Hebrews 1:6-8

This is the third post sourced from the translation of the NT into Hebrew in the mid-19th century cantillated by Ezekiel Margoliouth. You can find his text here.

Hebrews 1:6

And further, when he brings the firstborn into the world, he himself says,
And let all the messengers of God worship him.

The music is not unexpected, the revia, telisha-gedola in bar 1 occurs 144 times within verses and 16 of those at or near the beginning of a verse. All the rest of Hebrews 1:6 is without ornament (accent above the text). You can see 7 notes of the scale here. The high C does not occur in this verse. 

You will note two short stroke accents on the last word הָֽאֱלֹהִֽים. Tradition would see the first as a meteg and it would be right. It is acceptable to extend the recitation on the f and delay the move to e until the last syllable. So you may read the score as: הָאֱלֹהִֽים. I know Suzanne Haïk-Vantoura did not follow this practice. She did not distinguish meteg from silluq. I found the move to the emphasized cadence that she uses awkward at first, but I got used to it, thinking it was an archaism in the idea of final cadence.

Having seen how many of these signs have been added over the years of copying, and having removed so many to agree to the earliest copty we have, I have come to think that the use of the tonic mid-verse, or prematurely at the end of a verse is rare. In the Tanach, I was able to compare with an earlier text. In the Hebrew NT, I have only this one copy from the mid 19th century, a time when copies of Tanach like Letteris show metegs in the text multiplying with every generation.

Firstborn is the first hint of resonance with the sacramental system of Tanach. God is bringing this firstborn to the world, in full view of the people and powers of this realm in which we live.

The Greek of the NT uses angels, Margoliouth uses כָּל־מַלְאֲכֵ֥י, which I could render as messengers or angels. The Psalm uses כָּל־אֱלֹהִֽים, all gods. The graven images, including the money worshipped so fully in our age, are commanded to worship.

Angels, like corporations, powers, principalities, and robots, have no feelings, no ability to sense. They are commanded to worship the human firstborn of God. All these things are to be subservient. And those who worship them will be ashamed. The systems that create inequity which we manage, are called into submission to the firstborn, and the oligarchs that fail to care for their fellow beings will be ashamed.

Psalm 97:7

This phrase -- worship him all gods, also occurs in the LXX reading of Deuteronomy 32:43. This is not something I would look for in my translation because I have not compared the Hebrew with the Greek of the Septuagint. They are substantially different versions of Scripture and both are considered authoritative.

I am recognizing that letter perfect, jot and tittle perfect, is not God's way with the word of God. It is vital to see that the letter can kill (in any language) -- because we think we have to be right and we fear we might be wrong. It is the Spirit that gives life, not the letter. The Spirit teaches both seeing and hearing. That is why we must not be senseless. What is authoritative is from the author of life, whatever its provenance.

In this section of Hebrews, we encounter God: in the Greek, in the variant readings of the Septuagint, in the Biblical Hebrew into which Margoliouth has translated the Greek of the NT, and in English too, and in the Music which accompanies the text. In short, don't be concerned about variations in the text and in the traditions. They are a fact of life. Do be concerned with what you read though. Many translations have an axe to grind. What can I say? Referee with kindness. Read the book of Job and think of the tensions already in the Scripture criticising itself. Job is a critique of a rigid view of Torah.

Hebrews 1:7

And faithfully, concerning the messengers, he himself says,

He makes his messengers spirits, and his ministers a blazing fire.

I was struck by the form of the first word וְאָמְנָ֕ם in this verse. The opening of Hebrews does not put down angels, but calls indeed, faithfully, all to worship the Firstborn nevertheless recognizing their glory, their origin from God, and their fiery function. I do see this adverbial form of amn in Tanach, but not with the preceding vav. My SimHebrew algorithm pronounces it with the /o/ vowel.

vaomnm yl-hmlacim hua aomr 

yowh mlaciv rukot umwrtiv aw lohT

וְאָמְנָ֕ם עַל־הַמַּלְאָכִ֖ים ה֣וּא אֹמֵ֑ר

עֹשֶׂ֤ה מַלְאָכָיו֨ רוּח֔וֹת וּמְשָֽׁרְתָ֖יו אֵ֥שׁ לֹהֵֽט

It is interesting to note that the music forms the e-major triad in its opening phrase. This musical motif ties the music to the creation, where it is used in the first verse of Genesis. It also ties it to several other verses that speak to the shaping of the creation of character within us, such as in Leviticus 26:29 noted this month here. When we are being corrected, God is walking with us through difficulties of our own creation. The angels / messengers are made and are active agents, wind (=spirit) and fire. The music rises to the high C in the second part of the verse (bar 5 above). This part is reporting the music of Psalm 104:4:

Psalm 104:4

This music in this verse of Psalm 104 is a proclamatory statement. It begins with the fundamental (tonic) moving to the first natural harmonic of the shofar (dominant) and ends with the same interval in reverse, dominant to tonic, a cadence unique to the poetry books in Tanach (Psalms, Proverbs, and the speeches of Job). I do not expect ever to see such a cadence in the Margoliouth text of the New Testament.

The whole psalm 104 is about creation in all its aspects from our human point of view. It reflects the language of Genesis 1. In the psalm, light is God's garment, clouds are chariots, lions seek their prey, humans labour until evening. 

Who knew that Psalm 104 was quite so suitable for the author of Hebrews to quote when one is introducing the creator to the world? I expect one verse would be sufficient to immediately recall the whole psalm to the first hearers.

