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The history of European psalm paraphrases begins in late ancient Greek literature. Greek interest in combining poetic content and metre is documented in the paraphrase of Psalm 102 from the 4th century preserved in the Codex visionum and the paraphrase of the whole psalter from the mid-5th century called Metaphrasis psalmorum or "Homeric psalter", both composed in dactylic hexameters. They share some features with early modern paraphrases: use of artistic language, application of christological interpretation, relation to singing, various approaches in terms of the degree of dependence on the biblical text. The Hebrew text of the Psalms shows no signs of the metric arrangement that is characteristic of traditional European poetry. Some Hebrew verses tend to be regularly organized on a tonic basis, but this arrangement is not binding or regular, unlike the standard of traditional European poetry. In the European environment, however, there has been since ancient times a strong conviction that the Hebrew verse is regularly arranged on a quantitative principle, and this belief lasted until the early modern period. Renaissance translations of ancient poetry into vernacular languages use syllabic or accentual-syllabic verse, and the same type of verse is also used in early modern psalm paraphrases when...