Quote for the Day

Quote for the Day  

“The responsibility of a Christian who has a talent or ability is that he use that talent or ability to the glory of God.”  The Ministry of Music in the Church by Vic Delamont, p.17

Good and Perfect Musical Gifts part 2

Good and Perfect Musical Gifts part 2   

As I have said so many times, no Christian musician is self sufficient and autonomous.  All of the special gifts that musicians posses are given to them by our wise and all-knowing heavenly Father.   John 3:27 states, “John answered and said, A man can receive nothing, except it be given him from heaven.  Romans 11:29 teaches, “For the gifts and calling of God are without repentance.”  1Corinthians 4:7 asks, “For who maketh thee to differ from another? and what hast thou that thou didst not receive?” now if thou didst receive it, why dost thou glory, as if thou hadst not received it?  1Peter 4:10 also teaches that, “As every man hath received the gift, even so minister the same one to another, as good stewards of the manifold grace of God.”  Romans 12:6-8 explains that, “Having then gifts differing according to the grace that is given to us, whether prophecy, let us prophesy according to the proportion of faith; Or ministry, let us wait on our ministering: or he that teacheth, on teaching; Or he that exhorteth, on exhortation: he that giveth, let him do it with simplicity; he that ruleth, with diligence; he that sheweth mercy, with cheerfulness.” 

The aforementioned Scriptures all bear out the fact that no musician is a “self made musician”.  The beneficial and perfect gifts that Christian musicians exhibit in their professional endeavors are given severely to them by our heavenly Father who never makes a mistake.  Therefore, it is no wonder that God’s Word declares that they are “without repentance”.  I have told my college classes over the years that when we face Him whose eyes are as a flame of fire, we will give an account of what we did with the musical gifts which God has given to us.  Romans 11:29, Revelation 19:12 and 20:12

 

Quote for the Day

Quote for the Day  

“No art is exercising such a strong influence over the human race at the present time as the art of music.”  This statement is taken from the introduction of the revised edition published in 1914.  The Music of the Bible by John Stainer, p.1

 

 

Good and Perfect Musical Gifts part 1

Good and Perfect Musical Gifts part 1 

James 1:17 states,” Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, and cometh down from the Father of lights, with whom is no variableness, neither shadow of turning.”  When one reads the first chapter of James, it seems on the first reading that this verse was merely dropped into this passage of Scripture without direct connection to the rest of what the apostle James was teaching.  To say the least, this verse is somewhat difficult to understand in the context in which it was written.  However, as one studies this chapter it becomes apparent that James is teaching that all good gifts emanate from God.

One of the perplexities centers on the apostle’s use of the words agathos dosis (18, 1394) and teleios dorema (5046, 1434) which were translated good gifts and perfect gifts in the AV.  What is the significance of the apostle’s use of the Greek words dosis and dorema?   What is the significance of good gifts and perfect gifts?  Finally, what does this verse teach us about gifts given to us from God? 

Agathos dosis means a beneficial giving [of God] and Telios dorema means a perfect bestowment [of God] in the context of completeness.  The words translated good and perfect in the AV reflect gifts [given to us by God] that are beneficial and complete.  I believe that this application given in the Book of James extends to Christian musicians. 

 

 

Quote for the Day

Quote for the Day   

“Dictionaries are like watches; the worst is better than none, and the best cannot be expected to go quite true.”  Samuel Johnson (1709-1781)

"True Truth" Not Exhaustive Truth Part 7

"True Truth” Not Exhaustive Truth  Part 7   

Let me reiterate the fact that although we do not have complete exhaustive truth from what is written in the Bible about music, what is written there is completely  accurate.  The problem that most always happens is that Bible translators have not been, for the most part, music scholars and certainly not students of ancient music.  To prove this point, look at the list of scholars included in most Bible translation teams and one will see that they most often do not include a music scholar and certainly not a scholar of ancient music.  The problem has not been that there were errors in the consonantal text.  The problem has been that because the language scholars who have prepared our modern translations have not understood music of ancient Israel and their neighbors, they have perpetuated many of the misunderstandings of music found in earlier translations.

