Musical Worship at The First
Century Feast of Tabernacles
The Catholic Encyclopedia
notes that: After the Exile, the feast was protracted to
the twenty-fifth of the month, and two
new rites were added to the
old ceremonial. Every morning of the celebration a priest went down
to the Siloe Fountain, whence he brought in a golden ewer of water
which was pored on the alter of holocausts amidst the singing of the
Hallel
(Pss, cxii-cxvii) and the joyful sound of musical instruments.
It was possibly the performance of this
ceremony (the institution of which may have been suggested by Is.,
xii, 3) which afforded to Our Lord the occasion to compare the action
of the Holy Ghost in the faithful to a
spring of living water (John, vii,
37-39). The other new feature added to the ritual of the feast was
the illumination of the women's court, together with the singing of the
Psalms of the Degrees (Pss. cxix-cxxxiii) and the performance of dances or processions in
the sacred precincts. On the eighth day a procession went seven times around the alter,
the people carrying myrtle-boughs and palms and shouting: "Hosannah!"
in memory of the fall of Jericho. "The archetypes of performance constituted
the usual temple ritual. Yet there was one annual event which served
as pretext for all kinds of extravagances in
music
and dance. Again we must, to a certain extent, rely upon the
Talmudic description, which however, in this case is confirmed by
passages of early rabbinic literature and extensive descriptions by
Josephus." "This, the merriest of all the festivals, was
the 'Feast of Drawing water.' It was the most joyous and the most
musical
of the temple's festivities. Its description in the Mishna text opens
with the significant words: 'Whosoever has not seen the joy of the
House of Water-drawing has never seen real joy in his life' (M. Suk.
5.1). After the preparations, which
occupied the entire afternoon of the first day of Tabernacles, the 'men of good
deeds' began to dance before the people
in the temple court with burning torches. The Levites having stationed themselves upon
the fifteen steps leading from the women's court to the Inner Court,
took up their harps, lyres, cymbals, trumpets,
pipes,
flutes,
clarinet, etc., all instruments greatly augmented in number,
and intoned the fifteen 'Songs of Ascent.' Thus, the night passed in dancing, singing,
and general merrymaking. At the sound of the first cockcrow, the
priests intoned the triple blast upon their ritual trumpets. These
signals ended the general frolicking, and the crowd ranged itself
into an orderly
procession to the well of Siloah.
(Interpreter's Dictionary of the Bible, p. 463, Abingdon).
"water drawing festival, was celebrated during
the week of Tabernacles with popular games and dances in which even
the elders took part, and the streets were so brilliantly illuminated
with torches that scarcely an eye was closed in Jerusalem during the
week." (Int. Std. Bible Ency., p. 1104) "Today, this music and dance
festival is understood as the one remnant of the old Canaanite fertility rituals, which, in the monotheistic pseudomorphosis of the
temple ceremonies, was to ensure an abundant crop of plants, animals,
and even human beings." "This was perhaps the only
occasion where popular music-making was allowed to mix with the
otherwise sternly guarded prerogative
of Levitical music. Consequently,
secular,
superstitious, even popular licentious
elements were here introduced in the
performance of the temple's liturgical
music." (Interpreter's Dictionary of
the Bible, p. 460, Abingdon). The right-side up world of Paul is shown by
William Barclay who explained what it meant to reject the Word and
seek knowledge or gnosis from a direct operation of the spirit in the
music and wine induced charismatic rituals. He informs us
that: "They made their voices sweet with
musical cadences and modulations of tone
and echoed resonances. They thought
not of what they were saying, but of how they were saying it.
Their thought might be poisonous so long as it was enveloped in
honeyed words. Philostratus tells us that Adrian, the sophist,
had such a reputation in Rome, that when his messenger appeared with
a notice that he was to lecture, the senate emptied and even the
people at the games abandoned them to flock to hear him.. "You might hear many poor wretches of sophists, shouting and abusing each other, and their disciples,
as they call them, squabbling; and
many writers of books reading their stupid compositions, and
many poets singing their
poems, and many jugglers (buffons)
exhibiting their marvels, and many soothsayers giving the
meaning of prodigies, and then a thousand rhetoricians
twisting lawsuits, and no small number of traders driving their
several trades. "The Greeks were intoxicated with fine words;
and to them the Christian preacher with his blunt message seemed a
crude and uncultured figure, to be laughed at and ridiculed rather
than to be listened to and respected. (Barclay, William, First
Corinthians, p. 19-20) "Perhaps professor would be a
rough modern equivalent to Sophist. It has a
similar range from Professors of Greek to Professors of Phrenology
and although some Professors research, all teach, and all are paid which was a
great reproach to the Sophists. Some of them were serious
philosophers, educators or scholars; others only cheap-jacks, who
professed to teach only the sublime art
of getting on. Did you want to
improve your memory: Did you want to be a £1,000-a-year
man? Some Sophist would teach you--for a fee. Sophists
went from city to city, lecturing on their particular subject, some
indeed undertaking to lecture on any subject, but
always for a fee. (Kitto, The Greeks, p. 168). See
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