Bibliography.—On the Prytaneum as the centre of an ancient state see article Fire, and references in a paper (s.v.) by Frazer (Journal of Philology, 1885, xiv. 28). For the site of the Athenian P. see E. Curtius, Attische Studien, and an article by Schöll (Hermes, v. 340); also, general histories of Greece.
PRZEMYŚL, a town of Austria, in Galicia, 60 m. W. of Lemberg by rail. Pop. (1900), 46,295, mostly Polish. It is situated on the river San and is one of the strongest fortresses in Galicia. Przemyśl is the seat of a Roman Catholic and of a Greek uniat bishop, and has a Roman Catholic cathedral, begun in 1460. The industries comprise the manufacture of machinery, liqueurs and spodium or tutty, the refining of naphtha, corn-milling and the sawing of timber. The trade is chiefly in timber, corn, leather and linen. On the hill above the town are the ruins of an old castle, said to have been founded by Casimir the Great.
Przemyśl, one of the oldest towns in Galicia, claims to have been founded in the 8th century, and was at one time capital of a large independent principality. Casimir the Great and other Polish princes endowed it with privileges similar to those of Cracow, and it attained a high degree of prosperity. In the 17th century its importance was destroyed by inroads of Tatars, Cossacks and Swedes.
PRZHEVALSK, formerly Karakol (renamed in 1889), a town of Russian Turkestan, in the province of Semiryechensk, 8 m. S.E. of Lake Issyk-kul. Nikolai Przhevalsky (Przevalsky q.v.), the Russian explorer in Central Asia, died here in 1889, and a monument has been erected to his memory. It is a growing town, and had in 1897 a population of 7985.
PSALM (from the Gr. word ψάλλειν, to play the harp), the name used to designate the religious poems of the Hebrews, which are contained in the Psalter (see Psalms, Book of). Modern collections of religious poetry sometimes bear the title of Psalms and Hymns, but these are always more or less directly connected with the actual Psalms of David. Longfellow wrote “A Psalm of Life” (1839), which was an intimate confession of the religious aspirations of the author. The Psaumes of Clément Marot (1538) were curious adaptations of Hebrew ideas to French forms of the epigram and the madrigal. But it is doubtful whether the psalm, as distinguished from the Hebrew Psalter, can be said to have any independent existence. It is loosely used to describe any exalted strain of devotional melody. (See also Hymns.)
PSALMANAZAR, GEORGE (c. 1679–1763), French adventurer, was born about 1679, probably in Languedoc. According to his own account he was sent in his seventh year to a free school taught by two Franciscan monks, after which he was educated in a Jesuit college “in an archiepiscopal city.” On leaving college he became a private tutor. He assumed personations in order to obtain money, his first being that of a pilgrim to Rome. Afterwards he travelled through Germany, Brabant and Flanders in the character of a Japanese convert. At Liége he enlisted in the Dutch service, shortly after which he posed as an unconverted Japanese. At Sluys he made the acquaintance of a Scottish chaplain, by whom he was brought over to England and introduced to the bishop of London. Having undergone conversion to Christianity, he was employed by the bishop to translate the Church catechism into what was supposed to be the Japanese language. In 1704 he published a fictitious Historical and Geographical Description of Formosa, and was shortly afterwards sent to Oxford. In 1707 he published Dialogue between a Japanese and a Formosan. There also appeared, without date, An Inquiry into the Objections against George Psalmanazar of Formosa, with George Psalmanazar’s Answer. His pretensions were from the beginning doubted by many, and when exposure was inevitable he made a full confession. Throughout the rest of his life he exhibited, according to, Dr Samuel Johnson, as reported by Mrs Piozzi, “a piety, penitence, and virtue exceeding almost what we read as wonderful in the lives of the saints.” Psalmanazar published Essays on Scriptural Subjects (1753), contributed various articles to the Ancient Universal History, and completed Palmer’s History of Printing. He died in London on the 3rd of May 1763. His memoirs appeared in 1764 under the title, Memoirs of . . . commonly known by the name of George Psalmanazar, but do not disclose his real name or the place of his birth.
PSALMS, BOOK OF, or Psalter, the first book of the Hagiographa in the Hebrew Bible.