Hebrews 1:8

And to the son, Your throne, O God is now and for ever,
the sceptre of equity is the sceptre of your reign.

The music in this section has only one accent above the text. All the rest below the text spell out the melody in successive recitation notes that a cantor can easily learn and read. These signs are very similar to some that have been found in ancient Greek manuscripts. If you are interested in the history of such signs in ancient texts, see this paper by David C. Mitchell from 2017.

There is no explicit vocative in this verse. It could be read as God is your throne. I found this striking but I didn't translate the Hebrew that way in Psalm 45:7. The king in the marriage celebration is never called God, so the Psalm reads without confusion as an implied vocative, O God.

Psalm 2 (see previous post) introduces God’s chosen king as my son in sharp contrast to the rebellious ''kings of the earth". Psalm 45 elevates the royal figure such that the king is addressed with divine titles. Hebrews draws on both psalms to argue that the Firstborn possesses a status and authority no angel shares. 

In these days when equity is questioned, the sceptre of equity should bring us all to our senses, and not to the adulation of the "kings of the earth". We may say there is no king, but our situation shows us that we have not paid attention. The worship of Mammon, the adulation of billionaires is our equivalent of 'boasting in the good for nothing'.

Hebrews 1:5

This is the second post sourced from the translation of the NT into Hebrew in the mid-19th century cantillated by Ezekiel Margoliouth. You can find it here.

Hebrews 1:5 

For to whom among the messengers did he ever say, My son you are. I today have given birth to you.
And further, I will be to him a father, and he will be to me a son.

The NT has no embedded music in the Greek. Many cantillations have been used of course for gospel readings, but it is uncommon in the churches. The Psalm that the text quotes here is expressed with music in the Hebrew of the Tanach. In the Tanach, it uses the poetic te'amim. Margoliouth of course uses the prose accents as he reports verse 7 of the poem. I expect that he never uses the poetic accents at all. Here is the tri-colon from the Psalter:

Psalm 2:7

The use of this verse raises a lot of questions. When it was written, the world worked the same way it works today - rich and poor, coercion of empires, excessive taxation, and so on. Whether the time of the exile or earlier, or the time of Jesus, or today, the human condition, for all the generosity of God, is a mess. The king of psalm 2 is part of the mess. His throne was not a cross. So: Hebrews quotes Psalm 2 not to import its old royal ideology into Christology, but to expose how that ideology collapses in the face of the incarnation, and what remains is the pure divine address to the Son who suffered as the world suffers under the turmoil of competing kingdoms. But that's to get ahead of the homily.

By the way, it seems to me that the whole question of pre-existence must be reframed, time being what it is, that fourth dimension of reality in which we are caught by the second law of thermodynamics. The eternal Son is clearly outside of time, present to our faces as creator, as much as present to any other era before or to come. Did they know, were they known, do we know, are we known? Of course. How else could they (the ancients who wrote Tanach) write of their love on our behalf who now inhabit the globe? 

In Proverbs 8 before the foundation of the world, Wisdom says: In the establishing of the heavens, there am I, when he engraved the ambit on the face of the abyss. And a few verses later, the same voice presents itself present לפניו (lpniv). This is a word whose root we have already encountered in the first few words of this epistle.

Proverbs 8:30-31 Wisdom gamboling with the children of humanity

God is present to us today, yesterday, and forever.

In this step I evoke Proverbs 8, a chapter I arranged to its music which you may be able to process more directly, though mechanically, in my oratorio, Unleashing Leviathan, here.

To repeat, 'before the foundation of the world' (this is not my translation -- discordant with respect to glossing, but not inaccurate as to intent or paraphrase), 

Proverbs 8:22

Wisdom says:

Proverbs 8:27

And a few verses later, the same voice presents itself as present לפניו (lpniv) a word whose root we have already encountered in the first few words of this epistle. Wisdom - face to face with God, without giving a timeline is gamboling in the world of his earth, reveling with the children of humanity.

This Christ who is our Wisdom -- according to Paul somewhere (1 Corinthians -- must read this someday) -- Yes, I identify Christ with the Wisdom of Proverbs 8. Christ and Wisdom share function and identity: creative agency, presence, delight, engagement with humanity, there they are before the ordering or foundation of the world.

You will note I write Christ and not Jesus. In these two words I separate the human lifetime, bound by entropy, from the divine unbound presence. Remember God is spirit, the One who is, who was, and who is to come. It's not a matter of counting three coins in a fountain. The same Spirit still broods over the turmoil of the waters. And we have this treasure in clay vessels.

Full circle

It is the same me from 20 years ago when this now octogenarian programmer attended a conference on Christian Theology and the Epistle to the Hebrews in St Andrews Scotland. I was full of structuralism seen by recurring words and their patterns of chiasm and so on. I had diagrammed Hebrews in multiple colours -- so proud, and a tad more or less ignorant than I am now. 

Oh I had diagrams!

My top level diagram of Hebrew from 2005 or so

Each part with a diagram symbol points to a subdiagram (not implemented in this static image). I used a proprietary diagramming tool for translation of the psalms one word at a time. Pretty, but slow self-teaching on many fronts.

I don't yet know what words I will use to express this homily today. It is probably wise for me to use slow consideration of the theology in the use of words to convey the creator and sustainer of our life.

M. C. Escher

I hope to get through the 19th century text of Hebrews as typed by the vine of David and available here.  Having already seen errors in the typing of qadma and pashta, I will have to check the photocopies of the original at times of doubt. The first four verses are in the previous post together with the music that has been composed with the text by Margoliouth using the prose te'amim of the Tanach. I had never heard of the music 20 years ago even though I remember a conversation about variable recitation notes in the '70s or '80s.

