Energion.com Reader's Guide - Psalms

Psalms combines fun, comfort, and problems of interpretation like no other book of the Bible. People are comforted by many passages, such as Psalm 91, encouraged and motivated by passages such as Psalm 78, and awed by such beautiful passages as Psalm 104. At the same time various Psalms taken as Messianic prophecies invite discussion, and some others, such as Psalm 137 are very troubling. As a result, some of your most fruitful study of the Old Testament can be done in the Psalms.

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From Amazon.com: This is Volume 16 of The Anchor Bible, a new book-by-book translation of the Bible, each complete with an introduction and notes. Psalms I (1-50)  is translated and edited by Mitchell Dahood, S.J., Professor of Ugaritic Language and Literature at The Pontifical Biblical Institute in Rome.

With Psalms, any new translation will be considered in the context of the literary achievement of the King James Version, and in the light of more recent renderings.  A word of explanation is, therefore, appropriate.

"The translation offered here," Father Dahood writes, "differs from earlier efforts in that it is not the fruit of a confrontation of the Hebrew text with the ancient versions, from which the least objectionable reading is plucked."  Rather, from a close examination of the original text, a unique translation has been attempted, one which relies heavily on contemporary linguistic evidence.  It is a translation "accompanied by philological commentary, that lays heavy stress on the Ras-Shamra texts and other epigraphic discoveries made along the Phoenician littoral," a translation prepared in direct response to W.F. Albright's statement (made a quarter of a century ago) "that all future investigations of the book of Psalms must deal intensively with the Ugaritic texts."

This translation tries to capture as much as possible the poetic qualities of the original Hebrew.  Its attempt is to render accurately not only the meaning of the Psalms but their poetic forms and rhythms as well.  In this process of probing the original, Father Dahood unearths some striking examples of passages previously mistranslated, and arrives at many provocative readings.

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From Amazon.com: This is Volume 17A of The Anchor Bible, a new book-by-book translation of the Bible, each complete with an introduction and notes. Psalms III (101-150)  is translated and edited by Mitchell Dahood, S.J., Professor of Ugaritic Language and Literature at The Pontifical Biblical Institute in Rome.

Having closely examined the original text, Father Dahood has attempted a unique translation which relies heavily on contemporary linguistic evidence.  His work stresses the relation of the Psalms to the Ugaritic texts found at Ras-Shamra, and to other epigraphic discoveries along the Phoenician littoral.

This translation tries to capture as much as possible--within the limits of language and the scope of present scholarship--the poetic qualities of the original Hebrew.  It attempts to render accurately not only the meaning of the Psalms but their poetic forms and rhythms as well.  It is particularly responsive to the terse, three-beat metrical line predominant in Hebrew poetry, and it reproduces the parallelism so characteristic of biblical verse.  In this process of probing the original, Father Dahood unearths some striking examples of passages previously mistranslated, and arrives at many provocative readings.

In addition to an introduction, text, and notes, this volume contains a comprehensive Grammar of the Psalter which makes use of much of Father Dahood's recent work with Ugaritic.

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