The Hymn Book--“Banished and Vanished”-part 9

The Hymn Book--“Banished and Vanished”-part 9

For those who are doubtful about the relevance of the Old Testament references to musicing unto God in the context of Temple worship in ancient Israel, I want to give some New Testament support for having a balanced musical diet in musicing unto God. Ephesians 5:19 states, ‘Speaking to yourselves in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody in your heart to the Lord.”  This is doubtlessly a reference to how to music in public worship.  If it was not, St. Paul’s scribe Tychicus would have written speak i.e. sing to yourself.

 This NT reference to musicing unto the Lord includes a variety of music generas.  It mentions psalms (psalmos 5568), hymns (humnos 5216), and spiritual songs (pneumatikos oide 4152, 5603).  Sounds like the hymnbook doesn’t it?  Notice that the NT reference to public worship doesn’t only include praise music.  Now don’t get nervous, I’m not against singing a sequence of praise choruses.  How could I be against praising God when we music unto Him?  I am merely trying to point out that praising God with our musicing is not constitute a complete musical diet for public worship.  I also want to bring to your attention that we have absolutely no logical reason to suppose that the Greek words psalmos, humnos, and pneumatikos oiide are referring only to the singing of the psalms written in the Biblos Psalmos i.e. the Book of Psalms. For a thorough discussion of the Ephesian reference to musicing unto God see my book Music of the Bible in Christian Perspective.

While I am on this subject I want to point out the shades of meaning of the Greek word psallo (5567) used in Ephesians 5:19. This word was translated making melody in the AV and means to twitch or twang or touch the strings of a musical instrument.  Since this was a well known instrumental music reference at the time the letter to the Christians at Ephesus was dictated by St. Paul to his scribe Tychicus, St. Paul was doubtlessly making reference to instrumental music with vocal music.  If there was at that time a ban on the use of instrumental music in NT worship, Paul, who was a language scholar, would not have thrown salt on the wound of such a musical controversy by referring to instrumental music.  So, there is no reason to jettison the hymnal merely because its compositions depend or at least are greatly strengthened by a written accompaniment.