The Serugin, Te’amim, and Meturgeman in Christian Perspective-part 19

The Serugin, Te’amim, and Meturgeman in Christian Perspective-part 19 

             It is believed by some historians that after the Babylonian exile the reader in the Synagogue [the one who intoned the Scripture] was a meturgeman who was allowed to employ these signs if he was intoning the texts from the abbreviated manuscripts called the serugin.  The reasoning behind this ancient policy was that nothing could be added to the complete texts of “sanctity” that the rabbines used in Temple worship.  This is not the case concerning the abbreviated serugin texts that were cantilated by the meturgeman [in the Synagogue].  Since the serugin manuscripts were not considered to be “sanctified”, in the minds of the rabbines, these abbreviated manuscripts which contained the te’amim, could be used in the daily intoning of the Tanakh as an aid to memory for the “reader”.

            Let us return for a brief moment to Nehemiah 8:7-8, “Also Jeshua, and Bani, and Sherebiah, Jamin, Akkub, Shabbethai, Hodijah, Maaseiah, Kelita, Azariah, Jozabad, Hanan, Pelaiah, and the Levites, caused the people to understand the law: and the people stood in their place.  So they read in the book in the law of God distinctly, and gave the sense, and caused them to understand the reading.”  This reference attests to the belief that the Levite musicians were charged with the responsibility of causing the people to understand the Law distinctly.  Is it possible that in some way intoning the Tanakh completed what I am taking the liberty to call “the ancient hermeneutic cycle”?