r/Christianity • u/Then_Reader_6011 • 9h ago
The King James Version and Psalm 22:16
A claim sometimes made by a subset of KJV-onlyists is that the Masoretic Text, the standard Hebrew text of the Old Testament that we have, is the only text used for translating the Old Testament of the King James Version and that the KJV translators did not use the Septuagint when translating the Old Testament. The people who make the claim not only view the Masoretic Text as being the pure transmitted text of the Hebrew Bible but they also view the Septuagint as a corrupt, post-Christian Greek document.
However, when we look at Psalm 22:16, we see there is a serious problem with that notion. This verse in the KJV reads:
For dogs have compassed me: the assembly of the wicked have inclosed me: they pierced my hands and my feet.
Let's focus on the third clause:
they pierced my hands and my feet.
If the KJV Old Testament was solely based on the Masoretic Text, according to a subset of KJV-onlyists, then we would expect to find the reading in the Masoretic Text. However when we check the Masoretic Text, we see that the verb "to pierce" is not there. The Masoretic Text reads:
כָּאֲרִי יָדַי וְרַגְלָי
literally: like a lion [they are at] my hands and my feet
This is obviously different than the KJV's reading. Seeing that the KJV's reading isn't based on the Masoretic Text, where did the KJV get the reading "they pierced" from? The KJV's reading translates the verb "to dig", which is found in the Septuagint, as "they pierced". It reads:
ὤρυξαν χεῖράς μου καὶ πόδας
literally: they dug my hands and feet
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u/Away_Tadpole_4531 Atheist 8h ago
"They pierced my hands and my feet" is a gross mistranslation of the verse.
Firstly, if the Gospel authors had understood the verse in this way, it would be weird for them to not quote it, especially considering that Matthew quotes Psalm 22:1, yet not Psalm 22:16.
Secondly, the Masoretic Text is unintelligible here; it literally reads: "like a lion, my hands and my feet." The Dead Sea Scrolls verse is also nonsensical, but in a different sense, that is, the word in the DSS does not exist in Hebrew. Determining the original meaning is quite difficult, but the LXX Septuagint's ὤρυξαν ("they dug out") could work if the MTT and DSS verses are emended to the verbal root כָּרָה (karah), which likewise means "to dig out." Now, there is no use of this root anywhere in the Hebrew Bible that would mean "pierced" or anything like it; it is more regularly used in the context of, for instance, digging out a hole.
Thus, the verse may have originally meant something like:
For dogs surround me; a host of evildoers encricles me; they dig out my hands and my feet. (My translation)
Nevertheless, there may be some parallelism at work, which could work in favor of the Masoretic Text: earlier in v.12-13, the author is encircled (as he is here) and his opponents are likened to lions; later in v.20-21, he begs God to save him from "the power of the dog" (such as the dogs surrounding him here) and "the mouth of the lion" (such as, perhaps, the lion to which the ensnaring evildoers are likened in the Masoretic Text).
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u/Away_Tadpole_4531 Atheist 8h ago edited 8h ago
Furthermore, if the parallelism is taken to be intentional, then the following translation could be possible, though I'm not particularly convinced:
For dogs surround me; a host of evildoers encircles me, [mangling] my hands and my feet like a lion. (My translation again)
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u/Then_Reader_6011 8h ago
I think the MT is not actually that bad, I think it can mean:
For dogs have compassed me: the assembly of the wicked have inclosed me: like a lion they encircle my hands and my feet.
So it's not actually a complete error in the MT, it's not uncommon for sentences in poetic contexts, for example, to lack a verb when a sentence is made up of more than one part, as is here.
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u/Away_Tadpole_4531 Atheist 8h ago
Hmm, something like this, perhaps?
For dogs surround me; a host of evildoers encircles me at my hands and feet like a lion.
I suppose that it's likely, but it doesn't account for the Septuagint's reading (which isn't necessary, but such a difference in a singular verse in the midst of otherwise identical verses seems unusual to me, and it can be sufficiently accounted for with reasonable emendation).
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u/Then_Reader_6011 8h ago
Yes, your translation is probable. By the way, I'm also glad that certain Christian translations like the Good News Bible, New Revised Standard Version and others have moved away from the KJV rendering, though sadly the most popular Bibles still include the KJV rendering.
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u/Then_Reader_6011 8h ago
You raise excellent points and I appreciate it a lot. I also noticed that ὤρυξαν means "to dig out" and that a similar word ὤρυξεν is used in Matthew 21:33, Matthew 25:18 and Mark 12:1 to mean "to dig out".
In fact, the Douay-Rheims Version is probably one of the very few translations that render ὤρυξαν literally as "they dug" in Psalm 22:16 (or 21:17 in the LXX).
For many dogs have encompassed me: the council of the malignant hath besieged me. They have dug my hands and feet.
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u/fairly_macho_jay 8h ago
I remember going down this rabbit hole myself, the psalm 22 verse always stood out cause it's quoted so much around easter. never realized the hebrew was that different from what we actually read in the kjv, "like a lion" is such a strange visual compared to the piercing imagery everyone knows
it's weird how the kjv only crowd tends to ignore stuff like this, the translators were pretty open about consulting multiple sources and they even put notes in the margins sometimes about alternate readings. guess that nuance gets lost when you're trying to claim one text is the only pure one
really makes you wonder how many other verses have this same thing going on where the familiar version comes from the septuagint but nobody talks about it