Getting to Grips with Transcendent Verses from a Dark and Dangerous Time

One tends to apply your own ideas and values – and judgment – to just about everything you hear and see, even if that thing is hundreds or thousands of years old. For example: A song written by – or attributed to – King David, the third king of the United Kingdom of Israel, also called the United Monarchy. This was a political entity comprising the territories of the later Kingdom of Judah and the Samarian Kingdom of Israel, under the reigns of kings Saul, David, and Solomon, his successor. So this is 1000 BC/BCE – a thousand years before year zero in the current era!

The song is King David’s Psalm 139, written about 970 BC/BCE – so in the 10^th century BC. Now, it is contained in the Bible, in the Book of Psalms, and if people actually bothered to read the prose penned by King David, they would notice that it is not about love and angels and glory and harmony and all those positive things that are now associated with a blessed Christian life. In any case, King David wrote it long before the birth of Christ. It is, though, about one God, rather than, as in other cultures and earlier ages, many gods and deities, so monotheistic.

Psalm 139 was my choice of a psalm to set to music for my album Divan. The Psalms (of David) is the first book of the third section of the Hebrew Bible called Ketuvim (“Writings”), and it is in the Old Testament of the Christian Holy Bible. Psalm 139 is part of the final Davidic collection of psalms, no. 138 through 145. It was originally written in Aramaic, then translated into Hebrew, then Latin, then English – and other languages of course. In the slightly different numbering system used in the Greek Septuagint and Vulgate versions of the Bible, this psalm is number 138.

From 970 BC/BCE to 1611, England

The English version that I know and referred to is in the King James Version of the Bible, also known as the King James Bible, Authorized Version. Originally, when this version was written in 1611, its title was King Iames Version, and it is an Early Modern English translation of the Bible for the Church of England. It was commissioned in 1604 and published in 1611, by sponsorship of King James VI and I (yes, he had two titles) and you can still read it today, with all the thee’s and thou’s, O’s and shallt’s as they were then.

A very real, very, very old text – The Mudil Codex

The documented psalms either written by King David or attributed to him, are highly valued antiquities. A particularly rare version is kept in the Coptic Museum in Cairo, Egypt. The Book of Psalms is also known as the Mudil Codex – a “codex” being an ancient manuscript text in book form. It is believed to be the earliest, complete, written version of King David’s Book of Psalms. It was discovered in 1984, in the village of Madel (Mudil), south of Beni Suef, in a cemetery that dates back to early Christianity in the 4^th century AD/CE.

It is a Coptic Psalter, psalter meaning a book of psalms that are songs of praise (Hebrew: תְּהִלִּים, Tehillim, literally, “praises”), that is written in the dialect of Middle Egypt. “Psalm” is a Hebrew word that originally meant the sound of fingers tapping on a musical instrument, and later came to mean the sound of a harp and singing. The poetic prose written by King David was likely performed at his court. I wonder how it would have sounded?

This codex dates from the 4^th century AD/CE (so about 400 years after it was written) and is the oldest Coptic Psalter ever discovered. It is described as the most important archaeological manuscript in the museum. I know about this psalter, and where it is kept, because of the YouTube history series, World of Antiquity, hosted by Dr. David Miano – fascinating stuff.

​Found in a tomb, and extremely fragile

The codex was discovered under the mummified remains of a child who could have been about twelve years old, which had led to some damage to the pages. The manner of burial indicates that the manuscript probably dates from an early Pharaonic Dynasty. The artifact consists of 150 psalms, written in prose on 490 vellum (calfskin) pages. The text is in lines, with punctuation. (This form of writing is another indication of its age.) It is in a dialect of Coptic, a language that has died, made up of Old Greek characters supplemented by seven hieroglyphs from Ancient Egypt’s Late Period. It’s been documented that each sheet is numbered, and that every psalm starts with a drawing of a bird, a plant, or a decoration. I wish I could show you how this looks, but there are no photos online, and the Codex is not available for viewing by the public.

So, what would the singers of the psalms have been accompanied by, back in the 10^th century before the birth of Christ? Perhaps a metal trumpet, a bone flute, a simple lyre, drums, or musical rocks.

King David’s psalm is very serious

In Psalm 139, King David (let’s assume that the attribution is correct) writes about slaying wicked, brutish men, about his enemies on whom he wishes the wrath of God, and about perfect (meaning complete) hatred. This is understandable, because life c. 970 BCE in the Middle East was war-torn, violent, and probably brief. Look it up: wars, wars and more wars. But that’s what it was. You take it, or leave it, as it was written then. However, no doubt the many translations and versions it has gone through led to the meaning being somewhat…adjusted. Certainly, when I compared the earliest known Latin verses to the classical English version, there were distinct differences, not only the words but also in the overall meaning. Perhaps King James, he of the King James Version of the Bible, thought the whole thing was rather grim and depressing and had the scribes make some changes.

