Wednesday, August 22, 2007

new Scetes and new translation of Psalms

"the Californian scete"; I ran across this logos when
checking out a curious news report about a new Coptic Orthodox
monastery in California deserta. http://www.stantonymonastery.org/
So there you are. Naturally I had to investigate that word scete and
it lead me a merry chase. There is nothing in my ancient greek lexica
that comes close; but in a modern lexicon I found sketos, an adjective
meaning "plain, simple, pure". An Egyptian tour guide said 'scetes'
means "the ascetics". But I didn't hit real paydirt until I got into
Wikipedia through Thebaid and found: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skete

I was pleasured to discover yesterday that there is a New Skete in New
York where the monks translated the Eastern Orthodox psalmody into
American English and made it available online. Their founder's obit
is probably the best introduction: http://www.nysun.com/article/57427

http://www.ogreatmystery.com/newskete/psalter/


Their new translation goes back to sources earlier than the Greek Septuagint from which, I believe, all the other available translations of the psalms were made.

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