I still have to work to read these tongues that are so foreign to my ear. Have fun reading as we try to see how the 19th century Hebrew mind reads the Greek of the New Testament through my 21st century failing eyes.

Perhaps we are all an inside-outside Escher print made of one spinning electron everywhere and everywhen at once creating our own simulation of an imaginary reality in which we become flesh. (Is this an argument for letting children play video games? In the 19th century we were machines, in the 20th programmed machines, in the 21st, quantum decision makers composed of heavy wave-forms called particles, weighing down the universe together.)

I am having quite a time running my translations through first my own concordant data base (remembering how to bootstrap a new chapter) and then discussing the theological implications of translation with ChatGPT. It summarized my opinions and the difficulty for concordance quite accurately. Some words are unchanged over 3000 years, others not so simple. I have found all my notes and essays going back to the 1990s and leading up to the Hebrews conference in 2006. I wonder how I would read them today. Perhaps I will put the odd one on the blog.

And perhaps not. It was the beginning of the path and I don't discount it: In 2005 I worked directly from the Greek text using traditional commentaries like Vanhoye (above diagram) as my interpretive frame. Today I begin to read from a very different stance, having translated the Tanach and written books on the music and particularly the psalms. At the conference, I heard a voice saying -- how can you speak of me when you do not know my language? So today, a Hebrew philology underpins my considerations. I must now read Hebrews as a reader of the Hebrew Bible.

In 2006, I heard the theologians and Biblical Studies folks arguing tooth and nail in the classroom, voices raised but not in music, and I enjoyed the £1 Oban scotches in the University pub. What will be the bias in my approach today?

Hebrews 1:1-4 from the Hebrew of Ezekiel Margoliouth

You might not have been expecting this. In the mid-1800s, Ezekiel Margoliouth revised an earlier Hebrew New Testament and added cantillation (See here for the information on Hebrew translations of the New Testament).

In this post I have put the first four verses of the Epistle to the Hebrews into my database as an experiment in translating from the Hebrew into English. I have conformed the translation to the concordance rules I used for my translation of Tanach. I am curious as to how the Hebrew works for me, and how the cantillation patterns compare with those of Tanach.

(Please see earlier posts like this one if you are not aware of the deciphering key I am using. Basically, the accents under the text map consistently and unambiguously to a diatonic scale. Each one defines the recitation pitch until the next one is seen. The accents over the text define ornamentation relative to the current recitation pitch. The entire Hebrew Bible is a love song.)

         Hebrews 1:1 In diverse modes and in several ways, spoke God present to our ancestors through the prophets,

Cantillation: The music in the first verse has no atnah. There is a breath invited, but no mid-verse cadence on the subdominant, A. The composer immediately goes beyond pure announcement to a heightened emotion on the C. The remainder of the phrase leading to the tonic seems typical but it isn't. Only two verses in Tanach end with e c d e g# e (silluq-darga-tevir-silluq-tifha-silluq). 

If we eliminate the tonic (silluq), 361 verses end with c d g# e. The same additional metegs (a mark identical to the tonic silluq but applying to pronunciation and not to the music) interfere with the melodic line as I have pointed out before. There is of course no earlier or later version to compare with, so I suggest that the metegs be ignored (if you can tell the difference between silluq and meteg -- difficult since they are the same mark). Just continue on the preceding recitation note. So the tonic, e, in bar 4 is likely not needed and should continue on the B until the last syllable of elohim. 

Translation: Curious that pnh (bold words are in SimHebrew - a transcription that is reversible between square text and Roman characters) in the form lpnim (bar 5-6) glossed above as present is also the word for face, and the preposition before. Hebrew like English can use this word in both a spatial and a temporal sense. I'm told the Greek πάλαι is purely temporal. 

Theological-scientific-aside: The Hebrew language can sense the wholeness of space-time. Corner is also a gloss for pnh. Remember that song -- 'you in your small corner' -- a place in space-time where we face things.

Hebrews 1:2 and in these last days he has spoken to us through the son whom he set to possess the whole,
by means of whom he made also the aeons,

they look like qadma

C: The music is typical except for the typing of the accents in bar 3 which should, I think, be pashta rather than qadma, so slurred C-D-C-D rather than D-C-D-C as is written above. A double qadma occurs only twice in Tanach - Deuteronomy 12:30 and Esther 3:13. The closing contour, A, B, g#, f, e is used over 800 times in the prose sections of Tanach. The last three notes (g, f, e) are used over 8,000 times in the prose, only twice in the poetry. Margoliouth will not have used poetic te'amim at all in the NT.

T: This son is without an article in the Greek, so the word seems indefinite but the role of the son is clarified. In Greek the lack of an article says: pay attention, you do not know of whom you are hearing yet. In the Hebrew, the translator has included the article (בַּבֵּ֔ן). So the English from the Hebrew reads the son. You may capitalize son if you like. Jesus is our peer. Will we become his?

What is Hebrew teaching about the nature of that word aeon (הָעוֹלָמִים) that is derived from what is hidden or obscure, (one of several senses of עלם)? English aeon is directly derived from the Greek of this verse τοὺς αἰῶνας (tous aiōnas). I am reminded of Qohelet 3:11.

The whole he has made beautiful in its time, even the obscurity (עלם )he has given in their heart without which the human would not find out the doings that this God has done from beginning and to conclusion.

