Can Archaeology Help Date the Psalms?

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The previous issue of BAR included an article on the possibly oldest Hebrew inscriptions. Among the candidates were two abecedaries—that is, inscriptions of the alphabet. No words, just the alphabet.¹ These abecedaries can also provide some archaeological help in dating the Book of Psalms!

The 150 psalms in the Book of Psalms are traditionally divided into five books. This division is already reflected in the Bible, as certain verses seem to serve as divisions between the books.² These books probably originated as independent collections.³ This is seen, for example, by the fact that Psalm 53, in the second book, is an almost identical repetition of Psalm 14.

Although the name “David” and other names are found in the superscriptions to most of the psalms, the superscriptions need not indicate authorship by the individual named. The superscriptions may indicate only that the psalm was connected to some event in the life of the person named, or that the psalm was dedicated (perhaps centuries later) to the person named. Many other possibilities for the meaning of the superscriptions have been suggested that have little to do with authorship. Robert Alter has called the dating of individual psalms “a region of treacherous scholarly quicksand.”⁴

There does seem to be a scholarly consensus that the first three of the five books are the earlier collections. Among these, the first book is often viewed as the earliest. In contrast, in the fifth book, several psalms refer to the time of the Babylonian exile and later: “By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat and also wept, when we 054 remembered Zion” (Psalm 137:1); “when the Lord brought back those that returned to Zion” (Psalm 126:1). These psalms must be late.

In its own peculiar way, archaeology seems to confirm an early date for the first book and a late date for the fifth book. Here’s how:

In general, the alphabets that most of us are familiar with follow the same order—A, B … in Latin (and English); alpha, beta … in Greek; and aleph, beth … in Hebrew. (This is not just coincidence; these alphabets all derive from a common source.)

Just after the middle of the Hebrew alphabet are two letters in the order ayin and pe, corresponding to our o and p. (In the earliest alphabetic inscriptions, ayin was written as a circle with a dot in the center; later the dot was dropped and it looked just like an o; see sidebar.)

The two abecedaries referred to at the beginning of this article now become relevant—one known as the Izbet Sartah abecedary and the other, the Tel Zayit abecedary. (They are named for the sites in Israel where they were found.) Based on the shape of the letters and other archaeological factors, scholars can agree that these abecedaries date very early, the former to about the 12th century B.C.E. and the latter to the tenth century B.C.E.

Both of these abecedaries share the same peculiarity: Instead of the ayin/pe order that we are familiar with, the order is reversed: pe/ayin!⁵

Did these two scribes simply err?

Returning to the books of Psalms, many of the psalms are written as acrostics; that is, successive verses begin with successive letters of the alphabet. In this way, the Hebrew alphabet is repeated four times in the first book, at Psalms 9–10, Psalms 25, Psalms 34, and Psalms 37. (The first book comprises chapters 1–41.)

Let us look closely at Psalm 34. When we do, it becomes obvious that the psalm’s original acrostic was written with a pe/ayin sequence:

In verse 34:16 (English, verse 15) we are told:

“The eyes (עיני/ayin) of the Lord are on the righteous, / and his ears attentive to their cry.”

In verse 34:17 (English, verse 16) we are told:

“The face (פני/pe) of the Lord is set against 055 evildoers, / to erase their names from the earth.”

Yet immediately following this, at 34:18 (English, verse 17), we are told without explanation:

“They cry out (צעקו/tzade) and the Lord hears, and saves them from all their troubles.”

Why should God listen to and save the evildoers, when we have just been told that he wants to erase their remembrance from the earth?

But if we make the assumption that pe preceded ayin here, the theological problem disappears and the sequence of verses makes perfect sense:

34:17: “The face (פני/pe) of the Lord is set against evildoers, / to erase their names from the earth.”

34:16: “The eyes (עיני/ayin) of the Lord are on the righteous, / and his ears attentive to their cry.”

34:18: “They cry out (צעקו/tzade) and the Lord hears, and saves them from all their troubles.”

