Hundreds of Hebrew and Aramaic scrolls have been discovered in eleven caves near the Dead Sea since 1947. These documents, scrolls written on leather, one embossed on copper, thousands of fragments on papyrus or leather, have been dated to roughly between 200 B.C.E. and 70 C.E., with a small portion of the texts perhaps going back to the third century B.C.E., and the bulk of the extant material dating to the first century B.C.E.'
The caves in which the scrolls were found are located near a complex of ruins known as Khirbet Qumran, near the Dead Sea. Excavations revealed the existence of various buildings showing evidence of a community, which has since been identified as that of the Essenians, described by Josephus, Philo, and Pliny the Elder. It is also now recognized that the scrolls found in the caves must have come from this settlement of the Essenes. However, not all scholars are happy about identifying the Qumran settlement with the Essenes.2
In cave 11 were found eight3 noncanonical psalms, of which four were known, prior to the recovery of the scroll from Qumran, in ancient translations. The scroll now reveals to us the Hebrew text on which these translations were based. All four poems were originally composed in Hebrew. None of them was written in the first century C.E., the date of the scroll itself; the youngest of the four may have been written as many as two centuries or more before the scroll was written. The so-called Psalm 151, which is in two sections, 151A and 151B, was excluded from the Masoretic Bible (the standard Hebrew Bible) but was known through various manuscripts like the Septuagint, the Greek translation of the Old Testament made in Alexandria, which does not always correspond with the Hebrew Bible; in Latin through the Vetus Latina;4 and in Syriac through the Syro-Hexaplaire (a Syriac collection of five noncanonical psalms). The Syriac and Latin translations were very probably made from the Greek translations
Edmund Wilson takes up the story:
This 151st Pslam of the Septuagint now turns up in the new text as two separate pieces, which have evidently been combined in the Greek and Syriac versions and to some extent censored. This censoring is thought to be significant, because in this new Hebrew version [from cave 11 at Qumran] the flocks and the trees are made to respond to the music of David's lyre as they are not in the other versions. Now, the influence of the Greek cult of Orpheus, whose music was supposed to have enchanted its animal and vegetable hearers, is clearly traceable both in Jewish and Christian art, in the former of which Orpheus merges with David and in the latter of which with Christ. The animals and trees charmed by Orpheus are transformed into the sheep watched by David and the flock of that other good shpeherd, Christ. Among the frescoes of a third-century synagogue discovered at Dura-Europus on the Upper Euphrates, is one of Orpheus in a Phrygian cap playing his cithern to a monkey and a lion.6
Philonenko gives Dupont-Sommer's translation. But there was a certain amount of controversy about this translation. I give Edmund Wilson's summary of the issues:
The scholars who have translated this psalm (151) have differed from one another in emphasizing or minimizing the supposed Orphic influence to be seen in it. Almost all of them, like Mr. Sanders, translate the words that precede the statement that the trees and the flocks respond to David's music as a statement that the mountains do NOT bear witness to the Lord nor do the hills proclaim Him. The Hebrew negative is certainly there, but M. Dupont-Sommer, in a paper called David et Orphee [Institut de France annual public session of Cinq Academies, Monday, 26 October 1964, Paris, plaquette no. 20, 11 pages], avoids these apparently contradictory statements by interpreting these lines as questions: "Do the mountains not bear witness ?" etc. He regards the lines that follow as also betraying Greek influence-in this case, Pythagoreanism, a conception of the harmony of the world, the music of the spheres, which the pious musician imitates and reproduces on his lyre in homage to the supreme God. "For who will proclaim and who will recount the works of the Lord ? God sees the universe; God hears the universe, and he gives ear." The Hebrew phrase for the all J. A. Sanders simply renders as everything; Dupont-Sommer translates "l'univers" as I have left it above.... The Jews, in their reaction against the Greeks, would have eliminated any trace of Orphism of Pythagoreanism, hence the abridged version in the Septuagint and the Syriac texts of this Hellenistic psalm.?
