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• Paratextuality Between Materiality, Interpretation and Translation: The Case of Psalm Incipits in Jewish Late Antiquity
• A.J. Berkovitz (bio)

The field of Book History binds together the destiny of books and their readers. As a principle, it posits that the material reality of a text will have an impact upon the way in which readers engage with it; and that, in turn, the way readers engage with a text will shape its material representations. This interpretive schema has produced volumes of thought-provoking and persuasive academic literature.¹ This article joins this tradition of discourse by exploring the complicated relationship between the opening words of compositions within the Hebrew Psalter and the late ancient Jews who read them. In particular, it examines the various interpretive frameworks that Hebrew- and Aramaic-literate Jews who lived between the years 70-650 CE in Roman Palestine and Sassanian Persia imposed upon the opening words of a psalm. These readers could understand a psalm—or verses from it—in light of its opening words. But they could also read against those words, ignore them or rewrite them. By mapping this diversity of practice, I hope to highlight the importance of considering historical readers when thinking about the dynamic relationship between material texts and those who used them. Where possible, we ought not reconstruct presumed readers solely on the basis of material remains. And further, material texts should be mapped for use with reference to multiple kinds of readers and reading practices.

Methodological Remarks

Of the poems that populate the canonical Hebrew Psalter, 116 of them begin with words that clearly differ from the poetic style that characterizes the Psalms. Modern bibles almost always segregate these opening words, or ‘titles’, from the rest of the psalm. The NRSV, among other translations of [End Page 31] the Bible, goes one step further and does not mark them with a verse number at all. These words or ‘titles’, which I will call incipits (see an example at Figure 1) throughout this article, often supply data such as the musical setting, the “author function,”² a rhematic function,³ or circumstances under which the text that follows was composed.⁴ Psalm 52:1-2 seems to provide an example of an incipit with the potential for all four functions. It begins in a prosodic manner:

For the leader, a maskil⁵ of David, when Doeg the Edomite came to Saul and said to him, ‘David has come to the house of Ahimelech’

Only after delivering this information does the text move to poetry:

Why do you boast of your evil, brave fellow?God’s faithfulness never ceases.Your tongue devises mischief,like a sharpened razor that works treacherously

(Ps 52:3-4).⁶

These incipits are paratexts, material that surrounds a work—such as titles, dedications, endnotes, illustrations etc.—and attempts to shape the experience of its readers.⁷ As biblical scholars rightly note, many of these opening words were added to the psalm they adorn well after the poem was composed.⁸ Whether they are actualized and in what manner, I argue, depends on readers, their exegetical needs, and their cultural conditions.

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Psalm 67:1-4 in the Aleppo Codex

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The Psalter provides a distinctive lens through which to examine the dynamic relationship between historical readers and incipits as paratexts. Like other biblical books, Psalms existed in material form from the times of the Second Temple period and onwards. The earliest extant fragment of what would eventually develop into the canonical Psalter dates to ca. 150 BCE.⁹ Ancient readers of the Psalter could memorize its layout while holding, reading and rolling physical scrolls. Some of these readers, additionally, left traces of their interpretive conclusions as well as the habits that underpin them in the texts that survive antiquity, texts that exist apart from the material Psalter. In other words, we need not guess based on the material form of a scroll how those in the ancient world interacted with sacred texts. They tell us. Furthermore, only the Psalter contains both small literary units— often under twenty verses long—and incipits that might govern them...

中文翻译：

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物质性、解释和翻译之间的副文本：以犹太晚期的诗篇开始为例

代替摘要，这里是内容的简短摘录：

• 物质性、解释和翻译之间的副文本：以犹太晚期的诗篇开始为例
• AJ 伯科维茨（生物）

书史领域将书籍及其读者的命运联系在一起。作为一项原则，它假定文本的物质现实将对读者参与其中的方式产生影响；反过来，读者与文本互动的方式将塑造其材料表现形式。这种解释模式产生了大量发人深省和有说服力的学术文献。¹本文通过探讨希伯来诗篇中作品的开头词与阅读它们的已故古代犹太人之间的复杂关系，加入了这一话语传统。特别是，它检查了生活在罗马巴勒斯坦和萨珊波斯的公元 70 年至 650 年间的希伯来文和亚拉姆文犹太人对诗篇的开篇词施加的各种解释框架。这些读者可以根据开头的词来理解一首诗篇——或其中的诗句。但他们也可以阅读这些词，忽略它们或重写它们。通过绘制这种多样化的实践，我希望强调在思考材料文本与使用它们的人之间的动态关系时考虑历史读者的重要性。在可能的情况，我们不应该仅仅根据物质遗存来重建假定的读者。此外，应根据多种读者和阅读习惯对材料文本进行映射以供使用。

方法论评论

在收录于标准希伯来诗篇的诗歌中，有 116 首以明显不同于诗篇特征的诗歌风格开头的词语。现代圣经几乎总是将这些开头词或“标题”与诗篇的其余部分分开。NRSV 以及[End Page 31]圣经的其他译本更进一步，根本没有用经文编号来标记它们。这些词或“标题”，我将在本文中通篇称为 incipits（参见图 1 中的示例），通常提供诸如音乐背景、“作者功能”、²一种语韵功能、³或在何种情况下下面的文字是撰写的。⁴诗篇 52:1-2 似乎提供了一个具有所有四种功能的潜在例子。它以韵律的方式开始：

为首领，大卫的一个maskil ⁵，当以东人多格来到扫罗面前，对他说：“大卫到了亚希米勒的家”

只有在传递了这些信息之后，文本才会变成诗歌：

你为什么夸耀你的邪恶，勇敢的家伙？上帝的信实永不止息。你的舌头设计恶作剧，就像一把锋利的剃须刀，诡计多端

（诗 52:3-4）。⁶

这些起始点是副文本，围绕着作品的材料——例如标题、献词、尾注、插图等——并试图塑造读者的体验。⁷正如圣经学者正确地指出的那样，这些开场词中的许多都被添加到诗篇中，它们是在这首诗完成后很好地装饰的。⁸我认为，它们是否被实现以及以何种方式实现，取决于读者、他们的解经需要和他们的文化条件。

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查看完整分辨率 图 1。

阿勒颇手抄本中的诗篇 67:1-4

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《诗篇》提供了一个独特的视角，通过它可以检验历史读者和作为副文本的始祖之间的动态关系。与其他圣经书籍一样，诗篇从第二圣殿时期开始以物质形式存在。最终发展成经典诗篇的现存最早片段可追溯到约 10 年。公元前150年。⁹诗篇的古代读者可以在拿着、阅读和滚动物理卷轴时记住它的布局。此外，这些读者中的一些人在古代幸存的文本中留下了他们的解释性结论以及支撑它们的习惯的痕迹，这些文本与材料诗篇分开存在。换句话说，我们不需要根据卷轴的物质形式来猜测古代世界的人是如何与神圣文本互动的。他们告诉我们。此外，只有诗篇包含两个小的文学单元——通常不到 20 节长——以及可能支配它们的起始点……