
Epiphany 3 January 2010:  Guilsborough Evensong

A Very Happy New Year! 
My spiritually enhancing New Year's resolution, as opposed to the physically enhancing trying to get a golf handicap,. was to study the Book of Psalms and try to read one, or part of one,  each day.  So as a change from talking about our the Biblical readings for to-day,  I thought that I'd say a few words about the Psalms as I have researched them,  and then read three to show the different ways in which they can be appreciated. 
We have the version of the Book of Common Prayer , so familiar to us. I also have a modern translation from the Hebrew by Robert Altman and them by way of contrast a translation by Sir Philip Sydney and his scholar sister Mary, a quite remarkable woman. 
Sydney the poet, courtier, cupbearer to the Queen, diplomat in Europe, soldier who dies in the prime of life . 
Old boy of my school.  Stands at the war memorial in doublet and hose  the guardian of Christian Chivalry and gentlemanly conduct. 
T S Eliot's poem the Cooking Egg. 
"I shall not want honour in Heaven
For I shall meet Sir Philip Sydney
And have talk with Coriolanus
And other heroes of that kidney "

Poetry Please inspiration.   To look at the Psalms again. 

Psalm comes from  a Greek word meaning a song sung to a plucked instrument.  There are  the 150 of them  that we sing or say on most Sundays, some as short as two verses and others as long as 176 verses.   
1000BC  -  450 BC.  David and many others; none with certainty. 
Their appeal is their variety. 

There are psalms of praise and blame; cursing and lamentation; joy and exaltation. There are psalms that describe history and others that describe Creation or divine law  They cover, like Shakespeare's plays,  the whole gamut of human emotions in our relationship with God.  

John Donne the seventeenth century poet and preacher described Psalms as the " Manna of the Church" since  "just as Manna tasted to every man like that that he liked best, so do the Psalms minister instruction, and satisfaction, to every man in every emergency and occasion. 

Written consistently in the first person they are the only book of the Bible in which the writer addresses himself directly to God.  As one early translator put it  " whereas all other scriptures do teach us what God saith unto us,  these prayers do so teach us what we shall say to God. 

In the time of  Philip Sydney the problem for readers of Psalms was that they were not written in meter or any recognised poetic form.  People accepted that they were " poems"  somehow written in meter in the Hebrew, but exactly how the meter was to be appreicated was not known.  The mystery was not unravelled until the mid eighteenth century by a bishop who pointed  a form of what is called  "formal parallelism"  

Put simply, a statement is made and then followed by a second statement with roughly the same meaning but different words.  For example Psalms 33 contains the words " A horse is a vain help and shall not deliver any by his great help"   Here the second clause repeats the meaning of the first with greater intensity. 

Psalms 6 starts " Lord rebuke me not in your anger neither chasten me in thy hot displeasure" 

Or take Psalm 128 "Thy wife shall be as the fruitful vine on the walls of thine house; thy children like the olive branches round the table" .  

Here the metaphors for prosperity are  i.e. fruitful vine, olive branches  and elements in each clause are parallel wife and children, vine and branch, walls and table. " 

Very many translations: Luther, Calvin and Miles Coverdale in many European languages.  

Metrical psalms important in sixteenth century English poetry, central to personal religious devotion  But biblical poetry provided authoritative justification for writing verse which many regarded as both idle and morally suspect. 

Philip Sydney's modest beginnings but had two powerful uncles, the Earls of Warwick and Leicester. At court: but quarrelled with the Earl of Oxford and fell out of favour with the Queen because of his connection with the Earl of Leicester who was himself out of favour because of a secret marriage. 
Zutphen; wounded died at 32. In 1586.

By time of his death he had completed Psalms 1-49.  He selected a different meter or stanza form for each Psalm .  Metrical translation 

Not primarily for singing or church worship They demonstrate Sydney's mastery of poetry. 

Mary Sidney, his sister, Countesss of Pembroke.  Philip's literary executor tyrnaslated the remaining 101 psalms. 
.  
 Well educated, multilingual, and rich at 16 when she married the Earl. Of Pembroke  The first English woman to be widely celebrated as a patron of the arts.

She died in 1621

Not printed till 1823

ROBERT ALTER University of California Berkely.  Hebrew scholar.  He points out that the Psalms have their origins in pagan poetry from the Canaanites
The economy of the Hebrew language: The Lord is my Shepherd comes out as a two syllable line in Hebrew. 

He reflects this in his translation

 So he tries to be more economical to reflect the Hebrew. 

Will read three psalms  You might like to follow in the Book of Common  Prayer's version

PSALM 23  Alter trying to be nearer the succinctness of the Hebrew.   KJV "Yea though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death tI will fear no evil"   A beautiful line that has moved people for 4oo years. 
In Hebrew however it comes out in eight words and 11 syllables; in the KJV it weighs in at 17 words and 20 syllables. 

PSALM 100

PSALM 8. 



Psalm 109 vv8  Politicians Psalm.   " let his days be few and let another take his office. " 


Glory be to the Father and to the Son and to the Holy Ghost, as it was in the beginning is now and ever shall be, world without end Amen. 
