Pastyr'

[Frank McLellan]

>From: Loren Billings <billings at mailer.fsu.edu>
>
>I seem to recall that the 19th Psalm (in English: "The Lord is my Shepherd
>...") uses the word _pastyr'_ for.  I recall asking why it isn't _pastux_
>'shepherd'.  I do not recall the answer.  No doubt other translations use
>_pastux_.  --Loren

(Loren later corrected the numbering of the psalm.  It is the 22nd in
Orthodox and Catholic Bibles, based on the Septuagint, and the 23rd in
Hebrew and Protestant Bibles, based on the Massoretic texts.)

Which translation were you talking about; Russian or Church Slavonic?
The ChSl (modern, Russian recension) does not include any noun for
'shepherd,' but instead reads:  Gospod' paset" mja. (' = jer', " = jer").
I don't have any Russian translation at hand, but if it uses a noun for
'shepherd,' and chooses _pastyr'_ over _pastux_, this could be because
_pastyr'_ has an exclusively spiritual connotation, while a _pastux_ is
merely someone who watches sheep.  A bad editorial choice, in my view,
because it extracts the poetic image of the relationship between God and
the psalmist as one of a shepherd to his flock from the psalm.  Still, I
can see how someone could come to the (erroneous, in my view) conclusion
that it was a better translation.

Frank McLellan