Sunday 24 July 2011

The state of affairs in my psalmody

I have synchronized the blog and my database up to psalm 69 and will gradually get to the end of book 2 this week with posts scheduled to August 20 at Poc.  It's kind of fun, scheduling posts. You forget that they are coming and you forget that you wrote them - and there they are! With enough blogs one might keep oneself entertained for a while :).

I did what I set out to do when I stopped writing a month ago at psalm 90-91. I have reviewed every usage of every word and touched nearly every psalm in the doing. There are a few English homonyms that are easily distinguishable in context, plenty of helping verbs to ignore and a few verbs with prepositions modifying the verb that distinguish usage.  And there are a few Hebrew words where the same word is spelled differently and I have left them separate like heart (lb, lbb) and trouble (cr, crr, crh) and evil (r`, r``). I don't have an easy way to present (or read) the results in English 'root' order, so I sort of have to believe myself.  But I expect I might try a clever ordering of the glossary at some point. It would be a confirmation of the analytical function that I wrote. I have left in a few compromises besides the acrostic games and I may introduce a few more. When I do, my single page summary shows me my compromises. So far there is only one: in 39.6 and 69.12 where I use 'make' for 'give'. These I will note by verse when I see them.

Of course this is still an early step in the process - I may elect for various reasons to stand down from this discipline.  What if I actually learned something from another source!

The plan: We will be at the end of Book 2 by Aug 18.  I will be on holiday so probably won't do much except blog the odd picture from NY and the USA.

I will then write the Book 2 summary as I wrote the quick one for Book 1. Maybe I will put Book 3 on PoC scheduled in August, Sept, Oct. Book 4 would likely carry us to December.  But in the period Oct to Dec I am supposed to be researching the Psalter as story - how should I do this?  I can't do it if I haven't finished the Psalter so I will have to wait and see what approach to take.  Maybe I will need to write the summaries before continuing with any notes apart from individual notes on verses. I am sorry I did not start this way - just notes on verses. It would have helped me remember the tortuous ways of my thoughts and my resources.

I think I will have to push myself to summarize books 3 4 and 5 in September and finish the synchronization of the blog and the database from psalms 73 to 150.

I am just realizing how much time I can save using a bit of java script and cascading style sheets. Nice support from blogger.  I just increased the font-size in the Hebrew without hardly lifting a finger!

Any advice?

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