God Created Sound

If you read yesterday's discussion, you will remember that Colossians 1:16 states that God created the visible (horatos 3703) and the invisible (auratos 517) part of music.  Christian musicians are much more familiar with God creating the visible than they are with his creating the invisible.  Twenty-first century Christian musicians are often much more fascinated with God creating the musical notation (the te'amim) of the O.T. than with the creation of sound.

We get caught up in discussions of the possibility that Moses came down from the mountain with the te'amim engraved on the tablets. We may postulate that Jehovah possibly revealed them to Moses and that Moses added them to the Decalogue. We may wax eloquent in our notion that Moses developed the system of  Bible notation since he could have learned  about musical notation from the Egyptians.( We know from Acts 7:22 that "...Moses was learned in all the wisdom of the Egyptians, and was mighty in words and deeds.")  An even wilder hypothesis is that he learned notation from the Sumerians or Akkadians.

However, it is an abstract thought to many Christian musicians that God created sound i.e. the invisible part of music.  It is what I call the "music part of music."  You cannot touch it, or see it, but it is very much there.  The invisible part gives music life and great power.  It gives our musicing the ability to function ,develop, come "alive" and be efficacious.  Therefore, Christian musicians should give very serious consideration to the sounds (auratos) that we connect to the Logos Christos.