and hardly admits of explanation by the use of the Christian Peshîto on the part of Jewish Targumist.[1]
It may be more readily supposed that the old Syriac translator of the Psalms, of whom we are now speaking, was a Jewish Christian and did not despise the welcome assistance of the Targum, which was already at hand, in whatever form it might be. It is evident that he was a Christian from passages like Psa 19:5; Psa 110:3, also from Psa 68:19 comp. with Eph 4:8; Jer 31:31 comp. with Heb 8:8; and his knowledge of the Hebrew language, with which, as was then generally the case, the knowledge of Greek was united, shows 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: Psa 88:11-13 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., Psa 12:6, Psa 60:6. The musical and historical inscriptions, and consequently also the סלה (including הגיון סלה Psa 9:17) he leaves untranslated, and the division of verses he adopts is not the later Masoretic. All these peculiarities make the Peshîto all the more interesting as a memorial in exegetico-historical and critical enquiry: and yet, since Dathe's edition, 1768, who took the text of Erpenius as his ground-work and added valuable notes,[2] scarcely anything has been done in this direction.
In the second century new Greek translations were also made. The high veneration which the lxx had hitherto enjoyed was completely reversed when the rupture between the synagogue and the church took place, so that the day when this translation was completed as no longer compared to the day of the giving of the Law, but to the day of
- ↑ Although more recently we are told, Hai Gaon (in Babylonia) when he came upon a difficult passage in his Academical lectures on the Psalms enquired of the patriarch of the Eastern church how he interpreted it, vid., Steinschneider, Jewish Literature, p. 125f.
- ↑ The fragments of the translation of the Ps., which are cited under the name ὁ Σύρος, Dathe has also there collected in his preface.
