The Singing Church: The Hymns It Wrote and SangLorenz, Edmund S. (Edmund Simon)
Religion
The Singing Church: The Hymns It Wrote and Sang
Lorenz, Edmund S. (Edmund Simon)
Hymns -- History and criticism
It has been suggested that the choral passages of the Book of
Revelation are quotations from current hymns. If that were true, how
could the little gatherings of Christians have risen to the majesty of
these marvelous hymns of adoration, either vocally or spiritually?
They are so intimately a part of the stupendous scenes in which they
appear as to make their being merely quotations seem impossible. Only
the itch of a German-type scholarship to press out the last drop of
possibility from any given historical material, and the calm assurance
that the results must be true, since it has recognized them, can
explain this hypothesis.
These hymns are too integral a part of the scenes, too consonant with
their elevated spirit, and logically too inevitable, that they should
have been mechanically introduced or even adapted from current
hymns—they are too choral in the grand manner.
In general, we may accept the same judgment of Dr. Lyman Coleman, in
his work _The Primitive Church_. “The argument is not conclusive, and
all the learned criticism, the talent and the taste, that have been
employed on this point, leave us little else than uncertain conjecture
on which to build a hypothesis.”
“_The Odes of Solomon._”
“The Odes of Solomon” is a Syriac collection of hymns which good
authorities claim to be of the Apostolic Age; one authority, Mrs.
Gibson, insists that it precedes Paul’s letter to the Ephesians, while
the most conservative concede that it belongs to the first century, or
the first half of the second.
Its discoverer, Dr. Rendell Harris, Director of studies at Woodbrooke,
the Quaker center at Selly Oak, England, says of the “Odes”: “They are
utterly radiant with faith and love, shot through and through with
what the New Testament calls ‘the joy of the Lord.’” He quotes one of
them: “A great day has shined upon us; marvelous is He who has given
us of His glory. Let us, therefore, all of us unite together in the
name of the Lord, and let us honor Him in His goodness, and let us
meditate in His love by night and by day.”[1]
The first stanza of Ode XXVI is translated as follows:
I poured out praise to the Lord,
For I am his:
And I will speak his holy song,
For my heart is with him,
For his harp is in my hands,
And the odes of his rest shall not be silent.
I will cry unto him from my whole heart;
I will praise and exalt him with all my members.
For from the East and even to the West
Is his praise;
And from the South and even to the North
Is his confession:
And from the top of the hills to their utmost bound
Is his perfection.
_The Failure of Apostolic Spiritual Songs to Survive._
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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