Apparently, the sort of people who think the world is coming to an end next week got very, very excited because they believed that an old Irish manuscript psalter (a book of Psalms) that was recently found in a bog was evidence that Israel was about to be wiped off the face of the Earth.
The news reports said that Psalm 83 was visible. This got the gullible into a lather, because in the King James Bible favored by a certain kind of Protestant literalist, Psalm 83 laments the attempts by her enemies to wipe the people of Israel out. The literalists were sure this was a Memo from God.
However, after being flooded with requests, the National Museum of Ireland was forced to make a clarifying announcement. What a shame that our national fruitcakiness about religion is getting to be such an international joke.
Museum seeks to calm over psalm – Yahoo! News
In modern versions of the Bible, Psalm 83 is a lament to God over other nations’ attempts to wipe out Israel and many commentators wondered at the coincidence of such a discovery at a time of heightened tension in the Middle East.
The above mention of Psalm 83 has led to misconceptions about the revealed wording and may be a source of concern for people who believe Psalm 83 deals with ‘the wiping out of Israel’,” the museum said in its clarification.
The confusion arose because the manuscript uses an old Latin translation of the Bible known at the Vulgate, which numbers the psalms differently from the later King James version, the 1611 English translation from which many modern texts derive.
“The Director of the National Museum of Ireland … would like to highlight that the text visible on the manuscript does not refer to wiping out Israel but to the ‘vale of tears’,” the museum said.
The vale of tears is in Psalm 84 in the King James version.
This is funny because the Irish monks who would have used the psalter were Catholics, and the King James translation of the Bible that the literalists were no doubt underlining and highlighting in their pre-apocalyptic euphoria would not exist for another 800 years or so.
If you listen carefully, you can hear the heavenly host of angels trumpeting to the Lord with a mighty “Bwah! Bwah! Bwah! BWAAAAAH!” sound. Just one of His amusing little practical jokes, I suppose.