The ones whom God listens to and saves are not the evildoers but the righteous ones!⁶

The likely original pe/ayin order in chapter 34 makes us suspect that the three other acrostics in the first book (= the same collection) might also have been composed with the pe/ayin order. Although this cannot yet be proven, there are strong arguments to support this. For example, in the acrostic that spans chapters 9 and 10, it is fairly clear that our text is corrupt, since the acrostic only includes 15 of the 22 letters. But many scholars believe that the words פיחו/pe (verse 10:7, second word) and עיניו/ayin (verse 10:8, third to last word) were once the first words of pe and ayin verses in the pe/ayin order in the original text.⁷

It is very likely that, during earliest Israelite times, the Hebrew alphabetic order was exclusively pe/ayin, and that this was the order through the end of the First Temple period (c. 1000–586 B.C.E.).⁸

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Moreover, the Book of Lamentations, which probably dates very shortly thereafter, also follows the pe/ayin order in its acrostics.⁹

There are other archaeological finds that support our conclusions. In 1975–1976 at Kuntillet ‘Ajrud, a site in the northern Sinai, a jar fragment from about 800 B.C.E. was discovered that included three abecedaries with the pe/ayin sequence.^a Moreover, in recent years, an ostracon with three Hebrew abecedaries with pe preceding ayin came to light, dating from the late seventh or early sixth century B.C.E.¹⁰

That the first book of Psalms is early is also hinted at in that most of the acrostics in this book are missing letters.¹¹ This suggests that we are dealing with acrostics composed at such an early stage that their original texts have no longer been accurately preserved.¹² Also, the absence of a verse for vav in chapters 25 and 34 perhaps suggests that we are dealing with acrostics composed at an early stage, a stage when the unusual letter vav was not yet consistently viewed as deserving a place in an acrostic.

What about the fifth book (chapters 107–150) of the Book of Psalms? This book includes several acrostics, at chapters 111, 112, 119 and 145.¹³ All follow the conventional ayin/pe order, and there is no reason to suspect that their original order was otherwise. For example, Psalm 119 is an eightfold acrostic. Eight complete verses would have had to have been rearranged if this chapter once reflected an older pe/ayin order that was later changed to ayin/pe.¹⁴

The explanation is that Psalms 111, Psalms 112, Psalms 119 and Psalms 145, along with the entire fifth book of Psalms, were 066 likely composed after the Babylonian Exile, when the ayin/pe order was introduced in Israel. Most likely, the Judeans in exile picked up the ayin/pe order from the Aramaic alphabet in Babylonia. (They also picked up the cursive Aramaic script at this time as well, largely discarding the old Hebrew script.) It is known that the ayin/pe order is an ancient one. It is found in Ugaritic abecedaries from Ras Shamra (Syria) that date from the 13th century B.C.E. It is also found in an eighth-century B.C.E. inscription in Aramaic from Tell Halaf (northeastern Syria).

Much scholarly ink has been spilled over the centuries on the topic of the dating of the Psalms. But the abecedaries that archaeologists have recovered from Izbet Sartah, Tel Zayit, and Kuntillet ‘Ajrud provide powerful evidence that the first book of Psalms preserves some early texts, texts from a period when the order of the letters in the Hebrew alphabet was slightly different from what it later became after the return from the Babylonian Exile.¹⁵

The previous issue of BAR included an article on the possibly oldest Hebrew inscriptions. Among the candidates were two abecedaries—that is, inscriptions of the alphabet. No words, just the alphabet.1 These abecedaries can also provide some archaeological help in dating the Book of Psalms! The 150 psalms in the Book of Psalms are traditionally divided into five books. This division is already reflected in the Bible, as certain verses seem to serve as divisions between the books.2 These books probably originated as independent collections.3 This is seen, for example, by the fact that Psalm 53, in the second book, […]

Footnotes

Ze’ev Meshel, “Did Yahweh Have a Consort? The New Religious Inscriptions from the Sinai,” BAR 05:02; Harvey Minkoff, “As Simple as ABC: What Acrostics in the Bible Can Demonstrate,” Bible Review 13:02.

Endnotes

The Tel Zayit inscription is just an alphabet. The Izbet Sartah inscription comprises five lines. The first four are probably gibberish, a scribal exercise. The last line is an alphabet.

The following verses serve as divisions: 41:14 (English, v. 13), 72:18–20, 89:53 (English, v. 52), and 106:47–48.

See, for example, Robert Alter, The Book of Psalms (New York: W.W. Norton, 2007), p. xix.

Alter, Book of Psalms, p. xv.

The pe and ayin are not as clear in the Tel Zayit inscription as they are in the Izbet Sartah inscription. But the prevailing view is that there is a pe and an ayin in this order in the Tel Zayit inscription.

The suggestion that these verses need to be reordered was made long ago. See, for example, S.R. Driver, An Introduction to the Literature of the Old Testament, 4th ed. (New York: Meridian, 1892), p. 346.

