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Friday 22 April 2011

Project status

I don't ask for your prayers, but I should have, so don't forget me. This is a long and complex project and I realize after making over 5000 corrections to my root derivations in the database and well over 500 changes to translations just how far away I am from knowing anything. Today I finished recording my glosses for psalm 49. This makes 44 psalms to go (I already finished books 1 and 5 and most of book 2) and 5439 words out of you know that number somewhere around 19583.  So I should not be discouraged. But Psalm 49 was very odd and my sometimes first pass guesses were no longer acceptable to me.  I must have been slightly inebriated when I did them.

The glossary is fun to skim - you can see things that you might not otherwise see if you are familiar with the psalms. As I skim, I think 'oh oh, there's something odd here', or 'well well, look at that, who'd have thought it?' When I'm done, and perhaps before, I will begin the next round of refinements.  Rosenberg had Zlotowitz to talk to about these enigmatic poems and Zlotowitz had Rosenberg. And they frequently agreed that they couldn't figure out the Hebrew.  I suspect they know more Hebrew than I do. So talk to me (if you have time).

Now - I remain stalled on first draft at psalm 65. Someone wrote recently - do the one thing that will be critical to the forward movement of your thesis. And that one thing is - finish your glossary.  So everything is waiting for this.  I hope to finish it by the end of the month. (And apart from 78 and 104-106, I have done most of the long ones.)

So - all the tables I have deleted from old posts are now automated and listed in this appendix. This shows first time usage for every key word used in any psalm sorted by chapter and Hebrew stem. And also with a click you can see every psalm where that stem is used as a frame in this appendix.  Then if one is foolish enough to want to read in Hebrew stem order every gloss for every one of the 19583 odd words in the Psalter kata Bob, it is in this appendix. But it is in the glossary where the decisions about words are clearest.

I recently published psalm 34 at PoC. I had a dream - well not exactly a dream - a conversation - the night before, and decided I should talk a bit about how this psalm engages the searching we do as humans for help, for healing, or for connection with the mystery that we call out to for whatever 'reason'. So a paragraph got added to the end that did not have the requisite 1 month fermentation period.  But I still have 30 psalms in hand for posting at PoC - that's three month's worth at the rate I'm going. (Aren't you impressed at my discipline - I haven't even updated the pdf's - too much work and too many changes in the way I am presenting the structural maps.)

The design of presentation will be a major task. I am still wondering how best to present and comment on structure. I am thinking that there needs to be a discovery type game to play. Ideas percolating...

2 comments:

  1. For the first time in a long while I managed to spend some time with your material this morning - before the others are awake, and I was afraid making onion jam for our dinner this evening (with c.40 people to celebrate our first "home grown" meat) might wake them :)

    I found this post gave me more of an overview of what you are doing than I have been getting from half read blog posts. I have long been impressed by how looking at repetitions leads you through Psalm 90, and can see how your tables can help people spot that.

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  2. Onion jam! Nice. Good luck with the 40 guests. I am alone today and must make my own dinner long before the Vigil when I will read Genesis 1. This Holy Saturday morning I have been planting flowers and ground cover in the garden - good time for planting. I will get to psalm 90-91 with my latest techniques soon I hope.

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