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The Exclusion of Musical Instruments from the Ancient Synagogue

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 1979

James W. McKinnon
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Extract

We are remarkably well-informed about the liturgy of the Second Temple at Jerusalem in the years which preceded its destruction by the Romans in AD 70; the same is not the case, as will be seen below, with the contemporary Synagogue. The central source of our knowledge about Temple liturgy is the Talmud, that massive compendium of rabbinic learning and lore which had its first redaction in the Mishnah of about AD 200. There are numerous remarks on Temple liturgy scattered throughout the sixty-three tractates of the Mishnah, but two in particular give us as detailed a description of its daily services as do the ordines romani of the seventh-century Roman pontifical Mass. These are the tractates Middoth, literally measurements, which gives a description of the Temple with its dimensions, and Tamid, literally perfect or perpetual, which goes step by step through the daily sacrificial rites.

Type
Research Article
Information
Proceedings of the Royal Musical Association , Volume 106 , 1979 , pp. 77 - 87
Copyright
Copyright © 1981 The Royal Musical Association and the Authors

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References

NOTES

1 The psalms are given in Tamid VII, 4: Sunday, Ps. 24; Monday, Ps. 48; Tuesday, Ps. 82; Wednesday, Ps. 94; Thursday, Ps. 81; Friday, Ps. 93; Sabbath, Ps. 92.Google Scholar

2 See Finesinger, SolBaruch, ‘Musical Instruments in OT’, Hebrew Union College Annual, iii (1926), 21–75.Google Scholar

3 M. 'Arakin II, 3, 5, 6.Google Scholar

4 M. 'Arakin II, 6.Google Scholar

5 The use of pereq is puzzling here; the context indicates clearly that it refers to a portion of a psalm whereas normally in the Talmud it refers to an entire psalm.Google Scholar

6 There may have been as many as eighteen if one includes Hannukah; see Zeitlin, Solomon, The Hallel', Jewsh Quarterly Review, liii (1962), 22–9.Google Scholar

7 M. 'Arakin II, 3.Google Scholar

8 Finesinger, ‘Musical Instruments’, 48–52; he identifies the holil with the aulos, but uses the anachronistic term flute.Google Scholar

9 M. 'Arakin II, 3.Google Scholar

10 Compare M. 'Arakin II, 3 and M. Pesahim V, 7.Google Scholar

11 M. Sukkah V, 4.Google Scholar

12 M. Rosh Hashanah III, 2–7; IV, 1–2, 5–9.Google Scholar

13 Abraham Z. Idelsohn, Jewish Music in Its Historical Development (New York, 1919), p. 93; see also pp. 96–7.Google Scholar

14 The Sacred Bridge (New York, 1959), p. 318; see also Alfred Sendry, Music in Ancient Israel (New York, 1969), p. 182.Google Scholar

15 Sacred Bridge, p. 334.Google Scholar

16 New Oxford History of Music, i (London, 1957), 315; ‘“If I Speak in the Tongues of Men” … St Paul's Attitude to Music’, Journal of the American Musicological Society, xiii (1960), 20.Google Scholar

17 Sacred Bridge, p. 334.Google Scholar

18 ‘St Paul's Attitude to Music’, p. so.Google Scholar

19 De vita Moysis, ii, 239; trans., C. D. Yonge, The Works of Philo Judaeus, iii (London, 1855), 124; the second passage is De spec. leg., i, 271.Google Scholar

20 Apparently he follows, without attribution, Johannes Quasten, Musik und Gesang in den Kulten der heidnischen Antike und christlichen Frühzeit. Liturgiewissenschaftliche Quellen und Forschungen, xxv (Münster, 1930), 71–77; the argument is similar and the citations are identical.Google Scholar

21 On this aspect of Philo see Henry A. Wolfson, Philo (Cambridge, Mass., 1947), i, 85–6.Google Scholar

22 As quoted in Sacred Bridge, p. 334; for the original see Geffcken, Johannes, Die Oracula Sibyllina (Leipzig, 1902), pp. 147–8 (lines 113–17).Google Scholar

23 See Geffcken, Johannes, Kompositions und Entstehungszeit der Oracula Sibyllina. Texte und Untersuchungen zur Geschichte der altchristlichen Literatur, N.F. viii, 1 (Leipzig, 1902), 38–46. The standard reference works follow Geffcken.Google Scholar

