Last Sunday I went to a concert by one of the choirs
of a friend of mine. She is a devoted amateur soprano and whenever she has a
concert, I attend it. This time the theme was: `Rise up my love.’ with various
settings of the Song of Songs in Latin, German and English and by composers
from Fransesco Guerrero (1528-1599) till
still living composers like Sven Sandström and Paul Mealor. I bought a booklet
containing information and the texts with
translations. Often I frown upon translations of Latin texts in such
booklets, but here the Vulgate text of Ego flos campi and a modern Dutch
bible translation went wide apart. I always assumed that the Vulgate was a
translation of the Hebrew Bible and not from the Septuagint, so where do the
differences come from? Time to sort this out! That was less easy than I
thought. Internet has terabytes and terabytes of information and some people,
especially youngsters, think that books and libraries are completely out of
fashion - unfortunately the managers of the academic library here at Groningen
think that too - but the fact is that a simple question like: `Dear mister
Internet, did Jerome translate the Canticus Canticorum from the Septuagint or
from the Hebrew Bible?’ will give only a massive silence from the other side of
the computer. So I went to the library of the theological faculty to sort this
out. Very handy as 10 commentaries on the Song of Songs where there neatly put
together on a shelf. From next year, all decentralized libraries of the
university will be closed and all the books which are now easily accessible on
shelves will be put in the central store of the university library,
inaccessible and every single copy has to be asked for by pc. Why? Students don’t
look for books anymore, so the librarians can be fired. And what about the
empty libraries? Students can sit there with their Ipods and laptops, studying
and looking for information on the internet...
Hieronymus (347 - 420), better known in English as St.
Jerome was a troublemaker and a religious zealot, but a highly prolific writer.
In 382 he was asked by Pope Damasius 1 to make a new translation in Latin of
the Bible. There was already a translation, known as the Vetus Latina, but this
was considered as a poor translation. Initially St. Jerome translated anew from
the Septuagint and had already completed a number of books under which the Song
of Songs, when he heard of the decision of the Rabbinical council at Jamnia to
reject the Septuagint in favor of the Hebrew Bible. The Septuagint was a
translation of the Hebrew Bible made in Alexandria, started around 200 BC and
ended decades later. It was made because many Jews were unable to read their
holy scriptures. Hebrew had already for a long time been replaced by Aramaic as the spoken language
and apart from that, Greek was the first
language of many Jews living in Egypt. However, the Hebrew text on which the
Septuagint was based, differed from Hebrew text which was later seen as
authoritative and known as the Masoretic text. It also contained more books, some
of which written in Greek from start. With the fall of Jerusalem and the
destruction of the temple in 70 AD, the cultic center of the Jews shifted from
the temple to the Hebrew holy scriptures. As there was no longer a physical
place, a spiritual place had to be the focus of devotion. Jewish communities were living wide apart,
and in the course of centuries there various texts of the Hebrew bible came
into use. Out of these various versions a single text was adopted as
constitutive for all Jews and the Septuagint was rejected as not inspired by
God, because it was in Greek and not in God’s own language.
So St. Jerome started to translate from the Hebrew
text. According to tradition he had to learn for this task Hebrew from rabbis.
There might be some truth in this, but modern scholars believe that his Hebrew
was not that good at all and that he made use of the Hexapla, a massive edition
of the Old Testament containing the Hebrew text, a transliteration of the
Hebrew in the Greek alphabet and four Greek translations of which one contained
notes where the Greek differed from the Hebrew. The Hexapla was the work of
Origen of Alexandria (184-253), one of the greatest minds Christianity ever
had, but as religions find it difficult to cope with great minds, he was later
condemned as a heretic - also by St. Jerome. The same fate happened to Averroes
(1126-1198), the greatest scholar of the Islamic world and one of the best
commentators on Aristotle’s philosophy.
If modern scholars are right, St. Jerome was translating
in the way many people translate from a Loeb edition: looking at the English
text with now and then a glance at the Greek or Latin. This is also evident
from the new translation he made in 398 of the Song of Songs: often it agrees
more with the Septuagint than with the Hebrew text, but there can be another
reason to for this, namely the sheer difficulty of the text of the Song of
Songs.
The Song of Songs is attributed to king Solomon but on
linguistic grounds this is impossible as it contains many Aramaic forms and
even a Persian word, so a date later than 500 BC and even the early Hellenistic
period has been proposed. I must say that this is heretical to evangelical and
orthodox protestant commentators. It
contains many difficult words or words which only appear in this text
and this may also have contributed to St.Jerome’s use of the Septuagint. The
translators contributing to the Septuagint themselves had difficulty with the
Hebrew of the Song of Songs too and many divergences between the Greek and the
Hebrew masoretic text are mainly not due to a different Hebrew text, but to
misunderstanding the words. The Song of Songs is not a unity, but consists of
various love songs. These love songs are reminiscent of Egyptian and even
Sumerian love songs, so they reflect a long history of a common Near Eastern
literary heritage. Probably these songs were used for wedding festivities. They
have the form of a dialogue between a man and a woman, with sometimes a choir
too . It is unknown for what reasons these songs were put together and put to
the canon of the Hebrew Bible, but it was not with the agreement of every
rabbi. Only a spiritual interpretation could save it from being expelled and so
it is now considered as a reflection of the love between God and Israel and for
Christians as symbolizing the love between Jesus and the church. But whatever
spiritual meaning can be attached to this work, it is first and foremost love
poetry and that has been better understood by pop artists like Kate Bush and
Sinéad O’Connor than by many theologians.
