sun.

It bursts forth like a radiant bridegroom after his wedding.
    It rejoices like a great athlete eager to run the race.

The sun rises at one end of the heavens
    and follows its course to the other end.
        Nothing can hide from its heat.  (NLT)

For the sun he made a tent in them;
    he is like a bridegroom
        who exits his wedding canopy.

He rejoices like a champion
    the course to run.

His point of exit: heaven’s end,
      his circuit, against its extremities;
           nothing is hidden from his heat.

Psalm 19:5: Text, Translation, and Notes

For an explanation of the format of this post, go here.

בְּכָל הָאָרֶץ 

יָצָא קַוָּם

וּבִקְצֵה תֵבֵל מִלֵּיהֶם

לַשֶּׁמֶשׁ שָׂם־אֹהֶל בָּהֶם

 

Their line has gone out through all the earth,
And their words to the end of the world.
In them He has set a tabernacle for the sun, (NKJV)

Throughout the earth
    their verse goes out,
          their language to world’s end.

For the sun he made a tent in them;

Psalm 19:4: Text, Translation, and Notes

For an explanation of the format of this post, go here.

אֵין אֹמֶר

וְאֵין דְּבָרִים

בְּלִי נִשְׁמָע קוֹלָם

There is no speech, nor are there words;
     their voice is not heard. (NRSV)

Thereof is no speech,
    thereof no words,
          thereof no sound not heard.

NRSV follows the text word-for-word. So translated, Ps 19:4 seems to say the exact opposite of 19:2-3 and 19:5. It might be argued that this is intentional, that the message the heavens convey is mute yet palpable at the same time.

That’s true, I suppose, but that doesn’t mean the text says that. The chief obstacle to the view that 19:4 says what NRSV says it does is that 19:4 is wedged in between 19:2-3 and 19:5. Contrapuntal claims, it seems to me, are not normally so placed.

Modern translations that tally with the one I offer include NKJV and NJPSV. ‘Thereof,’ as Lingamish notes, is a pitiful translation. I was looking for some way to tie the parts of 19:4 together and to the preceding, which seems necessary to my ear in terms of style. Suggestions are welcome.

Psalm 19:2: Text, Translation, and Notes

The format of this post is as follows. First the Hebrew text is given. Then a modern English translation, not my own, is quoted, chosen for its utility as a whipping boy, that is, as a negative object lesson. Then the translation I prefer is offered, followed by comment that touches on all three. 

הַשָּׁמַיִם מְסַפְּרִים

כְּבוֹד אֵל

וּמַעֲשֵׂה יָדָיו

מַגִּיד הָרָקִיעַ

The heavens are telling the glory of God;
      and the firmament proclaims his handiwork. (NRSV)

The heavens declare
     the glory of God.

The firmament shows
     his handiwork.

The verbs in Hebrew are participles. They give a timeless quality to the description. NRSV, by way of false mimicry, translates the first participle with ‘are telling.’ The English phrase, which might seem like an appropriate calque of the Hebrew, is time- and aspect-specific (present ingressive). As such it is not a faithful rendering of the Hebrew. Straight aspectless presents, capable of bearing a timeless quality in English, best translate the Hebrew participles in this context. Cf. KJV, REB, NAB, ESV, etc.

 NRSV ‘the firmament proclaims his handiwork’ strikes me as unidiomatic English. I don't want to give up ‘his handiwork,’ which goes back to the KJV if not before. It has a certain je ne sais quoi, and is understandably repeated in many modern translations. It is probably best to follow KJV and translate the verb loosely by 'show,' which I now do, after having been attracted initially by the solution offered by NAB, which has: ‘the sky proclaims its builder’s craft.’ [Assist by elf, see comment below]

As noted in a previous post, the Hebrew of Ps 19:1 instantiates a ring structure. But ring structures like this one are untranslatable.

A Psalm to Learn by Heart: Psalm 19

While a student of the Waldensian Theological Seminary in Rome, I was given the job of teaching Hebrew to my fellow students. This left me with few friends, because I am a bit hard-butted when it comes to standards. They especially hated translating from Italian into Hebrew. That requires active fluency in Hebrew, not something everyone wanted to bother their brain with.

Actually, I had lots of friends, but that was because my Hebrew students, pissed off though they were at how high I set the bar, would go and complain not with me, but with the love of my life (Paola - we were not yet married). She told them flat out she couldn’t do a darn thing about it.

The Prosody of Ugaritic Poetry

In May of 2006, Michael Patrick O’Connor (ז˝ל) lectured at the UW-Madison and spoke about regularities of ancient Hebrew verse during Cynthia Miller’s class on Biblical Hebrew poetry. He began, if memory serves, by going over an example or two of Ugaritic poetry.

Mitchell Dahood (one of my teachers) was smiling from the Elysian fields as he did. Or so I imagine. Dahood had a way of reading Hebrew as if it were Ugaritic and Ugaritic as if it were Hebrew. To do so, of course, is fraught with risk.

 

On the Importance of Making Indefensible Claims on Behalf of Scripture

Pete Williams, Eric Rowe, and I have been having an enjoyable conversation about questions of text and canon over at Evangelical Textual Criticism. Go here for the thread.

The conversation might be entitled “Three tulips tiptoeing on each other over text and canon.” Do I have to explain what a TULIP is? Oh, all right. It’s someone who reads Augustine and Calvin and on a set of core issues has a hard time knowing where to disagree with them. True, TULIPism has not always, to put it mildly, been expounded in an evangelical way (i.e., as expressive of good news), but that doesn’t mean it is per se unfaithful to Scripture.

Let it also be said that a TULIP can appreciate Luther and Wesley, not to mention John of Damascus, Thomas, and a host of others, for other reasons and even on the same issues, but in subordinate fashion. I know I do.