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    STUDIA THEOLOGIA REFORMATA TRANSYLVANICA - Issue no. 2 / 2012  
         
  Article:   MUSICAL INSTRUMENTS IN THE PSALMS / A „ZSOLTÁROS” HANGSZEREK NYOMÁBAN.

Authors:  . 		 
       
         
  Abstract:   The Book of Psalms presents a large variety of ancient musical instruments, which were deeply embedded in the Hebrew culture, though the most of them were taken from the Egyptian, Sumerian-Akkadian, Babylonian, Assyrian, Chaldean, Ancient-Greek tradition. During the centuries before Christ the musical instruments underwent a slow but constant development process. This is why already the first translations of the Old Testament had to cope with the problem of finding the proper equivalent of the source language name of the instruments in the target language.This paper deals mainly with the translations of the musical instruments’ names present in Psalm 150. The analysis focuses on the Hungarian Bible translations (based mainly on the Greek and Latin translation of the Old Testament, the Septuagint and Vulgate), which are in use in Transylvania, and tries to find out how well they cover the original Hebrew designate. The analysis comes to the result that every translation tries in a way to bring these instruments closer to the reader by using known names of the instruments instead of explaining (circumscribing) the ancient one. The consequence of this process is that some of the instrument names used in the target language does not correspond with the designated in the source culture. The paper finally illustrates the different artistic interpretations of King David’s instrument, which derives from the different translations of the Hebrew kinnor.

Keywords: ancient musical instruments, Bible, Old Testament, Septuagint, Vulgate, Hungarian Bible translations, Book of Psalms, Psalm 150.
 
         
     
         
         
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