Differences in words and meaning

​The psalm is classified as a song of praise, but it is rather a song of fearful awe, and subjugation to the power and glory of God. The poet humbly begs for protection, forgiveness and guidance. It begins with the words: “O Lord, thou hast searched me, and known me”. Interestingly, the English prose uses the word “Lord”, not “God”. In Latin liturgy, the psalm is titled “Domine probasti me et cognovisti me” – which means the same as the first line. ​

Psalm 139 has been set to music numerous times, notably as a cantata by J.S. Bach, called “Erforsche mich, Gott, und erfahre mein Herz, BWV 136” – meaning, roughly, “search me, God, and know my heart”.

So why Psalm 139?

Have you ever done that thing of opening a book, or a map, and randomly putting your finger on a word and then that’s it – that’s what you base a decision on? Well, I did that. I knew I wanted to write a hymn that incorporates a melody that had been recorded by Luke Garfield, and I know Luke to be church-going Christian. Ergo: a psalm, since I did not think I was up to writing modern Gospel lyrics. I am no Theologian. But which psalm? So, I stuck my finger on a list of psalms and Psalm 139 was it.

How to get from Latin to English and back

​This was the process for writing the lyrics:

1. I took the original Latin prose, and selected some, not all of the original 23 verses;
2. Translated them into English;
3. Compared them with the King James Version and made corrections to stay true to the original meaning (like I said, I’m no Theologian, and no expert on the Bible);
4. Turned the prose into verses and refrains to fit a song of about five minutes long, and four to six parts (intro, verse, refrain, verse, refrain, outro). The main challenge was to make them rhyme;
5. Comped them to the melody, which means that the number of syllables of the words had be changed to match the number of beats and the bars.
6. Then I took the English words and reverse-translated them into Latin with the current meanings – thanks Google Translate!
7. Again, made the lines rhyme. Luckily, the suffixes in Latin made this easy.
8. Compared that word for word to the original Latin prose, and asked Dr. Domingo Avilés of Simon Fraser University to check and correct my language. The good doctor was excellent about it but maybe thought it was a strange thing to do. I mean, who writes in Latin these days?
9. Then I again comped the Latin lyrics, but to a different composition. For the pronunciation by the vocalist, Ben Botfield, performing as Ben Alexander, I used a platform called Voicemaker.io, which offers text to voice conversion. Their algorithm is definitely superior to most others, and rarely goes wrong.
   I recorded the Latin words as pronounced in Italian (close enough) to allow Ben-from-Manchester to pronounce the lyrics phonetically. Except for one tongue-twister (“…cogitationes tua…”) he got the words right immediately. In any case, Ben has this angelic voice, so he was the perfect vocalist for these songs.

The end result: Two songs with the same contents and meanings, but with different melodies, and different languages for the lyrics. The Latin one is called “Invenies Me Mane Caelo”, meaning “on the wings of morning”, and the English one is called “On Perfect Wings”. Goodness, it was a slog! It took something like three months to write. And then I also produced an instrumental version called “The Wings of Morning”, on which the core melody other two compositions is based.

So, to get back to my initial remark about modern interpretations of ancient texts, this is what I did with King David’s Psalm 139; I avoided the problem of the rather depressing words in the psalm by simply not including them, under the pretext that modern song arrangements have length limits. And also by using more current synonyms for a few of the original words, for instance “tried”, “test” and “search”.

Church music is serious stuff

Some of the readers of this blog (Fran!) will be familiar with the tricky process of vetting new Church Music. Church Music, often songs that are in a hymnal, as opposed to Contemporary Gospel, Inspirational or Spiritual music, has to meet two criteria: 1) the words have to be Biblical, literally, and 2) the music has to suit the words and be aesthetically pleasing. I am wondering whether either of these songs could, or would, be sung in a church choir, or by a congregation.

Lyrics to “Invenies Me Mane Caelo”

The English translation, below, gives the literal rather than the idiomatic meaning, except for the pronoun “Thou” which is used in the formal religious context. In my Latin lyrics, “Lord” (“Domine”) is used throughout, except for one instance in the 7th verse, where “God” (“Deus”) is used, in order the make the lines scan. In verse 3, the lines “Tenebris oritur lux ex” and “Domine indica mihi ubi” are transposed, as can be seen in the translation. The two questions belong together, but were transposed to make the verse rhyme: “ex” with “es”.

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