Back to the main task - the commentary on the psalms. The music is interesting and the zarqa table helpful - but I am not convinced by the traditional tropes because they use too little of the information embedded in the accents. Still - I had to pay attention. And I may go back to fixing and translating the German of his music book - learning German at this stage of my life would be a challenge. I read it because I have sung lots of it, but I don't have much fluency.
But there is a section on the history of the exposition of the psalms to do first. And I did not cover all the detail in the section on early translations. There will be more in this new section. To read the whole thing, the epub is gradually taking shape.
Hopefully I have time to let Delitzsch be my teacher for a while yet. I am cautious. He is clearly a Christian with these sentiments:
The Old Testament according to its very nature tends towards and centres in Christ. Therefore the innermost truth of the Old Testament has been revealed in the revelation of Jesus Christ.
And I am myself Christian - but I am more aware than he of the way in which New Testament assumptions have been dismantled over the past 150 years. When he says
He revealed to His disciples the meaning τοῦ συνιέναι τάς γραφάς Luke xxiv. 44 sq. Jesus Christ's exposition of the Psalms is the beginning and the goal of Christian Psalm-interpretation.
Am I to assume that my tradition has correctly interpreted the psalms according to this revelation of Jesus Christ? Whom should I ask? This is a serious question. Indeed the Scriptures speak of Christ - but when he speaks to me through them, he does not glorify himself. But he shows the character of Yahweh-God who is praised in these psalms. And this has been true of Christendom in part - but also in part, Christendom has done things that are completely outside the character of Yahweh. I find that when we really read what is in the psalms, it is not our theology - i.e. right or wrong beliefs, that is in question, but our actions in imitation of the kindness we see. As church whether institution or individual, we should not be in the position of the bully, or in a conflict of interest because we are beholden to some social situation.
Here is what Dr. D is doing in his work as a grammarian:
But we must not seek in the New Testament Scriptures what they are not designed to furnish, viz., an answer to questions belonging to the lower grades of knowledge, to grammar, to cotemporary history and to criticism. The highest and final questions of the spiritual meaning of Scripture find their answer here; the grammatico-historico critical under-structure, — as it were, the candlestick of the new light, — it was left for succeeding ages to produce.
Now there's a thought - and close to what he reveals about his love of language in the foreword of the Music book (Physiologie Und Musik in Ihrer Bedeutung Für Die Grammatik: Besonders Die Hebräische);
When I was called back to the local university after twenty-one years of work in Rostock and Erlangen, where I had now completed the professorship a full 25 years ago; I heard from several quarters that I was to be primarily concerned with preserving and cultivating the solid grammatical tradition established by my predecessor in the exegesis of the Old Testament.
... And this expectation also agrees with my personal inclination, because theology and linguistics have always fought for supremacy in me, and in the course of my studies I have become more and more convinced that theology, as an essentially historical science that is based on documented facts and has to be built on the foundations of grammatical interpretation.
I am really looking forward to carrying on this unexpected journey into the past.
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