After
reading scores of author’s opinions on the technical terms in the Psalms, it
has become apparent that many of them failed to support their arguments with
significant word study, historical fact, linguistic considerations, or even
ancient extra-Biblical literature. Many
of the commentators appeared to be non-musicians who were determined to give
each word in the psalm headings a significant musical definition. After studying the inscriptions at length and
after using the various word study helps available today, it has become clear
that not every term should be understood in a musical sense.
Throughout
the last two hundred years, it has been customary to believe that the obscure
sayings in the psalm headings were the words or tune names of popular secular
songs of the ancient Hebrew culture.
Also, the various writers have tended to believe that the chief
musicians used tunes of secular ditties, love songs, and folk ballads, etc. to
sing the psalms. As has been discussed
in this blog and in my book Music of the
Bible in Christian Perspective, Susanne Haik-Vantoura's deciphering of the
melodies of the Psalms from the te'amim has now produced evidence that all of
the Psalms had their own melodies which were composed by the various
psalmists. Therefore, there was no
reason for the chief musician to have used the melodies of the popular songs of
the day, and furthermore, this notion is completely without factual or
scholarly basis.
Furthermore,
it has been found after careful study that a logical explanation for several of
the obscure sayings in the psalm headings may be found in the content of the
psalms in which they appear--an observation that all too few writers have
made. Many of the terms are engulfed in
a plethora of confusion created by a multitude of conjectures of hundreds of
authors over the last two hundred years.
In my writings on the Book of Psalms I have purposely tried to spare the
reader the hassle of reading through these often strange and exotic conjectures
of authors.
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