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Hastings' Dictionary of the New Testament

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MUSIC.—The Jews cultivated music from the earliest times, perhaps the more because sculpture and painting were practically forbidden (Exodus 20:4). It gave expression to all their emotions, and found a place in all the chief events of public and private life (cf. OT, passim).

1. References in the Gospels are few and indirect, (a) Song: Matthew 26:30 ||, Luke 15:25 (?) seem to be the only instances. (b) Instruments: Matthew 9:23; Matthew 11:17 || pipe (wh. see) or flute (see Flute-players); Matthew 24:31 trumpet (wh. see), probably the curved trumpet as in Exodus 19:16. In Daniel 3:5; Daniel 3:15 (LXX Septuagint ) συμφωνία is usually taken to mean a bagpipe; but such a meaning in Luke 15:25 is unlikely. It is in the OT that the various national instruments appear, of which the following are the principal types:—(1) Stringed: lyre (Authorized and Revised Versions ‘harp’), harp (Authorized and Revised Versions variously ‘psaltery,’ ‘viol,’ ‘lute’); (2) wind: pipe, of wood; curved trumpet, of horn or (in later times) of metal; straight trumpet, of silver; (3) percussion: hand-drum (Authorized and Revised Versions ‘tabret,’ ‘timbrel’) of skin; cymbals (Authorized and Revised Versions once [Zechariah 14:20] ‘bells’) of brass, used, especially the precentor as it appears from 1 Chronicles 16:5, no doubt for rhythmical purposes. Several others are mentioned, but some are foreign, and the nature of the rest is unknown.

2. The general character of Jewish music in the time of Christ is wholly a matter of inference. There were no theoretical writers, as among the Greeks; of their instruments sculpture portrays the silver trumpet alone; and, notation not having been invented, specimens of their music contemporaneously committed to writing do not exist. Yet within definable limits inference amounts to certainty, (a) As to rhythmical structure, all ancient music was of the free form, in contrast to the measured form of modern music: ‘time,’ in our sense, was then unknown. (b) The variety and combination of instruments employed, together with the musical arrangements generally (e.g. 1 Chronicles 15:16-22), imply at least some definite system whereby the intervals of melodic progression were regulated. The existence of scales or modes, of some sort, cannot therefore be questioned, (c) They seem to have been in accord with those in use at Babylon (Psalms 137:1-3). Moreover, habitual contact with Greek influences in Alexandria and elsewhere probably produced (or at least goes to prove) an affinity with the Greek modes. (d) The ‘traditional melodies’ now used in Jewish synagogues are, in some cases, similar in kind to the music that we may infer to have existed in the time of Christ. Tradition might preserve melodies down to the invention of notation, much as it preserved the vowel-system down to the invention of ‘points.’ But the Jews themselves seem to have discontinued the Temple melodies after its destruction; so that the synagogue melodies, whatever their origin, would not be those of the Temple. It may be supposed that Jewish Christians imported some of their Temple melodies into the Christian Church. Perhaps it was they who introduced antiphonal singing: and even Greek liturgies are held to have been largely ‘affected by Mosaic rites’ (Swainson, Gr. Liturgies). It is therefore not impossible that a Jewish element still survives in some of the ancient ecclesiastical plainsong. But no one can say for certain that this is so, or identify any particular instance.

Literature.—Chappell, History of Music; Stainer, The Music of the Bible; Edersheim, The Temple, etc.; art. ‘Music’ in Hasting's Dictionary of the Bible ; Helmore, Plainsong, etc. The traditional Jewish melodies can be seen in E. [Note: Elohist.] Pauer’s Hebrew Melodies (Augener), and in the collection of music for the synagogue edited by Cohen and Davis.

F. S. Ranken.