Ancient Psalms Found Preserved in Irish Bog
Detail from the recently discovered book of psalms, which is more than 1,000 years old.
Detail from the recently discovered book of psalms, which is more than 1,000 years old.
Some people call it the Irish equivalent of the Dead Sea Scrolls: the discovery last week of fragments of an ancient book of psalms that had been buried in a bog for centuries.
Robert Siegel talks with Pat Wallace, director of the National Museum of Ireland, about the recent discovery in the midlands of Ireland. The text, which survived in a peat bog, is thought to have been written more than 1,000 years ago.
Psalm 84
Pat Wallace, director of the National Museum of Ireland, says Psalm 83, one of the Latin psalms found in the ancient book, corresponds to the modern Psalm 84. The following is the Common Worship psalter version of Psalm 84.
How lovely is your dwelling place, O Lord of hosts!
My soul has a desire and longing to enter the courts of the Lord;
my heart and my flesh rejoice in the living God.
The sparrow has found her a house
and the swallow a nest where she may lay her young:
at your altars, O Lord of hosts, my King and my God.
Blessed are they who dwell in your house:
they will always be praising you.
Blessed are those whose strength is in you,
in whose heart are the highways to Zion,
Who going through the barren valley find there a spring,
and the early rains will clothe it with blessing.
They will go from strength to strength
and appear before God in Zion.
O Lord God of hosts, hear my prayer;
listen, O God of Jacob.
Behold our defender, O God,
and look upon the face of your anointed.
For one day in your courts
is better than a thousand.
I would rather be a doorkeeper in the house of my God
than dwell in the tents of ungodliness.
For the Lord God is both sun and shield;
he will give grace and glory;
no good thing shall the Lord withhold
from those who walk with integrity.
O Lord God of hosts,
blessed are those who put their trust in you.
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