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

Continuing on

 I have decided not to pursue any further sales of my current 18 volumes of the Bible. I am working on each of the volumes and have discovered things I want to put in the general introduction so if you’re interested, let me know but nothing is available at the moment apart from what is mentioned in the previous post.