 It is therefore every Christian performer’s and music educator’s responsibility to, “Study to shew thyself approved unto God, a workman that needeth not to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth.” II Timothy 2:14 We also have the responsibility to study the many word study sources available to us today. There are more of these teatises available to us today than there has ever been in the history of Western civilization.  There is also a myriad of great scholarly writings about the ancient music of Bible times that have been written by Jewish historians and musicologists. 

 

Quote for the Day

Quote for the Day   

“If the arts as a whole do not present a Christian view of values and, in fact, frequently contradict them, no automatic claims can be made for the arts as a teacher of truth.”  Culture in Christian Perspective by Leland Ryken, p. 127

 

 

"True Truth" Not Exhaustive Truth Part 6

“True Truth” Not Exhaustive Truth  Part 6   

At this point you are probably wondering why I am discussing music theory in the middle of a discussion of music philosophy in Christian perspective.  The reason is that now we view ancient Bible music and musicing through the dark glass of the rules of Western music.  Therefore, some of what we read about music in ancient Israel will require reading the works of Jewish music scholars.   The reason is that they are practically the only scholars who have consistently studied the music of the Old Testament over the last two thousand years.  Frankly, reading and believing the works of Jewish scholars has been a pill too difficult for most twentieth and twenty first Christian musicians and exegetes of Scripture to swallow. 

If anyone knows what happened musically in ancient Israel, it is those who have for centuries studied the music of the Bible.  All a person has to do is to read the exotic hypotheses of Christian musicians and biblical scholars over the last one hundred years and one will see very clearly that music of the Bible was not their expertise or in many cases their interest.  In many cases Bible scholars have failed to make any mention of verses of Scripture that are concerned with music. So, it is of little wonder that we are in such a mess concerning the value of what is written in the Bible about music and its application to twenty first century musicing inside and outside of the church.

 

Quote for the Day

Quote for the Day

“The study of music and its influence confronts the Christian with a complicated paradox.  The less he studies and thinks about music, the more he imagines he knows about it.   However, the more he studies and thinks about music, the more he realizes how little he actually knows about it.”  Music in the Balance, by Frank Garlock & Kurt Woetzel, p. XIII

 

 

“True Truth” Not Exhaustive Truth Part 5

“True Truth” Not Exhaustive Truth  Part 5 

      The musician must understand that many of the precepts taught in the Bible which do not concern music, are just as difficult to understand as those that concern music.  However, that fact has not deterred biblical historians, exegetes and commentators from writing multiplied thousands of volumes on other things that are taught in the Bible.  It is unfortunate that so few Christian musicians have written about the music of the Bible in the last two hundred years.  Instead they have concentrated on the problems we have with our musicing rather than with the cure.

Brown explains that although St. Paul uses the imagery of seeing through a mirror dimly when he writes about knowing, “He does not mean that our knowledge is inadequate but that it is limited when compared to what we will know in the future.”  The Broadman Bible Commentary, Vol. X, I Corinthians by Raymond Brown, p. 374.  When we get to heaven and are ushered into God’s presence we will have perfect knowledge, but that does not mean that we cannot trust the knowledge that we have in this life.  Some of the things we read in the Bible about ancient music and musicing have now, centuries later, become somewhat esoteric and are to us, because of our lack of knowledge, only indications or hints of what actually happened in ancient Israel.  They are mere intimations to us because we read the Old and New Testaments through Western eyes and Western understandings.

 For instance, we understand hepatonic scales with half steps between three and four and seven and eighth in light of the music of the Oxidant.  When we study an ancient musical scale that seems to be a major or minor scale because of its construction, we expect that scale to follow the rules of music theory of Western Europe.   This is possibly why so many musicologists before Susanne Haik-Vantoura were not able to successfully decipher the te’amim of the Old Testament.  One of the main impediments to European theorists deciphering the te’amim was also the fact that in the music of the Occident the tonic is always the first note of the musical scale.  In the music of the Bible the tonic is medial i.e. the third note of the scale rather than the first note.