Selected Psalms (“David’s Prophesies”) of The Palaea Interpretata

During the Middle Ages on the Eastern Orthodox Church territories there existed an encyclopedia book, entitled the Palaea Interpretata that was extremely popular and highly respected. The current paper studies one of the Biblical sources of The Palaea Interpretata – namely, the collection of selected psalms, entitled “David’s Prophesies” (давидъ же прорицаше). The discussion is focused on the compiler’s placing of the collection in The Palaea, in the part dedicated to David (i.e. after the excerpts from the First and Second Books of Samuel and before the First Book of Kings). David’s Prophesies belonged to the original content of The Palaea Interpretata. They had one major goal – to represent the Old Testament as a prototype of the New Testament and to prove the superiority of the Christian doctrine over the non-Christian ones. The Compiler of The Palaea Interpretata chose various psalms or parts of psalms, dividing them into twenty five orations with respective titles. To trace the editing performed over the Psalter text the current article draws a parallel with the text of seven psalters from the 11th–16th centuries. It establishes the greatest resemblance with the Bychkov Psalter of the 11th century, which reflects the Preslav version of the Psalter translation. At the same time, it becomes obvious that “David’ Prophesies” of The Palaea Interpretata have also retained many of the peculiarities of the primary translation of the Psalter as reflected in Sinai Glagolitic Psalter. The Glagolitic traces are to be found in the very text of “David’s Prophesies” of The Palaea Interpretata, which obviously derive from the psalter, serving as their source and protograph. The source was of relatively old origin; it contained traces of Glagolitic letters, and reflected the Psalter’s primary translation into Old Bulgarian by Cyril and Methodius, which had been edited in Preslav.