The Psalms

[Ite_ad_Ioseph]

Hey everyone,

Christ is baptized!

So I’ve taken a liking to reading the psalms and I was reading them out of my bible. However I became aware that in the eastern churches, they use psalms translated from the Septuagint, not the masoretic, and not just for personal prayer but prayers in the services of the church reference this translation. How important is this distinction and what translation of the psalms do you use?

 

[Vico]

Hey everyone,

Christ is baptized!

So I’ve taken a liking to reading the psalms and I was reading them out of my bible. However I became aware that in the eastern churches, they use psalms translated from the Septuagint, not the masoretic, and not just for personal prayer but prayers in the services of the church reference this translation. How important is this distinction and what translation of the psalms do you use?

In the Jordan!

Examples of the promulgated Psalm 103 (104) from Presanctified are drawn from different sources depending on when they were promulgated:

• Dr. Leonicas C. Contos (Byzantine - Passaic - Presanctified, 1998): “Clothed in pomp and brilliance”.
• Grail (Byzantine Presanctified, 2009): “Clothed in majesty and glory.”

The Contos translation is from LXX.

The Grail Psalms are from 1963 - based on the French Jerusalem Bible - translated from the Hebrew and Greek texts, published 1956.

 

[petra22]

I love the Psalms and use the Catholic Bible. Did not know there was more…

 

[Ite_ad_Ioseph]

Yes, there’s two versions of the Old Testament, the Septuagint (LXX is it’s abbreviation) and the Masoretic. The first is in greek and the second is in Hebrew. Jesus and the fathers used the Greek version, according to what I’ve heard from eastern Christians. A friend in seminary said when St. Jerome translated scriptures from Hebrew, people wondered why and told him of how the Hebrew was changed from the Greek.

 

[KjetilK]

Hey everyone,

Christ is baptized!

So I’ve taken a liking to reading the psalms and I was reading them out of my bible. However I became aware that in the eastern churches, they use psalms translated from the Septuagint, not the masoretic, and not just for personal prayer but prayers in the services of the church reference this translation. How important is this distinction and what translation of the psalms do you use?

Well, I normally use a Norwegian translation (which has, AFAIK, been translated from Hebrew). But I would love a Norwegian translation of the Septuagint. The Masoretic text qua Masoretic text dates no further back than to approximately the 9th century AD.

 

[Ite_ad_Ioseph]

The Masoretic text qua Masoretic text dates no further back than to approximately the 9th century AD.

What do you mean? I don’t know what qua means here even though I study Latin

 

[Casilda]

Nice carry along size:
store.ancientfaith.com/the-pocket-psalter/

 

[KjetilK]

What do you mean? I don’t know what qua means here even though I study Latin

The Masoretic Text as the Masoretic text. What I meant was that undoubtedly there was a Hebrew text that existed before the Masoretic text, or the Masoretic collection (as we can see, for instance, in the Dead See Scrolls). But that doesn’t change the fact that the Masoretic text itself dates no further back than to approximately the 9th century AD. And that the Septuagint dates further back.

 

[Augustine]

“[TheSeptuagint] brought about this encounter between biblical faith and the best of Greek thought in a way that was decisive for the birth and spread of Christianity.” (Pp. Benedict XVI)

 

[Ite_ad_Ioseph]

Then why does any Christian scholar care what the Hebrew bible says? Why don’t we translate the LXX or the vulgate for Catholics?