Title and Traditional Authorship.—The Hebrew title of the book is תְּתִלְים, tĕhillīm, or םֵפֶר תִּלְּים “the book of hymns,” or rather “songs of praise.”[1] The singular תְּהִלָה is properly the infinitive or nomen verbi of הלּל, a verb employed in the technical language of the Temple service for the execution of a jubilant song of praise to the accompaniment of music and the blare of the priestly trumpets (1 Chron. xvi. 4 seq., xxv. 3; 2 Chron. v. 12 seq.). The name is not therefore equally applicable to all psalms, and in the later Jewish ritual the synonym Hallel specially designates two series of psalms, cxiii.–cxviii. and cxlvi.–cl., of which the former was sung at the three great feasts—the encaenia, and the new moon, and the latter at the daily morning prayer. That the whole book is named “praises” is clearly due to the fact that it was the manual of the Temple service of song, in which praise was the leading feature. But for an individual psalm the usual name is מִזְמוֹר (in the Bible only in titles of psalms), which is applicable to any piece designed to be sung to a musical accompaniment. Of this word ψαλμός “psalm,” is a translation, and in the Greek Bible the whole book is called ψαλμοί or ψαλτήρίον.[2] The title ψαλμοί or βιβλὸς ψαλμῶν is used in the New Testament (Luke xx. 42, xxiv. 44; Acts i. 20), but in Heb. iv. 7 we find another title, namely “David.” Hippolytus tells us that in his time most Christians said “the Psalms of David,” and believed the whole book to be his; but this title and belief are both of Jewish origin, for in 2 Macc. ii. 13 τὰ τοῦ Δαυίδ means the Psalter, and the title of the apocryphal “Psalter of Solomon” implies that the previously existing Psalter was ascribed to David. Jewish tradition does not make David the author of all the psalms; but as he was regarded as the founder and legislator of the Temple psalmody (1 Chron., ut supra; Ezra iii. 10; Neh. xii. 36, 45 seq.; Ecclus. xlvii. 8 seq.), so also he was held to have completed and arranged the whole book, though according to Talmudic tradition[3] he incorporated psalms by ten other authors, Adam, Melchizedek, Abraham, Moses, Heman, Jeduthun, Asaph, and the three sons of Korah. With this it agrees that the titles of the psalms name no one later than Solomon, and even he is not recognized as a psalmodist by the most ancient tradition, that of the LXX., which omits him from the title of Ps. cxxvii. and makes Ps. lxxii. be written not by him but of him. The details of the tradition of authorship show considerable variation; according to the Talmudic view Adam is author of the Sabbath psalm, xcii., and Melchizedek of Ps. cx., while Abraham is identified with Ethan the Ezrahite (Ps. lxxxix.). But, according to older Jewish tradition attested by Origen,[4] Ps. xcii. is by Moses, to whom are assigned Ps. xc.–c. inclusive, according to a general rule that all anonymous pieces are by the same hand with the nearest preceding psalm whose author is named; and Ps. cx., which by its title is Davidic, seems to have been given to Melchizedek to avoid the dilemma of Matt. xxii. 41 seq. Origen’s rule accounts for all the psalms except i. and ii., which were sometimes reckoned as one poem (Acts xiii. 33 in the Western text; Origen; B. Berakhoth, f. 9b.), and appear to have been ascribed to David (Acts iv. 25).
The opinion of Jerome (Praef. in ps. heb.) and other Christian writers that the collector of the Psalter was Ezra does not seem to rest on Jewish tradition.
Nature and Origin of the Collection.—Whatever may be the value of the titles to individual psalms, there can be no question that the tradition that the Psalter was collected by David is not historical;
- ↑ Hippol., ed. Lag., p. 188: Euseb. H.E. vi. 25, 2; Epiph. Mens et Pond. § 23; Jerome’s preface to Psalt. juxta Hebraeos.
- ↑ Similarly in the Syriac Bible the title is mazmōrē.
- ↑ The passages are collected in Kimhi’s preface to his commentary on the Psalms, ed. Schiller-Szinessy, Cambridge (1883).
- ↑ Opp. ii. 514 seq., ed. Rue; cf. Hippol. ut supra; Jerome, Ep. cxl. (ed. Cypr.), and Praef. in Mal.
