front cover of The Bay Psalm Book
The Bay Psalm Book
A Facsimile
With an Introduction by Diarmaid MacCulloch
Bodleian Library Publishing, 2014
The Bay Psalm Book was the first book to be printed in North America, twenty years after the arrival of the Pilgrims in Massachusetts. Today, only eleven copies are still in existence and fetch as much as fourteen million dollars at auction, making it also the most expensive book in the world.
           
Originally published in 1640 as The Whole Booke of Psalmes Faithfully Translated into English Metre, the unassuming psalter undertook the translation of Hebrew psalms into English verse for a growing population of New England Puritans unhappy with contemporary translations and in need of a version that would better represent their beliefs. The book became popularly known as The Bay Psalm Book, named after the Massachusetts Bay Colony in which its translators—among them the ministers John Cotton and Richard Mather—lived.
           
This beautiful facsimile edition of The Bay Psalm Book reproduces one of the best remaining copies of the psalter, including the translators’ preface and the original printer’s errors and binding marks. An introduction by Diarmaid MacCulloch details the book’s place in American religious and cultural history and explains how the psalter came to have such a profound effect on the course of the Protestant faith in America.
[more]

front cover of The Book of Psalms
The Book of Psalms
The JPS Audio Version
Michael,Norma,Kathy,Harold,Elizabeth,Francie Anne,Jonathan JPS: The Jewish Publication Society
Jewish Publication Society, 2009
The audio version of the Book of Psalms was created by JPS and JBI. Using the NJPS translation, Michael Bernstein, Norma Fire, Kathy Ford, Harold Kushner, Elizabeth London, Francie Anne Rile, and Jonathan Roumie narrated this book exclusively for The Jewish Publication Society.
[more]

front cover of Commentary on the Psalms, Psalms 1-72
Commentary on the Psalms, Psalms 1-72
Robert C. Theodoret of Cyrus
Catholic University of America Press, 2000
No description available
[more]

front cover of The Homilies of Saint Jerome, Volume 1 (1–59 on the Psalms)
The Homilies of Saint Jerome, Volume 1 (1–59 on the Psalms)
Saint Jerome
Catholic University of America Press, 1965
This volume contains fifty-nine homilies preached by St. Jerome on selected Psalms.
[more]

front cover of Homilies on Psalms, 36-38
Homilies on Psalms, 36-38
Michael Origen
Catholic University of America Press, 2023
This volume provides the first English translation of the nine extant homilies on Psalms 36[37]–38[39] preached by Origen (d. 253/4) to his congregation at Caesarea as arranged and translated for Latin readers by his admirer, Rufinus of Aquileia (d. 411). These homilies are among the earliest extant examples of patristic preaching on the Psalter. The interpretation offered throughout these homilies, which is almost wholly moral, reflects Origen’s understanding of the “soul” of the scriptural text. These homilies provide a glimpse of Origen’s account of scriptural meaning, outlined in De principiis 4, in pastoral practice. In his preaching, Origen offers a vision of the Christian life as centered on the soul’s continuing conversion, growth, and progress, with particular reference to and within the context of the Church. The life of the believer is one of combat and struggle with powers opposed to Christ. It is Christ, as the divine Physician, who offers healing to the one who is wounded and ailing from sin, and it is Christ, as Wisdom and Word of God, who instructs and educates the believer in the life of the Spirit. These homilies reveal the substantial coherence of Origen’s thought, as expressed in the more speculative De principiis and as revealed in the more elaborate, nuptial theology found in his Commentary on the Canticle. This volume includes a robust introduction and complements the work of Joseph Trigg, whose translation from the original Greek of the cache of homilies discovered in Codex Monacensis 314 has recently appeared in this series.
[more]

front cover of Homilies on the Psalms
Homilies on the Psalms
Codex Monacensis Graecus 314
Joseph W. Origen
Catholic University of America Press, 2021
In 2012 Dr. Marina Marin Pradel, an archivist at the Bayerische Stattsbibliotek in Munich, discovered that a thick 12th-century Byzantine manuscript, Codex Monacensis Graecus 314, contained twenty-nine of Origen’s Homilies on the Psalms, hitherto considered lost. Lorenzo Perrone of the University of Bologna, an internationally respected scholar of Origen, vouched for the identification and immediately began work on the scholarly edition that appeared in 2015 as the thirteenth volume of Origen’s works in the distinguished Griechische Christlichen Schrifsteller series. In an introductory essay Perrone provided proof that the homilies are genuine and demonstrated that they are, astonishingly, his last known work. Live transcripts, these collection homilies constitute our largest collection of actual Christian preaching from the pre-Constantinian period. In these homilies, the final expression of his mature thought, Origen displays, more fully than elsewhere, his understanding of the church and of deification as the goal of Christian life. They also give precious insights into his understanding of the incarnation and of human nature. They are the earliest example of early Christian interpretation of the Psalms, works at the heart of Christian spirituality. Historians of biblical interpretation will find in them the largest body of Old Testament interpretation surviving in his own words, not filtered through ancient translations into Latin that often failed to convey his intense philological acumen. Among other things, they give us new insights into the life of a third-century Greco-Roman metropolis, into Christian/Jewish relations, and into Christian worship. This translation, using the GCS as its basis, seeks to convey, as faithfully as possible, Origen’s own categories of thought. An introduction and notes relate the homilies to the theology and principles of interpretation in Origen’s larger work and to that work’s intellectual context and legacy.
[more]

