On Translating the Psalms - I

 

A social-media friend of mine posted the original, color version of the illustration above. I have rendered it here in black and white in order to make the writing at the bottom more legible. It is a painting by Jean Fouquet, dated to 1452-1460, from a Book of Hours of the time.

The words are in Latin, with the characteristic abbreviations of the fifteenth century. Since I am not a paleographer, it took me a while to puzzle them out. Here they are, in more readable form:

     Deus in adiutorium meum intende                 O God, come to my aid,

     Domine ad adiuvandum me festina.               O Lord, hurry to help me.

These are the opening words of Psalm 69 (in Septuagint/Vulgate numbering)/70 (in Masoretic Text numbering). Psalm 69/70. The words have been familiar to me since my youth (I was raised Catholic, and could read Latin long before I graduated from high school). The words are even more familiar, because for centuries they were recited by priests, monks, and nuns as part of the Roman Breviary.

As a poet, I cannot help but be impressed by the smooth, flowing quality of these words and indeed, all of St. Jerome's Latin translation of the Greek of the LXX (Septuagint).

The first question that arises for the prospective translator of the Psalms is which text/language to translate. Which text is oldest? Which text is most original? Which text is the least corrupt? In this case, the choices are pretty much the following:

Septuagint (Greek) ca. 150 BCE

Dead Sea Scrolls (Hebrew) ca. 30-50 CE, fragmentary

St. Jerome's Latin translation from the Hebrew ca. 400 CE

St. Jerome's Latin translation from the Septuagint ca 400 CE

The Masoretic Text (carefully conserved and pointed Hebrew) ca. 800 CE

The Septuagint got that name because it was supposedly translated by seventy of the most learned scholars in the Jewish community of Alexandria, a great center of learning at the time. We can gage its success and its influence by the fact that most of the biblical quotations in the New Testament are from the Septuagint, and it is still authoritative today for all Orthodox churches.

The Dead Sea Psalms scrolls number between thirty-nine and forty-four, and all, unfortunately, are fragmentary. Even the Great Psalms Scroll (11Q5), which covers mostly Psalms 90-150 plus a few non-canonical ones, lacks six or seven lines at the bottom of every column. The others are in many fragments.

The only part of the Bible for which St. Jerome produced two separate translations is the Book of Psalms. One translation was based on the Hebrew text (pre-Masoretic and still unpointed) of his time. The other was based on the Greek of the Septuagint. Jerome offered both to Pope Damasus, and the Pope chose the translation based on the Septuagint. The rest is ecclesiastical and monastic history.

(to be continued)

Text Copyright © 2021 by Donald C. Traxler aka Donald Jacobson Traxler.