Tuesday 22 March 2011

State of my project on the psalms

The land appears fertile and endlessly yielding a succulent crop of milk and honey. Note the anaphoric insistence of the poet in psalm 74.  The poem is too long to see the structure in one table, but some selective filters allow one to see that there is a significant feature in the land and then to focus in on it. The tables are here including the following one that highlights the area of interest. Note what is in the middle, day and night - and the seven uses of the separated second person pronoun reflect the order of creation (as my wife suggested without even reading the psalm), beginning with Leviathan and ending with the seasons. Dig this land and you will find your own harvest and re-creation.

לְךָ יוֹם אַף
לְךָ לָיְלָה

to you is day indeed 
to you night
Keywords in relative order (verses 13 to 17)
Root123456789101112Vs
אתה אתה 13
ראשׁ ראשׁי 13
אתה אתה 14
ראשׁ ראשׁי 14
נתןתתננו 14
עםלעם14
אתה אתה 15
נחל ונחל 15
אתה אתה 15
אתןאיתן15
לךלך16
יוםיום16
אףאף16
לךלך16
אתה אתה 16
אתה אתה 17
כל כל 17
ארץארץ17
חרףוחרף17
אתה אתה 17

I have sketched all the tables that go with the translations up to psalm 89. Books 4 and 5 are still all in the old format. As I do this, I refine the English to reflect the sounds and to avoid false reflections where possible. At Poetry of Christ I have published my notes up to psalm 26.  In draft (see links to pdf's at PoC) I am up to psalm 61 - and finally after several intense weeks of error correction in my table of recurring sounds, I think I am close to 95-98% 'correct'.

Correct means that the sounds are the same and I have eliminated most of the false identities of stem.  I did notice last night that one of my routines skips the relative pronoun and the other leaves it in! That comes from endless jigging for the right approach and very ad hoc experimentation.  Also at one time I did not include several small words that I think have significant play - words like 'all' and 'no' and 'to you' or 'to me'. These often give a rhetorical flourish. Because these are now included, I am forced to read closely every time I fix something or approach a psalm again. (This is actually good for me!)  Also sometimes, the divine names (El, Eloah, Elohim, and the tetragrammeton) are structurally significant but I have not included them since they would almost always recur and thus obscure other significant features.  I have included the verb 'to be'.

These are the roots omitted from the tables: על ,יהוה ,אלוה ,סלה ,כי ,מן ,אל ,את

I welcome feedback.  Where am I obscure? Where too arcane? Help me find the remaining blunders.  Thanks in advance.

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