Note (return) — Replies to Minor Queries.

Titles to the Psalms in the Syriac Version.—Mr. T. J. Buckton (Vol. ix., p. 242.) observes, in reference to the superscription למנצח בנגינת‎, "For the chief performer on the neginoth," that "the Syriac and Arabic versions omit this superscription altogether, from ignorance of the musical sense of the words." And lower down he speaks as if נחילות‎ were expressed in the Syriac by the word "church." I do not question the accuracy of Mr. B.'s renderings of the Hebrew words, for they have been admitted for centuries; but I wish to observe that the translator of the Syriac should not be lightly charged with ignorance of Hebrew, as I can testify from an extensive acquaintance with that venerable version. I therefore cannot allow that the words were omitted by the translator for that reason. Besides, whenever he found a word untranslateable, he transferred it as it was. Nor do I admit that nehiloth, in Psalm v., is translated by the term "church." And this leads me to remark, what seems to have been overlooked by most writers, viz. that the Syriac version omits uniformly the titles of the Psalms as they are found in Hebrew[9]. The inscriptions contained in the common editions of these Psalms form no part of the translation. One of them refers to the destruction of Jerusalem by Titus! They are not always the same. I am acquainted with at least three different sets of these headings contained in the Syriac MSS. in the British Museum. Erpenius omitted them altogether in his edition of the Psalter, and Dathe's follows his; for which very substantial reasons are given by him in the "Præf. ad Lect." of his Psalterium Syriacum, pp. 36, 37., Halæ, 1768.