Psalm 83, Israel and the Irish Bog Book
When I posted on the amazing find of the Irish book of the Bog, I did so without referring to Israel unlike most publications I read - because it smacked of convenient sensationalism, and I prefer my sensationalism a little more inconvenient.
How can newspapers be so lazy? (Any ideas, Jason?)They are told that parts of Psalm 83 are open and they just grab the nearest bible to see what it might say, it never occurring to them that maybe a 1,000 to 1,200 year old Psalter might not be the same as the Gideon bible.
The bible I grew up with, at home right now in my parents’ house on top of the bookcase (and destined for my brother though he doesn’t deserve it) is not a King James version. Why on earth would something from a millenium earlier be one?
Anyway fair play to the National Museum of Ireland for putting a stop to the nonsense of a gullible (and opportunistic) world fueled by The Da Vinci Code and Reality Television, by issuing a statement saying the text visible on the manuscript found in the bog does not refer to the wiping out of Israel but to the “vale of tears”:
This is part of Verse 7 of Psalm 83 in the old Latin translation of the Bible [the Vulgate] which….would have been the version used in the medieval period.
In the much later King James version the number of the psalms is different, based on the Hebrew text and the ‘vale of tears’ occurs in Psalm 84.
The text about wiping out Israel occurs in the Vulgate as Psalm 82″ which equals Psalm 83 (King James version)
So, no coincidence, no phenomenom, and no reason to kill anybody. Anyway, if you look really closely at the photos, this is obvious.
UPDATE: Unless you equate the ‘Vale of Tears’ with the Bekaa Valley
See Also:
• The Irish Book of Bog
• Irish Music Charts and Bandwagon
• Irish Conversation in a Dublin Pub #19
Eolaí gan Fhéile:
Leaving aside the issue of my not deserving said Bible - and why not, I wonder, what with the clock being destined for a man who doesn’t even own a watch - this struck me as odd too.
Most Catholic Bibles have a dual numbering system for the psalms - the traditional Catholic one, based on the Greek Septuagint as used by the vast majority of Jews at the time of Christ, and the later Protestant one, based on the Masoretic Hebrew text, compiled from older sources towards the end of the first millennium AD. Generally the Hebrew numbering is given first, with the Greek numbering in brackets.
I’m guessing that the numbering in the Tanakh follows the Masoretic text, rather the Septuagint, and that may be where the problem lay, as it seems that this nonsense started with an Israeli journalist; well, that and laziness, or at least a huge failure of imagination!
For what it’s worth, our Bible at home would have had the same numbering as this psalter’s; ours being a Douay-Rheims Bible, albeit a revised one, it’s a translation of the Vulgate from which the medieval psalter was derived.
I received your comment. I’ll post a correction today.
I am sometimes gullible, although not generally opportunistic.
I assume you’re neither.