front cover of Jerome, Epistle 106 (On the Psalms)
Jerome, Epistle 106 (On the Psalms)
Michael Graves
SBL Press, 2022

A fresh interpretation of the nature, purpose, and date of Jerome’s Epistle 106

In this volume of the Writings from the Greco-Roman World series, Michael Graves offers the first accessible English translation and commentary on Jerome’s Epistle 106, an important work of patristic biblical interpretation. In his treatise Jerome discusses different textual and exegetical options according to various Greek and Latin copies of the Psalms with input from the Hebrew. Epistle 106 provides insightful commentary on the Gallican Psalter, Jerome’s translation of Origen’s hexaplaric edition. Jerome’s work offers a unique window into the complex textual state of the Psalter in the late fourth century and serves as an outstanding example of ancient philological scholarship on the Bible. Graves’s translation and commentary is an essential resource for scholars and students of patristic exegesis, biblical textual criticism, and late antique Christianity.

[more]

front cover of Mirror in Parchment
Mirror in Parchment
The Luttrell Psalter and the Making of Medieval England
Michael Camille
University of Chicago Press, 1998
What is the status of visual evidence in history? Can we actually see the past through images? Where are the traces of previous lives deposited? Michael Camille addresses these important questions in Mirror in Parchment, a lively, searching study of one medieval manuscript, its patron, producers, and historical progeny.

The richly illuminated Luttrell Psalter was created for the English nobleman Sir Geoffrey Luttrell (1276-1345). Inexpensive mechanical illustration has since disseminated the book's images to a much wider audience; hence the Psalter's representations of manorial life have come to profoundly shape our modern idea of what medieval English people, high and low, looked like at work and at play. Alongside such supposedly truthful representations, the Psalter presents myriad images of fantastic monsters and beasts. These patently false images have largely been disparaged or ignored by modern historians and art historians alike, for they challenge the credibility of those pictures in the Luttrell Psalter that we wish to see as real.

In the conviction that medieval images were not generally intended to reflect daily life but rather to shape a new reality, Michael Camille analyzes the Psalter's famous pictures as representations of the world, imagined and real, of its original patron. Addressed are late medieval chivalric ideals, physical sites of power, and the boundaries of Sir Geoffrey's imagined community, wherein agricultural laborers and fabulous monsters play a similar ideological role. The Luttrell Psalter thus emerges as a complex social document of the world as its patron hoped and feared it might be.
[more]

front cover of Mirror In Parchment
Mirror In Parchment
The Luttrell Psalter and the Making of Medieval England
Michael Camille
Reaktion Books, 1998
What is the status of visual evidence in history? Can we actually see the past through images? Where are the traces of previous lives deposited? Michael Camille addresses these important questions in Mirror in Parchment, a lively, searching study of one medieval manuscript, its patron, producers, and historical progeny.

The richly illuminated Luttrell Psalter was created for the English nobleman Sir Geoffrey Luttrell (1276-1345). Inexpensive mechanical illustration has since disseminated the book's images to a much wider audience; hence the Psalter's representations of manorial life have come to profoundly shape our modern idea of what medieval English people, high and low, looked like at work and at play. Alongside such supposedly truthful representations, the Psalter presents myriad images of fantastic monsters and beasts. These patently false images have largely been disparaged or ignored by modern historians and art historians alike, for they challenge the credibility of those pictures in the Luttrell Psalter that we wish to see as real.

