Here's my editor's preface to Forbes 1888 publication entitled: Studies on the book of Psalms: the structural connection of the book of Psalms, both in single Psalms and in the Psalter as an organic whole.
The intro may change since I am only about half-way through. I have put my work in process here. You can see it now as it evolves if you would like to. By all means help me if you can to find my oversights and the remnants of the OCR failures.
I come to this writing 144 years after its first publication. It is not a famous writing. The Oxford professor, Susan Gillingham, has researched the reception history of the psalms for over 40 years and had not come across this volume.
It is a volume that has no easily observable structure on its surface. But the author is a mathematician and the subject of the Psalms and their co-inherence has sufficient appeal to me that I accepted reading and commenting on this document as a post-translation exercise. Outside of this preface, you can find my impressions on my blog. E.g. this brief introduction to John Forbes, the Laird of Corss. I have not been able to find his dates (c 1810? to 1886?).
It is abundantly clear even half-way through the editing process that John Forbes loved the psalms. His careful work demonstrates this love for the poetry and the structures that he found in it.
Technically this editing exercise presents some tedious problems. I have tried to minimize any editorial comments in the text itself. If I found them essential, I have footnoted them with an asterisk.
- The OCR makes no use of style sheets. It seems to know only the bare paragraph tag.
- OCR does not read italics, Greek, Hebrew, or graphics. These transcriptions must be done by hand. Some Hebrew I have left in the square text. For some I have used SimHebrew.
- All footnotes were separated from the text. I numbered them (not such a good idea if I missed one).
- Page turns and interior headings were removed by hand.
- There are hosts of misspellings.
- Since the practice of separating double quotes from their content requires significant read-ahead processing, I have removed them, of necessity one at a time, since they are ambiguous and not subject to a global change.
- I have retained archaic spelling and Roman Numerals. Much as I would like to get rid of them, they are his mode of thinking and this is his book.
- I have attempted to retain his italics, and other modes of emphasis like small caps and as much formatting of his scripture portions as would be suitable for an e-book format.
The above are just surface starters. I imitate the 19th century type-setting if I can with style sheets. I hope the result will be useful to me and possibly to others.
The author’s stated intention is to explore the Psalter as a whole. This he does with some credibility of observation. He is observant of chiastic structures, recurrence, and some numerical patterns that are different from any I have found in my research. All his counts can be verified from a database. His proffered solutions to some aspects of the broken acrostics in Book 1 are quite intriguing. They fit the design of an acrostic when the author chooses to hide a letter. His division of Book 5 into 3 ‘books’ is verifiable through his counts. His divisions of the psalms into sevens, eights, tens and even alphabets (groups of 22) are more subjective, but still plausible, the work of ancient metaphysical scribes. His association of Book 4 with the exile and Book 5 with the return from Babylon is not something I have considered in these terms.
His second intention is to explore the psalter without New Testament prejudice as to its intent. In this his failure is severe. He sees a New Testament 'super-human' (his term - used 6 times) Messiah everywhere. This is part of a general failure of humanity and particularly of Christendom to follow the character of God with accuracy. I have met many divines who think as he does, moving rapidly without historical or contextual critique from one verse to another.
My intent is to compare the author’s view, with my own view of the character of Messiah. Messiah for me cannot be a super-hero, a governing despot or oligarch. In contrast, God, under The Name of yod-heh-vav-heh, (whom Forbes calls Jehovah) cares for the poor and marginalized. This God is life-giving and not domineering. This God is caring and compassionate. The use of Exodus 34:6 by subsequent writers within the Tanach (particularly Psalms and Jonah) is proof enough of one part of the mindset of the ancient scribes and poets. One can certainly compare this character of The Name in Tanach with the care, vulnerability, and even fragility of Jesus in making this character flesh.
And Yahweh, passed over before him, and he called, Yahweh, Yahweh, a God compassionate and gracious, // slow to anger and abundant in kindness and truth.
Our failure to exercise such care is evident in humanity everywhere and found its result in the Shoah some 65 years following the author’s publication of this volume. We can and should learn from this failure. Seventy-five years later, though we have learned something, we are still failing. It remains true of us that we cannot see our own assumptions.
Bob MacDonald, January 2022, Victoria BC.
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