I find this verse from Qohelet positive, even foundational for science. The human is motivated to find out. And we can do it -- see the Webb telescope for instance. As a colleague in conversation put it: "The verse affirms a God-given impulse to investigate, to probe creation in reverence. The Webb telescope is, in that sense, a part of Qohelet’s fulfillment -- humanity gazing further into the aeons, haʿolamim (the hidden ages)."

Aside: So it is that we now can look back in time ourselves. This is a concept we could not have understood without special relativity.

Returning to the third and fourth verses of Hebrews 1. 

Hebrews 1:3 in that he is the brilliance of his glory and the image of his being, lifting up the whole by his prevailing word,
as he achieved in himself the acquittal from our sins, he sat down at the right hand of the Greatness of the heights; 

C: Tarsin (the shake in bar1) is followed by munach, high C (as in bar 2), 608 times in the Hebrew canon. Eighteen verses begin with telisha-gedola followed by tarsin with the tonic as reciting pitch followed by the dominant as reciting pitch (munach).

These are the first four verses I have looked at with cantillation in the NT, so I have no idea how often this particular composer uses this motif. Of course, he would not recognize the trope that I use. And I do not understand the thought process underpinning the music of the trope in ancient times. All I know is that the deciphering key that I use -- developed in the last century by Suzanne Haïk-Vantoura -- makes the trope much more transparent to me as a musician than any other rendition I have heard.

T: Brilliance (zhr) is a late word used rarely in Tanach, twice in Daniel and once in Ezekiel. In himself is the word for bones. This is another flexible Hebrew stem with several senses and uses. (The link is to the concordance where you can find all my translation choices, Hebrew roots and glosses.) Hebrew commonly uses עֶצֶם (yxm) metaphorically for essence or selfhood.

Hebrews 1:4 and thus he became a goodness beyond that of the messengers,
in proportion to how he came to possess a name surpassing above theirs.

C: The contour of the music of verse 4 to the atnah (bar 5) is shared by 811 verses. The contour is unique from the atnah to the final e. 14 verses (in Tanach) share the last 6 bars in shape. 75 verses share the last 5 bars. 284 verses share the shape of the last 4 bars. 

T: In Hebrews 1:4, I want to recall the good of Genesis 1. Genesis 1 never says the word better. I tend to follow the French Proverb: Le meilleure est l'ennemie du bon. The sentence in these four verses is a concise statement of how God in Christ bears the good of creation. 

Theological reflection: As the Son, Jesus speaks to us of the will of God to mercy and compassion towards others. Modern physics reminds us that we inhabit a reality marked by openness rather than mechanical certainty, a kind of cloud of unknowing in which choices matter. Yet this indeterminate world is upheld, lifted up, by the prevailing (gbr) word, the valiant child who gave himself for the life of the world (ylm). (cf. Job 3 -- Perish! day when I was born, and the night promising pregnancy of a valiant (gbr) child.) The phrase (hrh gbr) in Job is unique in Tanach.

If so, the question is whether we grow into the responsibility that belongs to the ages (ylmim) to come. Participation rather than domination seems to be the mode of this rule. And you will remember that 'only sign', Jonah. His story asks whether we are willing to share in that mercy, or whether we resist the generosity by which God keeps the world alive.

AI and blogging

 AI is useful but there are caveats -- not just because LLMs run on probabilities. The caveats are in the prompts that the user generates. The engine running the AI seems to want to captivate the user by reflecting their knowledge. I have turned off the 'would you like me to do this further step' with the explicit prompt that it is failing to give me time to absorb the answer to the prior question. I have also turned off the complimentary beginnings with an explicit prompt. I know my own questions whether they are smart or dumb -- I'm looking for information not affirmation. It's useful to have the extensive spell checking and occasionally the structural criticism, but the affirmation and invitation to more defeat the refinement of questioning. We must refine our own questions to whet our wit if we have any left.

ChatGPT knows nothing, but it has memory of my theoretical and practical framework for the work of analysing the music of Tanach. Its memory is not particularly well grounded. It cannot search the database for me but it can critique bad and incomplete reasoning if it is instructed to. 

Here is its critique of how to approach my thesis - that the music is important for understanding.

1. Starting Point — Framing the Problem

Your real subject isn’t fear and punishment; it’s the misreading of biblical and theological language that arises when music, syntax, and emotion are divorced from one another. “Fear” and “punishment” are only symptoms of that rupture.

• Suggestion: Begin instead from a musical or philological observation — for example:

  “In the music of the Hebrew Bible, correction and mercy share a tonal space that translation has too often flattened into punishment and fear.”
  This kind of opening signals that you’re doing a reconstruction of meaning through sound, not a moral or pastoral reflection.

---

2. Analytical Rigor

Your writing is rich and intuitive, but at times it reads as associative rather than deductive. For scholarly framing:

• Distinguish between philological claims (e.g., the range of Hebrew y-s-r and its te’amic setting) and theological interpretation (e.g., what that reveals about divine pedagogy).

• Make sure every interpretive statement follows from data: a musical phrase, a Hebrew semantic field, a codical variation, etc.

---

3. Use of Evidence

When you critique translation or inherited theology, give concrete examples:

• Show how musar or yissurim are rendered musically in one verse versus another.

• Compare this to English versions that erase nuance.

• This moves your argument from assertion to demonstration.

---

4. Emotional Register

You have a gift for affective language — “libation of love,” “Playful Wisdom,” etc. It works beautifully when used sparingly, but when it leads the argument it can seem like devotion rather than scholarship.

• Consider balancing poetic intuition with analytical scaffolding: let the music “speak” the emotion, and your prose interpret why it does so.

