Knowledge Must be Accompanied by Faith—part 5

Knowledge Must be Accompanied by Faith—part 5

             If any authors’ writings are to be considered to give an accurate account of how the ancient Jews worshiped with music, those writings which are most ancient, both biblical and extra-biblical, should be treated with great respect.  Certainly the ancient Old Testament biblical record should be treated with great respect regardless of whether or not one believes it to be inspired by God. Those of us who do trust the authenticity of the Old and New Testaments should be reminded that 2Timothy 3:16 attests to the fact that “All scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness: That the man of God may be perfect, throughly furnished unto all good works.”

            Modern day students of the Old and New Testaments have a tendency to believe that it is perfectly proper to translate the ancient Old Testament with sentences that are not literal representations of the Hebrew and Aramaic words in order for Scripture to be made more easily understood  by the twenty-first century reader.  Although the modern redactor of Scripture may get up in the morning and say, “I’m going to change the wording of that verse in the Bible”, the last thing that would have gone through an ancient Jewish scribe’s mind would have been to spend his day altering the Holy Writ.  We have evidence of this carefulness from the common historical knowledge that for manifold centuries the ancient Jewish scribes purposed to “build up a wall around the Torah”.  As a matter of fact it is believed by some scholars that even the ancient abbreviated manuscripts called the Serugin were an attempt to “build up a wall around the te’amim” (the cantillation signs i.e. musical notation found below and above the entire Hebrew and Aramaic texts of the Bible).
Note: this series will be continued on April 2, 2015.