PS. I forgot to mention: the concert was beautiful!
Let us now turn to chapter two of the Song of Songs. I
will consider this as a text in its own
occasionally I will refer to the Hebrew in order to understand the
modern translation of the New Standard Version to which I have a link below,
but mostly I will refrain from that, partly because of my rusty Biblical
Hebrew, partly to make the notes not too tedious.
Where the Latin widely diverges from the translation,
it is due to the problems mentioned above. I have punctuated the text and put
it in its poetic structure. I have given more text than what is usually set on
music of the ego flos campi. It would be disappointing to read such a
long introduction with only a few lines of Latin...
Canticus canticorum 2.
She:
[1] Ego flos campi et lilium convallium.
He:
[2] Sicut lilium inter spinas,
sic amica mea inter filias.
She:
[3] sicut malum inter ligna silvarum,
sic dilectus meus inter filios,
sub umbra illius quam desideraveram sedi,
et fructus eius dulcis gutturi meo.
[4] Introduxit me in cellam vinariam,
ordinavit in me caritatem
[5] Fulcite me floribus,
stipate me malis quia amore langueo.
[6] Leva eius sub capite meo
et dextera illius amplexabitur me.
[7] Adiuro vos, filiae Hierusalem,
per capreas cervosque camporum,
ne suscitetis neque evigilare faciatis
dilectam quoadusque ipsa velit.
[8] Vox dilecti mei, ecce,
iste venit saliens in montibus,
transiliens colles.
[9] Similis est dilectus meus capreae
hinuloque cervorum.
en ipse stat post parietem nostrum,
despiciens per fenestras,
prospiciens per cancellos
[10] et dilectus meus loquitur mihi:
surge, propera amica mea,
formonsa mea et veni.
[11] Iam enim hiemps transiit,
imber abiit et recessit.
[12] Flores apparuerunt in terra,
tempus putationis advenit,
vox turturis audita est in terra nostra.
[13] Ficus protulit grossos suos,
vineae florent, dederunt odorem.
Surge amica mea speciosa mea et veni.
He:
[14] Columba mea in foraminibus petrae,
in caverna maceriae.
Ostende mihi faciem tuam.
Sonet vox tua in auribus meis,
vox enim tua dulcis et facies tua decora
[15] capite nobis vulpes,
vulpes parvulas quae demoliuntur vineas,
nam vinea nostra floruit.
She:
[16] Dilectus meus mihi et ego illi,
qui pascitur inter lilia.
[17] Donec adspiret dies
et inclinentur umbrae revertere,
similis esto, dilecte mi,
capreae aut hinulo cervorum super montes Bether.
ego flos campi et lilium
convallium: a so-called parallelismus membrorum. It is a
feature of Hebrew poetry to say the same thing twice with a difference in
phrasing. You will find lots of examples in this short text.
flos campi: not any flower of the field, but a specific flower,
though it is unclear what. It is often considered as a rose. The word campus
is a translation of Hebrew Sharon and is taken by Hebrew commentators as
a geographical designation, hence the translation `I am a rose of Sharon’.
convallius: belonging to a valley
spina: thorn
malum: apple
ligna: tree
silva: wood
dilectus: lovely, beloved
umbra: shadow
desideraveram sedi: plusquam perfect and perfect. In Hebrew it is
perfect, but modern translations take the Hebrew original as a present.
Originally, Semitic languages had no tenses in the way Indo-European languages
have and what is called the perfect tense also has a punctual aspect: I desire now
to sit under the shadow, whom I love.
guttur, -uris (n): throat
cella: store-room
vinarius: wine-
ordino: to place
caritas, -atis (f): love, charity
fulcio fulsi fultum: to bolster. fulcite: directed to the filiae
Hierusalem.
stipo (1): to surround
langueo (2): to be faint, be languid
leva: not from levare, but laevus: left
(suppl. manus)
amplexor amplexatus sum: to embrace
adiuro (1): to swear to
caprea: a wild she goat
cervus: deer
suscito (1): to raise
evigilo (1): to be
awake
dilecta: love
quoadusque: till
dilectus: lover
salio: (4): to leap
transilio: to jump over
collis,-is: hill
hinulus: young deer (class. Latin: hinnuleus)
en: behold
paries, -etis (m): wall
cancelli: a lattice of a window
propero (1): to hasten
formonsa = formosa, formosus: beautiful (probably
the n was not strongly pronounced but a nasalisation like in French)
hiemps = hiems, -emis (f): winter
transeo: pass by
imber, imbris (m): heavy rain
putatio, -onis (f): a pruning or lopping of trees
turtur, -uris (m) turtle dove
ficus (f): fig tree
profero, -tuli, -latum: bring forth, produce
grossus (m): an unripe fig
speciosus: beautiful
colomba: dove
foramen, -inis (n): hole
caverna: cave, hole
maceria: enclosure
vulpes, es (f): fox
parvulus: little
pasco pavi pastum: to feed, pasture
donec: untill
adspiro (1): to come: (litt: to breath forward)
inclinentur umbrae
revertere: the shadows (= darkness of the night) are inclined to
draw themself back.
esto: a formal form of the imperative `you must be’.
Bether: genitive. Hebrew names in Greek or Latin often
have no declination.
Translation
About St. Jerome:
About Song of Songs, but when you can read German, go also
to the German wiki:
Guerrero:
Kate Bush!:
Lovis Corinth, Das hohe Lied (1911)
Great stuff, thank you. I was looking for the meaning of DuMont's motet O flos Convalium but found so much more.
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