"Asida, Ὁ ἘΡΩΔΙÓΣ, herodius": bocian, czapla, raróg…
"Asida, Ὁ ἘΡΩΔΙÓΣ, herodius": a stork, a heron, a falcon…

The bird from Psalm 103 (104), 117 in Early Modern times: translations, identification and exegesis attempts

Author(s): Tadeusz Rubik
Subject(s): Cultural history, Studies of Literature, Polish Literature, 16th Century, 17th Century, 18th Century, Theory of Literature
Published by: Wydawnictwa Uniwersytetu Warszawskiego
Keywords: Bible translations; Psalm 103 (104); culture of old periods; history of exegesis; history of philology; erudition; natural science; avifauna; Joannes Lorinus SI
Summary/Abstract: The article explores the problem of the bird from Psalm 103 (104), 117; the attempts to identify it, their conditions and mechanisms and the importance of deciding the identity of this representative of the Middle East fauna for the exegesis of the Psalm from Antiquity to early modern times. The study begins with a comparative analysis of Polish translations and paraphrases from the Middle Ages to the 17th century, with reference to source texts (part 1). It is followed by the attempts to identify the bird, reconstructed on the basis of Joannes Lorinus’ commentaries ("Commentariorum in Liber Psalmorum… tomus tertius", 1616) and the ancient, medieval and early modern sources Lorinus indicates (part 2), and the implications of the findings for the exegesis of the Psalm in two keys: birds of prey (part 2.1) and other birds (part 2.2), which were first used by Saint Hieronymus and Saint Augustine. The results of the analyses are then merged in relation to individual historical periods from the perspective of perceiving Biblical fauna from a textual to a naturalistic paradigmin the 18th century (part 3). The study ends with the discussion of traces of reception of the problem outside the scientific biblical-philological discourse in early modern Polish republic (part 4) and a concise reconstruction of contemporary findings on the identity of the bird, also non-conclusive (part 5).

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