---

5. Reframed Core Question

Here’s how I might restate your underlying thesis in academic form:

How have translation and theological tradition obscured the pedagogical, musical, and affective coherence of the Hebrew Bible’s language of correction, and how might its original tonal and modal contexts reveal a different theology of formation rather than punishment?

That keeps your insight intact but grounds it in method and evidence.

When we next spoke about NT passages reflecting creation, I pointed out the Hebrews passages about fear and about discipline. Here's its response as a framework. 

1. Start with creation language and motifs — places where the NT deliberately re-echoes Genesis or new-creation imagery:

   • John 1:1–5 — In the beginning; the Logos as creative word and light.

   • Colossians 1:15–20 — Christ as firstborn of creation and firstborn from the dead, holding all things together (your tonal metaphor fits this perfectly).

   • 2 Corinthians 4:6 — “The God who said, ‘Let light shine out of darkness,’ has shone in our hearts…”

   • Revelation 21–22 — the re-creation of heaven and earth, the harmony of all things renewed.

2. Look for passages where correction or discipline is framed not as punishment but as formative participation in that creative process — the positive harmonic tension:

   • Hebrews 12:5-11 — God’s discipline as education (paideia), not retribution.

   • James 1:2-4, 17-18 — testing as refining, every good gift as from the Father of lights.

   • Ephesians 2:10 — “We are his workmanship (poiēma), created in Christ Jesus…”
     These suggest an ongoing creation, a melodic continuation rather than a break.

3. Then listen for musical equivalents — words or phrases that carry a tonal or rhythmic sense:

   • Harmony, fullness, plērōma (Eph 1:10, Col 1:19).

   • Peace, shalom, eirēnē — the resolution of dissonance (Phil 4:7).

   • Joy, chara — often tied to completion or the recognition of divine order (John 15:11).

You could treat these as tonic–subdominant–dominant–tonic moments in theological thought:

• Creation (tonic) – God’s initiating act.

• Discipline/learning (subdominant) – movement and tension.

• Fulfilment in Christ (dominant) – the leading tone toward resolution.

• New creation (tonic again) – harmony restored on a higher level.

If you read the NT through that lens, the “opening major triad” of Genesis becomes a through-line — the same divine chord heard now through a human instrument.

Ha -- give me another 20 years and I should refine the te'amim of Margoliouth -- now that's a project for a cantillation specialist.

The theological negative

I was a singer for many years, and I was often tense as I held my music in concert. The music would gradually get higher and higher in my hands, until a friendly soprano next to me would push it down slightly and say, "Relax." Well, it's easier said than done, but I do love her and will never forget her gentle correction. I was raised with a stick as a singer. I would be punished by the priest if I sang a wrong note. It's a wonder I ever sang. But the singer in me won out for a good while. I never resolved all the tension.

The priest in question was himself a product of centuries of distortion. Part of his problem was that he had studied the King James translation of the Bible, replete with its notion of punishment. He inherited both the theology of fear and the abuse it perpetuates. His punishments were more deeply wrong than I will describe. And he forgot that he was not supposed to be the one to deliver it, -- whether we call it chastisement, or correction, or tutoring, or mentoring, all of which are glosses that bear a closer sense of the sound of the Hebrew stem.

I have reported before that there is no Hebrew stem that demands punish as a gloss, e.g. here and here and here and over seventy other places. Look at Leviticus 26. Don't imagine that there are no consequences to running off the rails. There are plenty of consequences, but listen: 

  

Leviticus 26:29 imitating the opening of Genesis. 

Genesis begins with the same E-major rising triad -- all this instruction and learning is part of being created.

The whole of Leviticus 26 is a complex of logic, and at every painful step, God walks with the people of this covenant even in their contrariness. To have God walking with you is not punishment, it is the consequence of covenant -- and  of presence. When people translate, they move rapidly from one thought to another, and may well fail, even in committee, to critique the move from cause to consequence, -- or worse, from cause to the supposed cure. 

How well does this fit with the New Testament promises? Perfect love casts out fear. The one who was before Abraham said: I am with you to the end of the age -- not to indulge your foolishness, but to keep you in all things because I cherish you. Well, I am paraphrasing of course -- and from distant memories of the NT.

We watched a live performance of E.T. the other day. (Film + live orchestra.) I heard it from one of the violinists that it is an impossible-to-read score -- no key signature, but every note with accidentals, and often spelled differently. It was a moving performance. The Bible also has no key signature.

Eschaton

Come and play!

I don't feed my dog mud. Sometimes he thinks he's a cow and eats grass.

Up the hill.

The dog really isn't mine, but my son's. This dog is keeping me alive. To keep me alive isn't mine either. That belongs to doG.

When my son is busy, Delta forces me to get out and walk. I didn't have a dog for nearly 70 years. Now he comes into my living room, pushes me out of my chair, and pulls me up the hill to see the beauty and give him some time off leash on the rocks. 

In my country and neighborhood, there are many dogs and owners out every day walking their pets. I can't remember all their names. They are all loved and loving.

Our attitudes to the domestic canis are different from the epithets about them thrown about in ancient literature like the Bible.

Dogs do more than "eat the crumbs that fall from the master's table". I am past the time of scrambling on the rocks at my age. But I do occasionally descend the steeper slope, though not with the speed that I will take you down my rocky thoughts in this post.

I have been pondering for at least two days a seven-part sequence I dreamt up as I awoke -- on Friday, Halloween, was it? My thoughts were stimulated by the juxtaposition of the Amalek incident noted in 2 Samuel 1 with the Elegy over the death of Saul and Jonathan later in the chapter.

