Hebrew Psalmic Additions from Qumran

Hebrew Psalmic Additions from Qumran — Witness Note

[Witness note. It emphasizes the Hebrew witness to the additional psalms, beside the Syriac and Greek witnesses noted elsewhere.]

Several of the additional psalms survive not only in later translations but in their original Hebrew, recovered from the Qumran scrolls. This Hebrew witness is of the first importance, for it carries the compositions in their own language and often in a fuller form than the versions.

The Hebrew witness from Qumran covers, in particular:

Psalm 151 — in Hebrew, in two parts, in the Great Psalms Scroll.

Psalm 154 and Psalm 155 — in Hebrew, in the same scroll.

The Apostrophe to Zion, the Plea for Deliverance, and the Hymn to the Creator — in Hebrew.

By contrast, Psalms 152 and 153 have no Hebrew witness and survive only in Syriac, as noted under the Syriac Apocryphal Psalms. The Greek Psalter’s witness, chiefly to Psalm 151, is noted under the Greek Psalmic Additions. Read together, these three notes — Hebrew, Syriac, and Greek — show which language preserves each psalm, so that no witness is overlooked.