In the conviction that medieval images were not generally intended to reflect daily life but rather to shape a new reality, Michael Camille analyzes the Psalter's famous pictures as representations of the world, imagined and real, of its original patron. Addressed are late medieval chivalric ideals, physical sites of power, and the boundaries of Sir Geoffrey's imagined community, wherein agricultural laborers and fabulous monsters play a similar ideological role. The Luttrell Psalter thus emerges as a complex social document of the world as its patron hoped and feared it might be.
[more]

front cover of A Model for the Christian Life
A Model for the Christian Life
Hilary of Poitier's Commentary on the Psalms
Paul C. Burns
Catholic University of America Press, 2012
In this examination of Hilary's treatise, Paul C. Burns discusses the intended audience of Hilary's text and the use of the Psalms by Christians in the fourth century. He identifies Hilary's distinctive perspectives; his dependence on Origen; his Latin theological and exegetical tradition; and the creative directions of Hilary's thought.
[more]

front cover of New Each Day
New Each Day
A Spiritual Practice for Reading Psalms
Rabbi Debra J. Robbins
Central Conference of American Rabbis, 2024
Every day of the year, Jewish liturgy includes the Shir Shel Yom, a psalm recited to mark the day of the week. New Each Day by Rabbi Debra J. Robbins breathes new life into this ancient practice, inviting us to engage with psalms in a fresh, inspiring way. Daily “Reflections for Focus” offer unique insights on each psalm, with a structure for meditation and writing that encourages the reader to develop their own personal routine. Reflections for each month, based on the psalm for Rosh Chodesh, provide a full year of spiritual practice. Just as Rabbi Robbins did for the High Holy Day season in Opening Your Heart with Psalm 27, New Each Day guides us along the journey of the year with intention and meaning.
 
[more]

front cover of Psalm Studies, Volume 1
Psalm Studies, Volume 1
Sigmund Mowinckel
SBL Press, 2014

Sigmund Mowinckel is widely recognized as one of the leading forces in Psalms research during the twentieth century. Indeed, the culmination of Mowinckel’s thought and work, The Psalms in Israel’s Worship, continues to play a significant role in Psalms scholarship today. Not as well known are the seminal studies that prepared the ground for Mowinckel’s later work, the six Psalmenstudien that are translated here into English for the first time. In these studies Mowinckel explores with care and in detail such topics as: “'Awen and the Psalms of Individual Lament”; “YHWH’s Enthronement Festival and the Origin of Eschatology”; “Cultic Prophecy and Prophetic Psalms”; “The Technical Terms in the Psalm Superscriptions”; “Blessing and Curse in Israel’s Cult and Psalmody”; and “The Psalmists.” Anyone interested in Psalms study, especially the possible role of the New Year’s enthronement festival within Israel’s cult and its relation to the Psalter, will find much to consider in these classic works.

[more]

front cover of Psalm Studies, Volume 2
Psalm Studies, Volume 2
Sigmund Mowinckel
SBL Press, 2014

Sigmund Mowinckel is widely recognized as one of the leading forces in Psalms research during the twentieth century. Indeed, the culmination of Mowinckel’s thought and work, The Psalms in Israel’s Worship, continues to play a significant role in Psalms scholarship today. Not as well known are the seminal studies that prepared the ground for Mowinckel’s later work, the six Psalmenstudien that are translated here into English for the first time. In these studies Mowinckel explores with care and in detail such topics as: “'Awen and the Psalms of Individual Lament”; “YHWH’s Enthronement Festival and the Origin of Eschatology”; “Cultic Prophecy and Prophetic Psalms”; “The Technical Terms in the Psalm Superscriptions”; “Blessing and Curse in Israel’s Cult and Psalmody”; and “The Psalmists.” Anyone interested in Psalms study, especially the possible role of the New Year’s enthronement festival within Israel’s cult and its relation to the Psalter, will find much to consider in these classic works.

[more]

front cover of Psalms
Psalms
Julia Fiedorczuk
University of Wisconsin Press, 2023
Fiedorczuk was inspired by her readings of the original Hebrew Psalms, as well as by the process of learning to sing. In her poems she captures the heartache and joy of the Biblical Psalms, but in the context of modern life. She addresses climate change, loss of biodiversity, the upheavals of migration, and, in her most recent poems, the return of war to Europe: “Even when bombs are falling you ought to write / perhaps even especially when people lost / in the woods are saying cold, she is so cold.”

Fiedorczuk writes of the natural world, the built environment, motherhood, brotherhood, and of vast and tiny passages of time. And as she does, she discovers a new voice, singing to soothe and inspire.
 
 
whose 
flower made from a clod of pain will enfold 
the milky way with its claws 
of time, its pelt of stars?
—Excerpt from “Psalm XVII”
[more]

front cover of The Psalms of Israel Jones
The Psalms of Israel Jones
A Novel
Ed Davis
West Virginia University Press, 2014

Secrets and snakes, rock and gospel, guilt and grace.

The Psalms of Israel Jones 
is the story of a father and son’s journey towards spiritual redemption. This novel tells the tale of a famous father trapped inside the suffocating world of rock and roll, and his son who is stranded within the bounds of conventional religion. 

When Reverend Thomas Johnson receives an anonymous phone call, he learns his Dylanesque rock star father is acting deranged on stage, where he’s being worshipped by a cult of young people who slash their faces during performances. In his declining years, Israel Jones has begun to incite his fans to violence. They no longer want to watch the show—they want to be the show.

