The Serugin, Te’amim, and Meturgeman in Christian Perspective-part 16

The Serugin, Te’amim, and Meturgeman in Christian Perspective-part 16       

            Now let us return to our discussion of the use of the ancient serugin. The Jewish Encyclopedia states that, “…the reading of the Bible text [in Hebrew] combined with the Targum [Aramaic translation] in the presence of the congregation assembled for public worship was an ancient institution which dated from the time of the Second Temple.”   http://www.jewishencyclopedia.com/articles/14248-targum   After the destruction of the Second Temple, worship took place in synagogues.  How long a period of time the serugin texts were utilized by the meturgeman is uncertain.  After the texts of serugin were no longer utilized, from the knowledge that we have at our disposal to date, accurate knowledge of the music notation of the Bible actually did fall into oblivion for centuries. It seems that for hundreds of years Jewish cantillation depended on the many varied oral traditions of intoning the OT texts.  Perhaps these varied practices caused a deep unrest among musicologists who studied these oral traditions which were so conflicting.  There have been several unsuccessful attempts at deciphering the ancient Hebrew music of the Bible.  According to Alfred Sendrey these attempts include the work Johann Christoph Speidel [1678-1744], Conrad Gottlob Anton 1745-1814], Leopold Arends [1817-1882], Heinrich Berl [1848-1934] and Otto Glaser [1866-1931]. Sendrey, MitSaRLo A, pp. 156-7.  Much later, Curt Sachs reports that in 1923 he attempted, “…to interpret the marginals as a musical notation but failed, since I thought of single notes at definite pitches.  Dr. Francis Galpin [1858-1945] failed in a similar way fourteen years later.” Sachs, TRoMitAW, p. 86.  

            Although none of these attempts at re-discovering Bible music by theory, linguistics, deciphering the Hebrew alphabet, or deciphering the te’amim were successful, they stand as historic proofs that, at least from the 1700’s until the last quarter of the 20^th century, scholars suspected that ancient Israel did have a precise musical notation.  Unfortunately, a successful system produced from deciphering the te’amim was not made public until 1976 when Suzanne Haik-Vantoura [1912-2000] published La Musique de la Bible Révélée.  The result of her deciphering of the te’amim revealed a precise accurate system of Bible music notation which is found above and below all of the texts of the OT. This deciphered musical system has been found to be without serious anomaly--a distinctly different result than other explanations of the meaning of these cantillation signs.  Although many Hebrew scholars and Bible historians have summarily dismissed her work, no one to date has produced a scholarly rebuttal of her work of deciphering.