I wondered, remembering first the traditional 'Amalek as the evil inclination', whom David, the not-yet-king, had commanded to be put down like a dog by one of his company. How can I pick my way down this slope from this summary execution to the music of the elegy, one of the most moving performances I have yet heard of the biblical music. From sin to death to the beauty of sorrow. 

(Excuse me, there is a slight whine at my door. It is Saturday morning and Delta is hoping for a fried egg for breakfast, a weekly treat. After a little coaxing, he settled and waited patiently for his "more than crumbs".)

Amalek was a problem to Saul. He failed (see 1 Samuel 15) and was he not one of the prophets, as they say? Did he not know the love of God? The Amalekite soldier who killed Saul was caught with spoil, just as the people and Saul were caught when they had pity on Agag. Neither convenient decision was good.

I doubt frankly whether I would have got on well with David or any other local dogs of the time. I suspect that in David's world, the dog was a local scavenger. The Amalekite is not called a dog, but the giant whom David slew asked -- Am I a dog? Amalek has not become a famous insult like the common use of Philistine today. Amalek is to be entirely wiped out. 

Deuteronomy 25 with the instruction to erase the memorial of Amalek

The raw juxtaposition of the Amalekite with the Elegy is a jarring episode in the exposed character of the human, but the Amalekite while claiming the title of guest, is given away by the loot in his hands, the consecrated thing that was on Saul's head and the armlet. The result is his immediate execution. David himself had refused to touch the Lord's Anointed more than once.

The act that condemns the one who claimed to be a 'guest'

Then follows some of the most touching music in the Scripture all of it as always, embedded in the te'amim, the cantillation accents in the text. You can hear it sung here.

The last few verses of David's elegy over the death of Saul and Jonathan

Amalek is not ignored in the Hebrew tradition nor is the problem of pragmatism with respect to human life. Is the evil inclination necessary for life? I wonder whether we can see such discussions as supporting what the apostle Paul calls in Greek, 'the flesh'. Self-interest and self-service, convenient pragmatism is inside all of us, the archetype of the flesh, the adversary of the brooding Spirit.

The New Testament verse that I hear within this analogue is, as you may have guessed, from Romans 8: If you by the Spirit put to death the deeds of the body, you will live. I take this as singular even though the tenses are plural. This death is the singularity in the centre of my galaxy. 

What does it do for us? In a word, we are to consider ourselves dead with Christ so that we can be alive with him in the new resurrected life that has already begun. When we discover this, the redemption works backward in time and reveals to us life in ways we would never have imagined. Of course, it is not without cost. As Amalek is to be entirely wiped out, so all our convenience and our desires are to be put to death in the death of Christ. This death is anticipated in Scripture in the word libation, a pouring out of love. The music for the pouring out from before the foundation of the world (Proverbs 8:23), is a slow descending scale to the tonic from the third, g f#, e. Yahweh bought me, the beginning of his way, preceding his work from then. From everlasting I have offered libation from the beginning, out of the precedents of earth. 

 Proverbs 8:22-23 Wisdom purchased, Anticipation of Sacrifice.

Years ago, we had the film Apocalypse Now. My thought shortly after in 1980 was Apocalypse Then. I wrote and wrote under this title in the infancy of the internet, a book I have withdrawn, even illustrating it with art I should not have spent toner on.

As far as I could see in all dimensions, the end of time was in the middle. I don't separate Now and Then -- the self-giving of Christ Jesus, the costly purchase, a libation of love, and Playful Wisdom in the shape of a dog disturbing my complacency: Come and play. Rise up, my love, my fair one -- to the hill.

In the words of George Herbert, Easter:

Can there be any day but this? We count three hundred, but we miss, there is but one and that one ever.

Before the beginning

Can there be any before with respect to the beginning? 

The problem is time. Who understands it? 

I will not attempt to explain time dilation, or time as an emergent property of matter in motion. It has been over 60 years since I studied special relativity, and the dilation of time made those classes light up the world for me week after week. (Pun intended). I then wrote for my Literature class a paper on Time and Space in Paradise Lost. I still have that somewhere, lost in storage. It was the longest essay I had ever written up to that point, filled with images. Milton writes:

The cosmic microwave background
(NASA image – a map of the universe).

"This pendant world, in bigness as a star," hanging by a chain from heaven (an idea that Milton borrowed from Homer perhaps mediated by his conversations with Galileo), not unlike the image of the microwave background we see today from cosmic sources. I combined these with graphs showing asymptotic curves that seemed to go off to the infinite in one axis and return by another. I imagined them meeting on the other side of somewhere. (You can find lots of videos explaining asymptotes in gory detail.)

At the base of all this, I have been curious and remain curious about what we take for granted with time-based words as we read Hebrew and Christian Scripture, especially in translation. For instance, past, present, and future, pre- and post- prefixes, before and after, everlasting, eternal. What is the nature of time ... ? AI will give you a good summary of this if you persist. 

Whatever the nature of time, Biblical Hebrew does not have past, present, and future tenses. Every tongue that uses these linear sounding tenses may be misleading us. Over 50 years ago, before I knew anything about Hebrew, (And I still 'know' very little -- we must return to the little word 'know' later or sooner), someone told me that the Hebrew verbal forms have aspect and they were right. It got me thinking, but I didn't have much to apply it to 'yet'.

