At this point
you are probably wondering why I am discussing music theory in the middle of a
discussion of music philosophy in Christian perspective. The reason is that now we view ancient Bible
music and musicing through the dark glass of the rules of Western music. Therefore, some of what we read about music
in ancient Israel will require reading the works of Jewish music scholars. The reason is that they are practically the
only scholars who have consistently studied the music of the Old Testament over
the last two thousand years. Frankly,
reading and believing the works of Jewish scholars has been a pill too
difficult for most twentieth and twenty first Christian musicians and exegetes
of Scripture to swallow.
If anyone
knows what happened musically in ancient Israel, it is those who have for
centuries studied the music of the Bible.
All a person has to do is to read the exotic hypotheses of Christian
musicians and biblical scholars over the last one hundred years and one will see
very clearly that music of the Bible was not their expertise or in many cases
their interest. In many cases Bible
scholars have failed to make any mention of verses of Scripture that are
concerned with music. So, it is of little wonder that we are in such a mess
concerning the value of what is written in the Bible about music and its
application to twenty first century musicing inside and outside of the church.
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