Eager to escape troubles with his congregation as well as gain an apology from his dad for abandoning his family, Reverend Johnson leaves town and joins Israel Jones’s Eternal Tour. This decision propels him to the center of a rock and roll hell, giving him one last chance to reconnect with his father, wife, congregation—and maybe even God.

The Psalms of Israel Jones is the 2010 Hackney Literary Award winner for an unpublished manuscript.

[more]

front cover of The Psalms of Solomon
The Psalms of Solomon
Language, History, Theology
Eberhard Bons
SBL Press, 2015

A fresh analysis of that sheds new light on the Psalms of Solomon

Researchers whose work focuses on the Psalms of Solomon, experts on the Septuagint, and scholars of Jewish Hellenistic literature take a fresh look at debates surrounding the text. Authors engage linguistic, historical, and theological issues including the original language of the psalms, their historical setting, and their theological intentions with the goal of expanding our understanding of first-century BCE Jewish theology.

Features:

  • New methods applied to open questions of authorship and historical context
  • Focusd scholarly attention on a work of theological and literary importance
  • Revised essays originally presented at the First International Meeting on the Psalms of Solomon
[more]

front cover of The Psalms of Solomon
The Psalms of Solomon
Texts, Contexts, and Intertexts
Patrick Pouchelle
SBL Press, 2021

Explore new approaches to the Psalms of Solomon

The Psalms of Solomon: Texts, Contexts, and Intertexts explores a unique pseudepigraphal document that bears witness to the 63 BCE Roman conquest of Jerusalem. Essays address a variety of themes, notably their political, social, religious, and historical contexts, through the lens of anthropology of religion, cognitive science, socioeconomic theory, and more. Contributors include Kenneth Atkinson, Eberhard Bons, Johanna Erzberger, Angela Kim Harkins, G. Anthony Keddie, Patrick Pouchelle, Stefan Schreiber, Shani Tzoref, and Rodney A. Werline.

[more]

front cover of The Shape and Shaping of the Book of Psalms
The Shape and Shaping of the Book of Psalms
The Current State of Scholarship
Nancy L. deClaissé-Walford
SBL Press, 2014

A new and innovative way to approach the Psalter that moves beyond form and cult-functional criticism

Drawing inspiration from Gerald H. Wilson’s The Editing of the Hebrew Psalter, this volume explores questions of the formation of the Psalter from the perspective of canonical criticism. Though called “canonical criticism,” the study actually employs a number of historically traditional and nontraditional approaches to reading the text including form criticism, historical criticism of individual psalms as well as of the whole Psalter, and redaction criticism.

Features:

  • Exploration of collections of psalms, theological viewpoints, sovereignty, and the shape and shaping of Psalms
  • Examination of the impact of canonical criticism on the study of the Psalter
  • Sixteen essays from the Book of Psalms Consultation group and invited scholars
[more]

front cover of Songs Ascending
Songs Ascending
The Book of Psalms, Complete Edition
Richard N. Levy
Central Conference of American Rabbis, 2017

front cover of Songs Ascending
Songs Ascending
The Book of Psalms in a New Translation with Textual and Spiritual Commentary
Rabbi Richard N. Levy
Central Conference of American Rabbis, 2017

front cover of Songs Ascending
Songs Ascending
The Book of Psalms, Volume Two: Psalms 73-150
Richard N. Levy
Central Conference of American Rabbis, 2017

front cover of Theodoret of Cyrus
Theodoret of Cyrus
commentary on the Psalms, 73-150
Robert C. Theodoret of Cyrus
Catholic University of America Press, 2000
No description available
[more]

front cover of This Grateful Heart
This Grateful Heart
Psalms and Prayers for a New Day
Alden Solovy
Central Conference of American Rabbis, 2017

logo for Harvard University Press
A Translator’s Defense
Giannozzo Manetti
Harvard University Press, 2016
Giannozzo Manetti (1396–1459) was an Italian diplomat and a celebrated humanist orator and scholar of the early Renaissance. Son of a wealthy Florentine merchant, he turned away from a commercial career to take up scholarship under the guidance of the great civic humanist, Leonardo Bruni. Like Bruni he mastered both classical Latin and Greek, but, unusually, added to his linguistic armory a command of Biblical Hebrew as well. He used his knowledge of Hebrew to make a fresh translation of the Psalms into humanist Latin, a work that implicitly challenged the canonical Vulgate of St. Jerome. His Apologeticus (1455–59) in five books was a defense of the study of Hebrew and of the need for a new translation. As such, it constituted the most extensive treatise on the art of translation of the Renaissance. This ITRL edition contains the first complete translation of the work into English.
[more]


Send via email Share on Facebook Share on Twitter