The Serugin, Te’amim, and Meturgeman in Christian Perspective-part 5

The Serugin, Te’amim, and Meturgeman in Christian Perspective-part 5

     The fragments of serugin texts that have survived are believed to have been used in the ancient Synagogue by an interpreter called a meturgeman. At least after the Babylonian exile this person orally translated Hebrew Scripture into Aramaic [the vernacular language] for worship in a Jewish Synagogue.  The Targums [translations from Hebrew into any other language—in this case Aramaic] were necessary because most of those who attended services in a Jewish Synagogue after the Babylonian exile understood Aramaic rather than Hebrew. This does not preclude the possibility that if serugin [that have not survived] were used before the Babylonian exile, they could have been texts written in Hebrew rather than Aramaic.   There may have been a rabbinic probation of the te’amim being added to ‘sanctified’ copies of the Tanakh or the te’amim were placed in these manuscripts to protect the Bible music notation.  If this was the case, the function of the serugin manuscripts was changed somewhat when, after the exile, they were translated and were intoned by a meturgeman in the synagogue.

It is believed by some writers [including Susan Haik-Vantoura who successfully deciphered the te’amim below and above the entire OT texts] that this system is a precise musical notation that was perhaps originally placed [at the same time that each Scripture was authored] in the entire OT Scripture. There is also the belief that they were at least placed in the OT manuscripts at a very ancient date.  These opinions are in contrast to those who believe that the biblical accents were indeed a musical notation, but that this notation was not precise and that these graphic signs may or may not have been ancient and/or the invention of the scholars at Tiberius.

 Scholarship in the late 20^th century has shown that these graphic signs are an accurate music notation, which was kept at various periods in ancient Jewish history, perhaps exclusively, in the OT abbreviated manuscripts called the serugin.  Reasoning supporting this hypothesis, among other things, is that this action could have been taken in order to keep the original melodies that accompanied Scripture from being vilified [changed or corrupted from their original form] by those who did not have the expertise to be able to interpret them with a high degree of accuracy.