The idea of aspect in verbs, e.g. incomplete and continuing, versus complete and over with, got me to change my view of time as linear. All we have is the present and that is very brief -- approaching the infinitesimal. We have to 'face' what we have, yet the emergent property seems real to us even though we express it with imaginary numbers! Experience, memory, music, sense, sight, sound, touch, taste, rhythm, agogic all integrate these infinitesimals into what amounts to us. (Our soul, if you like.)

Here as I write, I sit listening to the cello suites of J.S. Bach. The whole is present all at once. Each dance form and harmonic movement contributes to a unity. It is a unity that requires and subtends duration -- and I do not need to be aware of the satellites, adjusting themselves to their slightly slower clocks than mine, that carried this streaming content to me, or the transistors running on quantum technology that mediate it for me into my speakers and fill the room with sound.

In the Scripture, there are two stark uses of time and tense that jump to my mind -- one from the Old and one from the New: Proverbs 8 - Wisdom at play before the foundation of the world, and Jesus statement in the gospel of John, Before Abraham was, I am.

That's enough to raise the question for now. That was the prequel to in the beginning. Next stop, last things. I have no shadow to run away from...

In the beginning

In the beginning is a famous trio of words in the English tongue. What do I 'know' about it?

Can I begin to say?

Sing the beginning:

Genesis 1:1 begins with a major triad.

Genesis 1:1 begins with a major triad resolving onto the subdominant. 458 other verses in the Hebrew Bible begin with this motif. Harmonically, the triad leads naturally to the subdominant, a note that signifies rest. It marks a caesura in 93% of the verses in the first testament.

The subdominant corresponds to the accent called atnah derived from the Hebrew word to rest נוח. If you are familiar with the Hebrew accent names, the score above is (silluq) tifha munach atnah, merkha tifha mercha silluq. The accents below the text define the recitation pitches on a one to one basis, always predictable, can be read in the original like any music score.

א בראש֖ית בר֣א אלה֑ים

א֥ת השמ֖ים וא֥ת האֽרץ

So there's the first beginning. But my question above is really a question about time, not about words or music. I have no choice but to use words and music as tools even if I am working for myself alone. This essay is the beginning of my journey to bring the first testament into my knowledge of the second. I have one or two ideas in the background: light as the first fiat and its impact on time, the power that is inherent in the words, mediated or not by the music to restore the tone of voice, and unfortunately, the abuse of power, the lust to dominate, and therefore, the primal (before the beginning) requirement for libation.

Benjamin Cremer in his weekly letter that I received this morning as I was struggling with this beginning essay, captures our predicament well as "... the perennial human sin of using religion to dominate rather than liberate." He goes on to say "the faithful way to read all of scripture is to ask: how are we, today [in any belief system], tempted by the same illusions of control, the same captivity to violence, the same inability to see [and hear] what mentality holds us captive?"

Some time later in Torah the heavens and the earth are called to witness. They are witnesses for the prosecution.

Deuteronomy 31:28 in the final words of the witness against the people, ends with a musical phrase mirroring the music of the opening of Genesis.

Deuteronomy 31:28 ends with a major triad.

1,552 other verses in the prose books also end with a major triad. It's not sufficient evidence to establish a direct allusion, but combined with the same phrase and triad in reverse as Genesis 1, perhaps it isn't too far-fetched. The phrase אֵ֥ת הַשָּׁמַ֖יִם וְאֵ֥ת הָאָֽרֶץ (at hwmiim vat harx) as sung is unique. I would have to remove the cantillation to compare the words alone. There's no substitute for slowing down and hearing what is in our ears.

The words are sung 6 times in Torah: Exodus twice (20:11, 31:17), and Deuteronomy 3 times (31:28 above, and 4:26, and 30:19), each one directly invoking the words of Genesis 1:1. Also in Hezekiah's prayer (2 Kings 19:15 and parallel in Isaiah), three times in Jeremiah -- a prophet who frequently recalls creation (23:24, 27:5, 32:17) and its destruction through the exile, and 2 Chronicles 2:11.

Jeremiah 4: Exile as the undoing of creation

The New Testament has a gospel that begins with Greek words rendered in English as 'In the beginning'. These words of the prologue to St John's Gospel are music to many just for their poetic quality and cadence that English readers hear with consequent pleasure. 

Margoliouth's 19th century translation of John 1:1

There is no textual score for the Greek Testament. (See this archive for the Margoliouth Hebrew version of John.) 

Score for the text of Margoliouth's 19th century Hebrew of John 1:1

This recitation, after a lightly ornamented (pashta) and short recitative on the tonic, moves via the second degree of the scale to the proclamation pitch on the third syllable of brawit (/w/ is sounded as sh sometimes just s, /a/ sounds as ai in bait in this case. See the same word in the lyrics above of this word  that begins the Bible with more traditional phonetics). The proclamation pitch is a fifth above the tonic. The phrase then pauses with a zaqef-qaton on the third syllable of hadabar. So it does not imitate Genesis musically. 

We have a verbal connection between Genesis and John but no music. It's not surprising that the connection is lacking. The cantillation tradition that Margoliouth is following would never have heard of the deciphering of the te'amim that I have been working with since it was not inferred until a hundred years later. We have much stronger connections within the Tanach to the foundational creative act of the heavens and the earth.

My overall thesis is that the music is required to balance our reading of the words alone. It is not understanding that we should seek, but rather imitation of the compassion that we will hear and receive. I have little to say about how to read the New Testament, but it is dangerous as Benjamin notes in his letter this morning. Read it.

