Early Christian hymnody was influenced by the tradition of psalm singing in the temple. The hymns of the New Testament church served both a doxological and an apologetic function.
Introduction
In a useful series of essays titled “Modern Issues in Biblical Studies,” published in Expository Times a generation ago, one notable contribution was “The Evidence in the New Testament for Early Creeds, Catechisms, and Liturgy” (Expository Times 71 [1960]: pp. 359–363). Professor G. W. H. Lampe’s far-ranging essay was prescient in several ways. For instance, it accurately pinpointed the direction in which liturgical and ecumenical studies were moving as, in the following decades, they have sought to build on a firm biblical base in such controversial practices as baptism, the Eucharist, and the role of Mary, the Lord’s mother. Lampe’s survey also paid tribute to the gains accruing to New Testament study from an application of the principles of form criticism. More recent interest in the traditional history and the redaction criticism of the New Testament liturgical passages has produced a spate of articles and books on the setting of the New Testament churches at worship. A valiant attempt has been made—with some measure of success—to press back behind the canonical New Testament documents to the pulsating life of the worship congregations in which these pieces of literature first took shape.
The aim of this study is to take up one aspect of recent research that stands at the meeting point of New Testament academic study and the liturgical interest that is shared not only by professional liturgiologists but equally by ministers and by all who have a concern for a more adequate expression of the church’s praise of God. The center of our interest is the age-old practice of singing hymns.
What kind of precedent is there for that part of our worship in which all the participants are directly involved? Geoffrey Wainwright’s comment (in Doxology: The Praise of God in Worship, Doctrine, and Life, [New York: Oxford University Press, 1980], p. 200) expresses a judgment that can hardly be disputed:
Singing is the most genuinely popular element in Christian worship. Familiar words and music, whether it be repeated response to biddings in a litany or the well-known phrases of a hymn, unite the whole assembly.
The concern posed by the following discussion asks two questions: (1) Granted the church meetings in New Testament times included the use of religious song, can we trace a line of development from one “type” of hymn to other specimens? and (2) What was the “catalyst” that led to the creation of new forms of hymns in the New Testament period, specifically the hymn directed to the praise of Jesus Christ as exalted Lord and ruler of creation?
The Earliest Christian Hymnody
We may begin with the earliest report we have of Christian hymns (1 Cor. 14:26): “everyone has a hymn.” Paul’s word (psalmos) has an unusual connotation, since it could be misunderstood by Greek-speaking people as a special form of musical composition, and yet it would be familiar to readers of the Septuagint who would recognize it as the heading given to many psalms. The suggestion, recently made by Martin Hengel (“Hymn and Christology,” Studia Biblica, 3 [1978], pp. 173–197), is that psalmos would be understood in its non-Greek, therefore Jewish, background. If Paul’s term is deliberately chosen, it would indicate a contribution to Corinthian worship in religious song, which was based on the Hebrew Psalter.
The origin of the church on its Jewish side made it inevitable that the first followers of the risen Jesus, themselves Jews by birth and tradition, would wish to express their devotion in a way to which they were accustomed. But did the synagogue pattern of worship include the use of religious song? The evidence is difficult to interpret, and it is safest to conclude that psalm-singing was confined to the temple and its choirs, while the Palestinian synagogues adopted a severely didactic form of worship based on a sequence of prayers, Scripture lections, homily, and confession of Israel’s faith.
This distinction may well have held for Palestinian Judaism or at least for Judaism in its orthodox center at Jerusalem. But clearly the practices of sectarian groups at Qumran, and among the Therapeutae according to Philo, did include a celebration in song shared by all the community members. In the world of the Jewish Dispersion, the Hellenistic synagogues were more open to this type of worship. It may be, as Hengel suggests, that the excluding of hymns from the orthodox synagogues was a response to the use of hymns among groups the Pharisees judged to be heretical.
The evidence of the Lucan canticles (Luke 1:46–55, the Magnificat; Luke 1:68–79, the Benedictus; Luke 2:14, the Gloria in Excelsis; Luke 2:29–32, the Nunc Dimittis), certain hymnic fragments in the book of Revelation (Rev. 15:3–4), and the early scenes recorded of the Jerusalem church support the conclusion that messianic psalms were being sung in the Jewish-Christian circles that treasured these compositions. The purport of these compositions was partly celebratory but chiefly apologetic and formed part of the theodicy by which the early Christians sought to justify their conviction that God was sovereign in their affairs despite the suffering and opposition they were called on to endure (Acts 4:24–31). The theme of the fulfillment of Old Testament prophecy in their day linked these messianic pietists with the Qumran covenanters, with the obvious difference that the Jewish Messianists held firmly to the belief that the promised Messiah had come and that his name was Jesus of Nazareth. His sufferings had issued in a triumphant vindication by God (Acts 2:32), attested by Davidic oracles and by their own experience as witnesses. And now Jesus of Nazareth was exalted as head of a messianic community in which alone salvation was offered as a present reality (Acts 2:37–42; 4:10–12).
The Theme of Christ’s Victory
From the early speeches in Acts we may conclude that the leading theme of both their proclamation and worship relating to the understanding of Jesus’ mission was his rejection and vindication, and to illustrate this nexus the proof text appealed to was Psalm 118:
The stone the builders cast aside
Is now the building’s strength and pride. (Ps. 118:22)
The continuance of the theme of victory in Psalm 118:26 apparently found its way into early liturgies as an acclamation heralding the triumphant return of the Messiah, based on his entry into the Holy City (Mark 11:9 and parallels), but soon the text came to be associated with his Parousia in glory. The evidence for the latter idea is the Aramaic prayer call marana tha, “our Lord, come!” found in 1 Corinthians 16:22 and Didachē 10:6. The division of the letters in the original term maranatha so as to yield the translation just given is all but conclusively proved by some recent discoveries from Qumran’s Cave 4 (dated in the Middle Aramaic period). A fresh look at 1 Corinthians 16:22 by J. A. Fitzmeyer in light of Qumran material recently published not only establishes that the Aramaic watchword means “our Lord, come!” but “gives evidence of a veneration of Jesus by early Jewish Christians as the ‘Lord,’ as a figure associated with Yahweh of the Old Testament, even as one on the same level with him, without saying explicitly that he is divine” (J. A. Fitzmeyer, To Advance the Gospel: New Testament Studies [New York: Crossroad, 1981], p. 229). Thus the contention that the earliest believers invoked the risen Jesus as Lord and awaited his return in glorious power rests on a firm linguistic basis.
Yet it was not appropriate to relate his glory to his pretemporal existence (his “preexistence”) or his future lordship at the end of the age. The earliest Christology had a vision of the Easter triumph of the crucified Jesus and its immediate afterglow in his being exalted to the Father’s presence, whence the blessedness of the new age of messianic salvation flowed down to those men and women who in turn were caught up to share his present reign.
Thus one specimen of “religious song” was patterned on the Old Testament Psalter and expressed conscious tribute to the messianic types already available for the fulfillment of Israel’s hope for a coming savior. He was hailed as Jesus of Nazareth, who, after the humiliation of rejection and death, was now raised to his Father’s presence where he enjoyed the divine glory (Acts 7:56). He will come again from his seat at the right hand of God to consummate God’s purposes (for Israel), and in the meanwhile—and it may be as a prelude to his advent—he was invoked to “come” and visit his people who “broke bread” as a sign of their joyful participation in the new age of the messianic banquets soon to be spread and shared (based on Isa. 25). Such examples of psalms applied to Christ may well be accurately called “messianic” tributes, or “Christ psalms.”