24 Samuel Krauss, ‘Sibyl’, The Jewish Encyclopedia, xi (New York, 1905), 323. The passage in question does express Christian antagonism to a broad spectrum of pagan cults with their prominent instrumental usage, but that is another matter.Google Scholar

25 Sotah 48a; Soncino, 258. The passage is from the Gemara of the Talmud, a commentary upon the Mishnah, written in Aramaic as opposed to the Hebrew of the Mishnah. Gemara translations are taken from the Soncino Press translation of the Babylonian Talmud, published at London from 1934 to 1960, and cited as above.Google Scholar

26 Gittin 7a; Soncino, 22. The parentheses in the Soncino translations are editorial.Google Scholar

27 Boaz Cohen would make the object of the Sotah passage even more specific, the wedding banquet; Law and Tradition in Judaism (New York, 1959), p. 167.Google Scholar

28 De elia et jejunia, xv; Patrologia Latina, xiv: 752.Google Scholar

29 M. Kethuboth IV, 4; see also M. Shabbath XXIII, 4.Google Scholar

30 M. Baba Mezia VI, 1.Google Scholar

31 Baba Bathra 145b.Google Scholar

32 Kethuboth 8a; see also Kethuboth 17a.Google Scholar

33 M. Sotah IX, 14; see also Sotah 49b and Niddah 61b. There is also a difficult passage involving thousands of trumpets at wedding and funeral processions' Kethuboth 17a.Google Scholar

34 M. Sukkah V, 1; Sukkah 50b-51a.Google Scholar

35 M. Rosh Hashanah IV, 1.Google Scholar

36 ‘St. Paul's Attitude’, 19–20; Sacred Bridge, p. 335.Google Scholar

37 M. Sotah IX, 12, 11.Google Scholar

38 See James W. McKinnon, The Meaning of the Patristic Polemic against Musical Instruments', Current Musicology (Spring, 1965), pp. 69–82.Google Scholar

39 Jewish Music, pp. 92–9.Google Scholar

40 Sotah 48a; Soncino, 257–8. See also Berakoth 242.Google Scholar

41 The prejudice is rampant, for example, in Hermann Abert's influential Die Musikanschauung des Mittelalters und ihre Grundlagen (Halle, 1905).Google Scholar

42 See especially ‘The Alleged Ban on Greek Wisdom’ and ‘Rabbinic Polemics against Idolatry’, Hellenism in Jewish Palestine (New York, 1950), pp. 100–14, 115–27.Google Scholar

43 What follows is an extremely cursory summary of a study in progress by the author, ‘The Myth of Psalmody in Early Synagogue and Church’.Google Scholar

44 M. Tamid V, 1.Google Scholar

45 The literature is summarized in Joseph Gutmann, ed., The Synagogue: Studies in Origins, Archaeology and Architecture (New York, 1975).Google Scholar

46 Perhaps the central passages of the many referring to Synagogue liturgy are those of M. Megillah III and IV.Google Scholar

47 An exception must be noted; the position is very close to that expressed in this paper: Louis I. Rabinowitz, The Psalms in Jewish Liturgy', Histona Judaica, vi (1944), 109–22.Google Scholar

48 Oesterle, W. O. E., The Jewish Background of the Christian Liturgy (London, 1925), p. 73; Dom Gregory Dix, The Shape of the Liturgy (London, 1945), p. 39; Clifford W. Dugmore, The Influence of the Synagogue upon the Divine Office (London, 1944), pp. 8, 80.Google Scholar

49 Sacred Bridge, pp. 7–10, 144–5.Google Scholar

50 Sopherim XVIII-XX; additional psalms are designated for certain occasions.Google Scholar

51 Megillah 32a; Soncino, 194.Google Scholar

52 The sources are collected and analysed in the study referred to in note 43.Google Scholar

53 The same study reviews the evidence which shows the Christian cantor to be a development of the fourth century and the Jewish cantor of a still later period.Google Scholar

54 The only argument I am aware of for an occasional use of instruments in the Synagogue is in Sendry, Music of Ancient Israel, 182; it is based on an unwarranted interpretation of M. Erubin X, 13. A more sophisticated, if not ultimately acceptable, case for their use in early Christianity is made by John Foster, The Harp at Ephesus', The Expository Times, lxxix (1962–63), 156.Google Scholar