Studies on the Syriac Apocryphal Psalms

Abstract

Studies on the Syriac Apocryphal Psalms, by H. F. Van Rooy. JSS Supplement 7. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999. Pp. v + 170. Euro64.00. The number 150 is traditionally the rather sacrosanct number of the biblical psalms attributed to King David. Since the time of the earliest editions of the Greek OT, however, scholars have been aware of additional psalms beyond those canonical 150. The five Syriac apocryphal psalms, numbered 151-155, which constitute the subject matter of this monograph, were only first brought to the attention of the scholarly world when the great Maronite scholars, the brothers Assemani, noted their existence in their catalogue of the Syriac manuscripts in the Vatican Library, published in 1759. Surprisingly, it was not until over a century later that the first text of these psalms appeared. And it was not until 1930 when the first edition of these psalms, utilizing five manuscripts, was first published by the great German scholar Martin Noth. Since this time, Hebrew texts of three of these psalms were discovered among the texts found at Qumran, and a new critical edition of these Syriac psalms was published in 1972, as part of the Leiden Peshitta project (vol. IV.6), which is now nearing completion. With all this data now available, Van Rooy here offers the first monograph-length study of these Syriac psalms. The volume is not a systematic monograph, but is actually comprised of eleven distinct studies, most of which have previously appeared in print. Studies 8-11 originally appeared in English, while studies 2-4, and 7 first appeared in Afrikaans but were translated into English; each of these eight studies was revised for this volume. Studies 1, 5, and 6 were prepared specifically for this volume during a research leave at the Leiden Peshitta Institute and are published here for the first time. The eleven studies found in this volume include a translation of these five Syriac apocryphal psalms, three studies of various aspects of the manuscripts in which they are found, three studies specifically of the forms and provenance of Ps 151, followed by a single study of each of the remaining psalms, 152-155. While others have studied these psalms, they were primarily biblical scholars interested in their relation to Greek and/or Hebrew versions. While Van Rooy rehearses these arguments and offers his own thoughts based on his own investigation into these relationships, the real value of this monograph is that it also offers detailed investigations into the provenance of these Syriac psalms within the context of the development of the Syriac biblical text. For example, these Syriac psalms each contain rather lengthy headings that are clearly an inner Syriac development, and contain comments from Eusebius, Athanasius, and Theodore of Mopsuestia. Van Rooy demonstrates that in the course of transmission of the Syriac Bible there was little change in the development of the text of these psalms. Though this might not be unexpected for biblical texts, he nonetheless discerns in the few variants, which otherwise seem of relatively little textual importance, a possibility that there was a second Syriac translation of these psalms, perhaps as part of one of the later revisions of the entire Bible; unfortunately, he does little more than proffer this suggestion. …