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McNamara, Martin, “Five Irish psalter texts”, Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy 109 C (2009): 37–104.

  • journal article
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Article
“Five Irish psalter texts”
Volume
109 C
Pages
37–104
Description
Abstract (cited)
In 1973 the present writer published an essay on the psalms in the early Irish Church (from AD 600 to 1200). In this he reviewed the material available for a study of the subject and gave a more detailed examination of some of the texts. The present work intends to supplement the 1973 essay. It concentrates on three central topics:

(1) the full collation of a hitherto unstudied text, the fragments of an Irish Hebraicum Psalter in MS. Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale de France (BNF) fr. 2452 (tenth century), fols 75-84, which on analysis is revealed as an early representative of the typical Irish recension of the Hebraicum (AKI—the sigla for the psalter text of the three MSS Amiatinus, Florence, Biblioteca Mediceo-Laurenziana Amiatino I; Karlsruhe, Badische Landesbibliothek, Aug. perg. 38; Rouen, Bibliothèque municipale 24 [A. 41]);

(2) a more detailed examination of the Psalter of Cormac (thirteenth century);

and (3) of the so-called Psalter of Caimin (c. 1100).

With these, two comments on two other psalters are also given (that in the 'Reference Bible' and the Double Psalter of St-Ouen) while a preliminary section treats of texts having a bearing on the understanding of the psalter in Ireland (the Tituli psalmorum attributed to Bede; psalm prologues and biblical canticles and psalm prayers).
Related publications
Other editions or printings
McNamara, Martin, The Bible and the apocrypha in the early Irish church (A.D. 600–1200), Instrumenta patristica et mediaevalia, 66, Turnhout: Brepols, 2015.  
abstract:
The twenty-one essays in this volume, published from 1971 onwards, together with the introductions and conclusion, treat of the Bible and apocryphal works in Ireland during the pre-Norman period, from A.D. 600 to 1200. The essays cover developments during the period from Professor Bernhard Bischoff’s seminal 1954 essay ("Wendepunkte"), on new evidence for Irish contributions in the field, down to the present day. After an initial survey of research during this period, attention is paid to the texts of the Latin Bible, in particular the Psalms and the Four Gospels, and to the Antiochene influence on Psalm interpretation, as well as to the rich corpus of Irish apocryphal writings, some of them very early (Transitus Mariae, so-called Infancy Narrative of Thomas, texts on the Magi and a related Infancy Narrative). Special attention is paid to the creative biblical interpretation of the Psalms in the early Irish Church A.D. 600-800, and also to what appears to be an early Irish (early eighth-century) commentary on the Apocalypse. It is hoped that these essays will contribute to a renewed examination of early Irish exegesis in this the sixtieth year of the publication of Dr Bischoff’s 1954 essay.
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Contributors
Dennis Groenewegen
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September 2011, last updated: July 2018