With regard to chapter 25, this chapter parallels chapter 34 in that both chapters lack a verse for the letter vav (the sixth letter) and both add an extra pe verse at the conclusion of the acrostic. This makes it very likely that chapter 25 originally paralleled chapter 34 in its pe/ayin order as well.

With regard to chapter 37, this is an acrostic where the ayin section is missing. But the section for samekh (the previous letter) has an unusually large number of words and spans three verses, 37:27–29, while the sections for all the other letters span only one or two. Moreover, the Septuagint (the ancient translation of the Bible into Greek) has an additional phrase here, not found in the Hebrew. The most likely explanation is that there was once an ayin verse here, some of which has been picked up in the samekh section. Of all the 22 letters in the Hebrew alphabet, why is it that the textual problem arises in the context of the ayin verse? Probability suggests that this is not mere coincidence, but that it has something to do with the issue of the pe/ayin order. Perhaps something went wrong in the course of the re-ordering of the original pe/ayin order to ayin/pe. Or perhaps at some point, a scribe accustomed to the later ayin/pe order was copying from a text which had the pe/ayin order, and jumped to the wrong line. I strongly believe that if the correct text of this chapter is ever established, it will end up being one in which the pe preceded the ayin.

Although many scholars have argued for an original pe/ayin order in chapters 9–10 and 34, none that I have seen have taken the next step and argued, as I am, that chapters 25 and 37 originally followed the pe/ayin order as well. Of course, without the archaeological evidence of the recent decades, they had no reason to suspect that this might be the case.

Émile Pueche claims that a certain eighth century B.C.E. inscription from Lachish follows the ayin/pe order. But André Lemaire rejects Pueche’s readings as unsubstantiated. See David Ussishkin, The Renewed Archaeological Excavations at Lachish (1973–1994), vol. 4 (Tel Aviv: Yass Publications in Archaeology, 2004), pp. 2116–2117.

The acrostics of chapters 2, 3 and 4 of the Book of Lamentations follow the pe/ayin order. Although the acrostic in the first chapter in the received text follows the ayin/pe order, the text of the first chapter found in the Dead Sea texts follows the pe/ayin order. Surely the Dead Sea text reflects the original order.

The Book of Lamentations was likely composed between 586 and 538 B.C.E. None of the hope engendered by the proclamation of Cyrus is reflected in it.

In the two earliest manuscripts of the Septuagint of Proverbs 31:10–31 (Vaticanus and Sinaiticus), the translation of the pe verse precedes the translation of the ayin verse. These manuscripts were copied long ago, in the fourth century C.E. This suggests that there was a very old Hebrew text with the pe/ayin order.

10.

See Martin Heide, “Impressions from a New Alphabetic Ostracon in the Context of (Un)Provenanced Inscriptions: Idiosyncracy of a Genius Forger or a Master Scribe?” pp. 148–182, in Meir Lubetski, ed., New Seals and Inscriptions, Hebrew, Idumean and Cuneiform (Sheffield: Sheffield Phoenix Press, 2007). Although the ostracon is unprovenanced, the prevailing view is that it is genuine. Allegedly, it came from the debris of the Temple Mount.

11.

The acrostic that runs through chapters 9 and 10 is missing seven of the 22 letters; the acrostic of chapter 25 is missing kof, and includes resh twice; and the acrostic of chapter 37 is missing ayin.

12.

In contrast, the acrostics in the fifth book are almost perfectly preserved. The acrostics of chapters 111 and 112 are complete, and the acrostic of chapter 119 is complete, with every letter repeated eight times! The lone possible imperfection is chapter 145 which lacks a nun verse. But the fact that all the other acrostics in the fifth book are complete suggests that the nun verse is not missing here, but was omitted intentionally. The nun verse found in the Dead Sea and Septuagint texts of Psalm 145 should be considered a later addition. The nun verse found in these sources is suspicious for other reasons as well.

13.

The acrostics in the book of Psalms are found only in the first book and the fifth book.

14.

That there was a reordering of chapter 145 also seems unlikely because the ayin and pe lines of chapter 145 seem to have a parallel at Psalms 104:27–28.

15.

In the surviving provenanced Hebrew inscriptions from the eighth through sixth centuries B.C.E., it has been observed that when samekh is immediately followed by pe, the two letters are consistently written the same way. Based on this, it has been suggested that Israelite scribes in this period were trained in an order in which samekh was followed by pe See Ryan Byrne, “The Refuge of Scribalism in Iron I Palestine,” Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research 345 (2007), pp. 4–6. Thus, the pe/ayin order may now be supported by a different line of evidence.