Regarding the instruments spoken of in Scripture as being used in the Temple there is also no certainty. In the Talmud there is mention of an organ which had but ten pipes, yet gave one hundred different tones; this instrument is placed about the beginning of the Christian Era, and is called _Magrepha_; it is said of it, that its tones were so powerful that when it was played, the people in Jerusalem could not hear each other talk. Pfeiffer conjectures that it was probably not an organ, but a very loud drum. There are other authorities who have endeavored to prove that the _Magrepha_ was simply a _fire shovel_; they contend that it was used at the sacrifices of the Temple to build up the fire, and was then thrown down, with a loud noise, to inform people outside how far the services had progressed. The reader has liberty to make his own choice, for the authorities are pretty evenly balanced,—_organ_, _drum_, or _fire shovel_. We must make some allowance for Oriental exaggeration in musical matters, for when Josephus speaks of a performance by 200,000 singers, 40,000 sistrums, 40,000 harps, and 200,000 trumpets, we must imagine that either Josephus’ tale, or the ears of the Hebrews, were tough. All these statements only enlarge a fruitless field, for in it all is conjecture. The flute was a favorite instrument both for joy and sorrow: the Talmud contains a saying that “flutes are suited either to the bride or to the dead.” The performance of all these instruments seems to have been always in unison, and often in the most _fortissimo_ style. Calmet gives a list of Hebrew instruments including viols, trumpets, drums, bells, Pan’s pipes, flutes, cymbals, etc., and it is possible that these have existed among them in a primitive form. The abbé de la Molette gives the number of the chief Jewish instruments as twelve, and states that they borrowed three newer ones from the Chaldeans, during the Babylonian captivity. According to records of the Rabbins, given by Forkel, the Jews possessed in David’s time, thirty-six instruments. Some of the instruments named in the Scriptures are as follows:—_Kinnor_, usually mentioned in the English translation as a harp, so often alluded to in the Psalms, (“Praise the Lord with harp,” etc., xxxiii:2,) was probably a lyre, or a small harp, of triangular shape: that the Hebrews possessed a larger harp is more than probable, for they were in communication with Assyria and Egypt, where the harp, in a highly developed state, was the national instrument, but it is a matter of much dispute, as to which of the musical terms used in the Scriptures was intended to apply to this larger harp. The _Nebel_, or _Psaltery_, was a species of Dulcimer. The _Asor_;—When David sang of an “instrument of ten strings,” he referred to the asor, which is supposed to have been a species of lyre, with ten strings, and played with a _plectrum_, a short stick of wood, or bone, usually black, with which the strings were struck.