The Canon as Musical Memory: Thematic Recollection in the Teʿamim

 Now here's an idea I hadn't yet thought about exactly. The key will be finding the right set of differences in the use of the te'amim across the books of the canon.

Abstract:

This paper will propose that the teʿamim—the cantillation signs of the Hebrew Bible—encode an intentional network of musical memory that links the canonical books through recurrent motifs and tonal gestures. Statistical analysis of verse openings across all biblical books shows that passages beginning on a pitch different from the default tonic e, or with an ornament on the initial syllable, show differences in patterns in Deuteronomy, the Latter Prophets, and parts of the Writings e.g. Qohelet, that differ significantly from earlier and later narrative prose. These sections of the 21 prose books written in and around the years of exile use this technique as frequently as it is used in the three poetry books. Selected case studies will reveal some deliberate musical echoes forming a chain of tonal recollection across the canon. These findings will suggest that the composers who applied the accentual system acted as musical exegetes, using melody to preserve theological continuity and to invite interpretive listening. The Hebrew Bible thus emerges as a polyphonic composition. Its books converse not only through words but through remembered sound.

Well, phew, that's generated and edited after 'months of effort' in my spare time of course, training my LLM assistant with multiple props, prompts, and examples. The excessively flowery outline of the paper is too much to share and a bit more effusive than my style allows. However, I am looking for bridges from the te'amim to textual criticism, musicology, and theology in ways that could change how we traditionally view the accentual tradition — not as a punctuation and syntactic system, but as a living musical architecture of memory. I know that we need to change on many fronts.

The outline, of course, has to address all the possible objections to such a study -- but here's some raw data that seems to me to support the effort required to do this. (Not that this particular swan could have the time to do it... but we'll see -- I just night restart some blogging.)

I have finished my 18 volumes. None of them is available for purchase yet. Perhaps they will only be available as gifts. But my initial essays briefly describing the music of each volume have led me to the conclusion that if I could show that the techniques as they have been transmitted to us in the 10th century contain variations in usage that point to different composers and different times, then we could theorize that they are more ancient than an imposition onto the Masoretic text.

---

Nice chart generated by my assistant.
At least it lets you know a breakdown of early, transitional, and late texts in the canon.

I have used a breakdown of early compared to late books largely on canonical order, but as can be seen in the following analysis of contours (shape based on the sequence of accents under the text), my categorization does not collect together the compositional techniques used in the different books. On this one measure, they are strikingly different.

Ezekiel and other books from the exilic period with notes beginning a verse that are not the default tonic (e) are below compared to the percentages in other books. What emerges may define a division in the usage of the accent system within the 21 books, one that is conservative and the other that is more like the musical techniques used in the poetry.

What stands out in the first group is the book of Deuteronomy. Clearly, this was written by a different composer from the earlier books of Torah. What if new compositional techniques were developed during the exile? Perhaps Deuteronomy, only found at this time used these new techniques of recitation. Deuteronomy is certainly an outlier in the first 11 books. It is clear that the later prophets use a different technique also, even if their language has fewer Aramaic influences.

Books dated to before the exile Torah
Book	Total Verses	Starting pitch<>e	%
GENESIS	1533	78	5.1
EXODUS	1213	81	6.7
LEVITICUS	859	87	10.1
NUMBERS	1289	140	10.9
DEUTERONOMY	959	140	14.6
Books dated to before the exile Former Prophets
JOSHUA	658	65	9.9
JUDGES	618	17	2.8
1 SAMUEL	810	19	2.3
2 SAMUEL	695	30	4.3
1 KINGS	817	45	5.5
2 KINGS	719	47	6.5
Books dated to before the exile Later Prophets
ISAIAH 1-39	766	126	16.4
JEREMIAH	1364	210	15.4
HOSEA	197	32	16.2
AMOS	146	26	17.8
OBADIAH	21	1	4.8
MICAH	105	17	16.2
NAHUM	47	12	25.5
HABAKKUK	56	12	21.4
ZEPHANIAH	53	8	15.1

For books dated to the transitional period between early and late Biblical Hebrew, the average number of verses with a starting pitch different from the tonic is 12%. Drop Ezekiel from this list and the average becomes 18%. Some averages without the outliers are called for. If we confine ourselves to three periods, and group the books by the characteristic of allowing a different starting pitch from the default tonic, we can ask additional questions related to composition style. The questions are tempered by other considerations like the setting of larger thoughts in groups of verses. These are expressed in stanzas in the poetry and their equivalent, sections and paragraphs, in the prose of the later prophetic books.

Books dated to the years of the exile
ISAIAH 40-66	525	100	19.0
EZEKIEL	1273	104	8.2
JOEL	73	10	13.7
JOB (Prose Sections)	72	12	16.7
LAMENTATIONS	154	26	16.9

A scan of the following table shows a few of these books are outliers, particularly Qohelet on the high side.

Books dated to after the exile
JONAH	48	2	4.2
HAGGAI	38	8	21.1
ZECHARIAH	211	34	16.1
MALACHI	55	5	9.1
SONG	117	19	16.2
RUTH	85	3	3.5
QOHELET	222	66	29.7
ESTHER	167	14	8.4
DANIEL	357	25	7
EZRA	280	16	5.7
NEHEMIAH	405	17	4.2
1 CHRONICLES	928	59	6.4
2 CHRONICLES	822	50	6.1

It is very clear that the poetry stands apart with respect to the use of the opening pitch of a verse differing from the tonic. Most of the later prophets and some of the writings share this technique.

PSALMS	2527	680	26.9
PROVERBS	915	316	34.5
JOB (Poetry)	998	292	29.3