ABSTRACT
Despite its central importance in their daily lives, early Christian ascetics tell us surprisingly little, even indirectly, of their experience of praying the psalms. To learn what the Psalter meant to them, either cognitively or experientially, we rely on a handful of texts, notably Athanasios’s Letter to Markellinos, the Scholia on the Psalms of Evagrios of Pontos, and John Cassian’s Conferences Ten and Fourteen. Might there be other ways to understand the absorption of ascetics in the psalms and their efforts to understand more fully these texts that shaped them so profoundly? This chapter is an attempt to do so by indirection, following hints left in one trail of texts, translations, and manuscripts. The primary focus will be Syriac appropriation of Greek introductions to the Psalms, with brief side looks at the Latin world.