I give Geza Vermes's English translation of Psalm 151A for comparison.
Hallelujah. Of David, son of Jesse
1. I was smaller than my brothers, and younger than the sons of my father.
He made me shepherd of his flock, and a ruler over his kids.
2. My hands have made a pipe and my fingers a lyre.
I have rendered glory to the Lord ; I have said so in my soul.
3. The mountains do not testify to him, and the hills do not tell (of him).
The trees praise my words and the flocks my deeds.
4. For who can tell and speak of and recount the works of the Lord?
God has seen all, he has heard all, and he listens to all.
5. He sent his prophet to anoint me, Samuel to magnify me.
My brothers went out to meet him, beautiful of figure, beautiful of appearance.
6. They were tall of stature with beautiful hair, yet the Lord did not choose them.
7. He sent and took me from behind the flock, and anointed me with holy oil.
As a prince of his people, and a ruler among the sons of his Covenant.8
151 B in J. A. Sanders's translation:
At the beginning of David's power after the prophet of God had anointed him.
I now give Dupont-Sommers's French translation of 151A and B:
151B:
Psalm 151A "is made up of seven pairs, or couplets, of bi-colons preceded by a short title. Hebrew poetry can be measured in sense-accented feet, or stresses ; the bi-colons in our psalm generally have the 3/2 metre save for verses 4 and 7, which have bicolons in 3 /3.... Psalm 151 A has two strophes clearly indicated by the slightly longer verses of 4 and 7, each of which closes a strophe."11
To end, I give Psalm 151 from the Septuagint:
This Psalm is a genuine one of David, though supernumerary, composed when he fought in single combat with Goliad.
I was small among my brethren, and youngest in my father's house: I tended my father's sheep. My hands formed a musical intsrument and my fingers tuned a psaltery. And who shall tell my Lord? the Lord himself, he himself hears. He sent forth his angel, and took me from my father's sheep, and he anointed me with the oil of his anointing. My brothers were handsome and tall; but the Lord did not take pleasure in them. I went forth to meet the Philistine; and he cursed me by his idols. But I drew his own sword, and beheaded him, and removed reproach from the children of Israel.12
NOTES
1. Geza Vermes, The Complete Dead Sea Scrolls in English, (Har- mondsworth: Penquin, 1998), pp. 13-14.
2. Others associate the Qumran sect with the Pharisees, Sadducees, Zealots, or Jewish-Christians: see R. Eisenbaum and Michael Wise, Dead Sea Scrolls Uncovered (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1992), pp. 5, 11.
3. Scholars do not always seem to agree: Vermes says there were seven noncanonical psalms found, The Complete Dead Sea Scrolls, p. 301, while Dupont-Sommer insists on eight: La Bible: Ecrits Intertestamentaires, ed. Dupont and M. Philonenko (Paris: Gallimard, 1987), p. 303.
4. Vetus Latina is a general term for all Latin translations of the scriptures prior to Saint Jerome's Vulgate (Saint Jerome 342 B.C.E.-420 c.E.). They show considerable variations since they were not the product of one translator, and they were translated from the Greek of the Septuagint, unlike Jerome's Vulgate, which was translated from the original Hebrew.
5. Most of the information in this paragraph, and the rest of this introduc- tion,comes from J. A. Sanders, The Dead Sea Psalms Scroll (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1967), pp. 93-103.
6. E.Wilson, The Dead Sea Scrolls, 1947-1969 (New York, 1969), pp. 145-47.
7. Ibid.
8. Vermes, The Complete Dead Sea Scrolls, p. 302.
9. Sanders, The Dead Sea Psalms Scroll.
10. Dupon-Sommer, La Bible.
11. J. A. Sanders, The Dead Sea Psalms Scroll, p. 94.
12. The Septuagint Version of the Old Testament and Apocrypha, with English translation by Sir Launcelot Lee Brenton (London, 1976), p. 787.