Delitzsch on Translations of the Psalms

If I had read this overview of ancient translations, (even if I could have at the time), I would perhaps never have started my own project. Fortunately reading it now, I can begin to appreciate some more of the complexity I took on and take on, but I am no longer starting from scratch.

Delitzsch displays immense learning here as one might expect. This is not a narrow study of 'the word' but an appreciation of history, and reception, and conflict, and a continuing hope that this middle wall of partition that he knows, will not stand.

He begins with the LXX translation of the Psalms, noting that

The story of the LXX (LXXII) translators, in its original form, refers only to the Thôra; the translations of the other books are later and by different authors. All these translators used a text consisting only of consonants, and these moreover were here and there more or less indistinct; this text had numerous glosses, and was certainly not yet as later, settled on the Masoretic basis. in ignorance of the higher exegetical and artistic functions of the translator in ignorance of the higher exegetical and artistic functions of the translator and frequently the translation itself is obscure". 

Warning noted.  He cites a host of texts I am not aware of - perhaps I should look them all up. (See note 1 in this section in his book.) They reveal more of the substance of the Psalter as received over the centuries. Had he read them all?

Nonetheless he gives first place to the LXX:

This version, at the outset, created for Christianity the language which it was to use; for the New Testament Scriptures are written in the popular Greek dialect (κοινή,) with an Alexandrine colouring. And in a general way we may say that Alexandrinism moulded the forms beforehand, which Christianity was afterwards to fill up with the substance of the gospel. As the way of Jesus Christ lay by Egypt (Matth. ii. 15), so the way of Christianity also lay by Egypt, and Alexandria in particular.

Then  he makes the claim: "Next to the Book of Isaiah, no book is so frequently cited in the New Testament as the Psalter."

It looks more like a tossup to me between these two and probably depends on how you measure it. And I would suggest that for translation of the psalms, one should be cautious in translating according to the New Testament's usage. I would not want to fall into the black hole of NT theology on its way to the destruction of the Jews in the middle of the 20th century. Delitzsch would not want to either, but he is surrounded by those who were and are not aware of this tendency to superiority and the abuse of such thoughts. But this anticipates his preliminaries on theology.

He spends some time on the targum of the Psalms, in convoluted prose

But as there was a written Targum to the Book of Job even during the time of the Temple, there was also a Targum of the Psalms, though bearing in itself traces of manifold revisions, which probably had its origin during the duration of the Temple. In distinction from the Targums of Onkelos to the Pentateuch and of Jonathan to the minor Prophets the Targum of the Psalms belongs to the so-called Jerusalem group, for the Aramaic idiom in which is written, — while, as the Jerusalem Talmud shows, it is always distinguished in no small degree from the Palestinian popular dialect as being the language of the literature — abounds in the same manner as the former in Greek words (as אנגלין άγγελοι, אכסדרין εξέδραι, קירים κύρίος), and like it also closely approximates, in sound and formation, to the Syriac.

What do I make of his words? All the Hebrew look like Greek transcribed.

Then he moves to the Peshito:

The third most important translation of the Psalms is the Peshito, the old version of the Syrian church, which was made not later than in the second century. Its author translated from the original text, which he had without the vowel points, and perhaps also in a rather incorrect form: as is seen from such errors as 

• xvii. 15 (amuntç [your faithfulness - used 7 times in the Psalter] instead of tmuntç [your similitude - unique in the Psalter] ), 
• lxxxiii. 12 [13] (wdmo vabdmi, dele eos et perde eos instead of witmo ndibmo), 
• cxxxix. 16 (gmli retributionem meam [my payback] instead of golmi [my embryo]). 
• In other errors he is influenced by the LXX, as lvi. 9 (bngdk [near you] LXX ἐνώπιόν σου instead of bnadç [in your bottle]),
• he follows this version in such departures from the better text sometimes not without additional reason, as xc. 5 [4 - I don't see any reason other than a typo for the verse #] (generationes eorum annus erunt, i. e. LXX τὰ ἐξουδενώματα αὐτῶν ἔτη ἔσονται [or like a watch in the night]), 
• cx. 3 (populus tuus gloriosus, i. e. ymç ndbvt in the sense of ndibh), Job xxx. 15, nobility, rank, LXX μετὰ σοῦ ἡ ἀρχὴ. 

The thought process as you can see is wide ranging, multi-lingual and occasionally lacks sufficient explanation. He was not writing for the common reader of the Bible, nor as a teacher. I suppose he was writing for a few friends who were also scholars.

Speaking of the translator of the Peshito, he notes (unfortunately without substantiation):

It is evident that he was a Christian from passages like xix. 5, cx. 3, also from lxviii. 19 comp. with Ephes. iv. 8, Jer. xxxi. 31 comp. with Hebr. viii. 8; and his knowledge of the Hebrew language, with which, as was then generally the case, the knowledge of Greek was united, shews that he was a Jewish Christian.

Moreover the translation has its peculiar Targum characteristics: tropical expressions are rendered literally, and by a remarkable process of reasoning interrogative clauses are turned into express declarations: lxxxviii. 11 -13 is an instance of this with a bold inversion of the true meaning to its opposite. In general the author shuns no violence in order to give a pleasing sense to a difficult passage e. g. xii. 6b, lx. 6. The musical and historical inscriptions, and consequently also the slh (including hgion slh ix. 17) he leaves untranslated, and the division of verses he adopts is not the later Masoretic.

I cannot find any reason to believe or disbelieve what he has written above. But I would need the Greek to see his point. At the moment I can only find an English translation and there is no interrogative in 89:11-13 to turn into a declarative. Similarly 12:6b, 60:6, - perhaps these comments will be more informative when I get (if I get there) to the detailed part of the commentary. 

He goes next to the translation by Aquila of Pontus ("a proselyte from heathenism to Judaism") - heathenism - now there's a 19th century bias!

Not to lose any of the weighty words he translates the first sentence of the Thôra thus: Ἐν κεφαλαίῳ ἔκτισεν ὁ Θεὸς σὺν (את) τὸν οὐρανὸν καὶ σὺν (את) τὴν γῆν.

I think this is supposed to be funny. I have a bit of a hard time with the associations of glosses. I don't have enough Greek to enjoy this. But Delitzsch praises him as a translator in any case. He follows with a mention of Theodotion, building on Aquila, then Symmachus "more decidedly and independently than Theodotion, and distinguishes himself from Aquila by endeavouring to unite literalness with clearness and verbal accuracy: his translation of the Psalms has even a poetic inspiration about it."

Finally he has a section on the Latin Psalters - praising Jerome:

Jerome's translation of the Psalter, juxta Hebraicam veritatem, is the first scientific work of translation, and, like the whole of his independent translation of Old Testament from the original text, a bold act by which he has rendered an invaluable service to the church, without allowing himself to be deterred by the cry raised against such innovations.