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September 18, 2007
One of These Things May or May Not Be Like the Other
I've spent a good portion of this afternoon trying to convince myself, one way or the other, that there is a relationship between the formula מִזְמוֹר לְדָוִד, "Psalm of/for/to David" or its cousins like מִזְמוֹר לְאָסָף, "Psalm of/for/to Asaph" and the various epigraphic formulae for possession and/or transfer like ליחזיהו יין כחל (followed by a sign that looks more or less like a capital E), "Belonging to/for Yahzeyahu, dark(?) wine" from the wine decanter inscription published by Avigad. Or if you don't like an unprovenanced inscription or an inscription with a strange sign, how about, this one from Hazor, לפקח סמדר, "Belonging to/for Peqah, grape blossom [wine(?)]" or from Khirbet El-Qôm, לעופי בן נתניהו החדר הזה, "Belonging to/for Ophay, son of Netanyahu, this chamber" or בשת התשעת מיצת לאדנעם נבל ין ישן, "In the ninth year from Yasit: Belonging to Adonaim, a jar of old wine" from Samaria (#9). And in case you worry about the word order, how about Samaria inscription 13, ין ישן לאש[חר] [ ] מתול, "Old wine, belonging to (or for) Ashur [ ] from Tawil?"
John Hobbins' post on Psalm 6:1 motivated this pain. John prefers to translate the phrase from Psalms, "A psalm of David’s collection." I'm not all that familiar with the literature on the biblical phrase but I think James Kugel, 49-50, has a fairly complete list of various meanings that have been proposed. But Kugel, 49, says something that worries me,
In fact, it seems certain that this phrase had no static existence but, having been used for one purpose early on, was reused and added on to other compositions later, perhaps with a new understanding of its meaning. . . . Perhaps the least likely hypothesis about this mysterious phrase is that it was originally an attribution of authorship but that is precisely the sense in which it came to be taken.
Now, Kugel may be correct that the "phrase had no static existence," but at each point in that existence it did have a fixed meaning for both those who wrote and those who read it. Not only was that meaning fixed at each stage, I believe it was unambiguous. Sure, I do believe that ambiguity was used as a literary device in antiquity and that there were occasions, as there are today, where there was unintentional ambiguity.
Because the biblical phrase appears to be a formula, I decided to look for similar formulae in the linguistic vicinity. The examples cited above from Hebrew epigraphic material seemed at first to meet the challenge. And they imply either to possess or to transfer possession. In other words, could it mean "A Psalm belonging to David" or "for David (in the sense of something being intended to belong to someone)." As a simple matter of fact, such formulae generally imply possession. But an inscription from Tell Qasile, למלך אלף שמן ומאה חיהו , "For / belonging to the king: one thousand one hundred (units) of oil. Hiyahu," seems to me to imply transfer from? Hiyahu to the king. I will point out that the difference between "belonging to" and "for" is a matter of current physical possession and little more.
I was pretty excited about all this until I started to think about it at a level beyond the purely grammatical. What might it mean for a Psalm to belong to someone in the same sense that a jug of wine or a tomb chamber or an allotment of oil belongs to someone? When I asked this question, the answer came quickly. I didn't have the slightest idea. The only possible thing I could think of is that Psalms so labeled belonged to David (or one or all Davidide kings) or to Asaph in the same way that a book belongs to my library. And of course, this is close to John's understanding.
Then I took a look at some passages like Deuteronomy 29:28a, הַנִּסְתָּרֹת לַיהוָה אֱלֹהֵינוּ, "Secret stuff belongs to Yahweh our god." And the remainder of the verse is instructive also, וְהַנִּגְלֹת לָנוּ וּלְבָנֵינוּ עַד עוֹלָם לַעֲשׂוֹת אֶת כָּל דִּבְרֵי הַתּוֹרָה הַזֹּאת, "but the revealed stuff belongs to us and to our children forever, that we may do all the words of this law."
So, do we have in מִזְמוֹר לְדָוִד a formula of possession or transfer that relates to "revealed stuff (don't take this too literally)" rather than material stuff?
Reference:
Posted by Duane Smith at September 18, 2007 8:57 PM | Read more on Hebrew Bible |
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Comments
"Not only was that meaning fixed at each stage, I believe it was unambiguous."
I see this ambiguity in Etruscan too. It seems that a lot of published people get a little lazy and just wave a magical statement over the pesky details they find too laborious to solve, such as "the translation depends on context" without defining what the context actually is. When I read stuff like that, my blood pressure rises because I for one think that even these small nuances are important in order to translate a text properly. It's nice to see someone asking pertinent questions, but alas, I need to learn more Ugaritic before I can make a more constructive comment. Your Ugaritic examples are helpful.
Posted by: Glen Gordon at September 22, 2007 2:41 PM
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