Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- List of abbreviations
- Introduction
- The writing and pronunciation of Old English
- I Teaching and learning
- II Keeping a record
- III Spreading the Word
- 13 After the Flood (from the Old English Hexateuch: Gen 8.6–18 and 9.8–13)
- 14 The Crucifixion (from the Old English Gospels: Mt 27.11–54)
- 15 King Alfred's Psalms
- 16 A Translator's Problems (Ælfric's preface to his translation of Genesis)
- 17 Satan's Challenge (Genesis B, lines 338–441)
- 18 The Drowning of Pharaoh's Army (Exodus, lines 447–564)
- 19 Judith
- IV Example and Exhortation
- V Telling Tales
- VI Reflection and lament
- Manuscripts and textual emendations
- Reference Grammar of Old English
- Glossary
- Guide to terms
- Index
15 - King Alfred's Psalms
from III - Spreading the Word
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- List of abbreviations
- Introduction
- The writing and pronunciation of Old English
- I Teaching and learning
- II Keeping a record
- III Spreading the Word
- 13 After the Flood (from the Old English Hexateuch: Gen 8.6–18 and 9.8–13)
- 14 The Crucifixion (from the Old English Gospels: Mt 27.11–54)
- 15 King Alfred's Psalms
- 16 A Translator's Problems (Ælfric's preface to his translation of Genesis)
- 17 Satan's Challenge (Genesis B, lines 338–441)
- 18 The Drowning of Pharaoh's Army (Exodus, lines 447–564)
- 19 Judith
- IV Example and Exhortation
- V Telling Tales
- VI Reflection and lament
- Manuscripts and textual emendations
- Reference Grammar of Old English
- Glossary
- Guide to terms
- Index
Summary
The psalms of the Old Testament, which had been a part of Jewish worship since the eighth century BC, came to play a crucial role in the practice of Christianity, too, for they were interpreted as presenting prophecies which were later fulfilled in the life of Christ. Their poetic qualities – a ‘psalm’ is a song, originally in verse in the Hebrew – and their association (however tenuous) with the great but troubled king of Israel, David, made them a popular resource for personal devotion also. By the early Middle Ages, formal church worship (the ‘divine office’) was built around the psalms and they were circulated in self-contained books called psalters. In the monasteries, the whole of the psalter would be sung through every week, and monks were expected to know all the one hundred and fifty psalms by heart. Not surprisingly, therefore, the Latin psalter seems to have been the most widely copied book in Anglo-Saxon England. Eleven of the forty surviving examples have an OE translation (or ‘gloss’) written word by word between the lines of Latin, probably as a way to help monks to master that language.
Because it followed the Latin word-order slavishly, such a translation did not produce a coherent vernacular version of the psalter. A self-contained translation exists, however, in a bilingual psalter made in the mid-eleventh century and now in the Biblioth`eque Nationale in Paris (lat. 8824).
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- Information
- The Cambridge Old English Reader , pp. 116 - 121Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2004