The musical culture of Jewish worship was carried over into the church by the Jewish converts to Christianity. In this regard, there was no radical break from Judaism that resulted in new forms of Christian music.
The New Testament Christians did not consider Christianity antithetical to Judaism but as its fulfillment. Jesus Christ was the ultimate conclusion to the Law and to the Prophets, whose essential truth he came to fulfill. Hence, it is not surprising to find that the followers of Christ frequented the temple and synagogues not occasionally but “every day” (Acts 2:46; 9:2, 20). Their purpose, in addition to worship, was obviously to complete the fulfillment of Christ, with regard to the forms of worship indigenous to these places, by the exposition and debating that issued from the centrality of Christ and his opposition to the gospel synagogue, however, forced the Christians to worship and speak of Jesus elsewhere, and for some time the home, the open air, or any other available place became the forum for worship and witness.
The change of locale, however, did not preempt the influences of the musical and liturgical activities to which the Jewish Christians had long been accustomed. The entire vocabulary of such activities is familiar to the New Testament. The Old Testament was still the only Scripture from which one could teach. Certainly the prayers were not forgotten. To quote Oesterley: “Nobody, in reading the pre-Christian forms of prayer in the Jewish liturgy and the prayers of the early church, can fail to notice the similarity of the atmosphere of each, or to recognize that both proceed from the same mold. Even when one perceives, as often happens, variety in the latter form, the genus is unmistakable” (W. O. E. Oesterley, The Jewish Background of the Christian Liturgy [Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1925], p. 125).
Musicological research has clarified the similarity between early Gregorian chant and Jewish music. The significance of this is heightened not only in light of the similarities in prayer forms just mentioned but in the matter of the cantillation of Scripture, in which common ground is again struck between Judaism and Christianity. Whatever else the church eventually developed on her own, liturgically, scripturally, and musically, these early bonds cannot be denied. The chief strata of liturgical music in church and synagogue, as Eric Werner identifies them, are (a) the scriptural lesson; (b) the vast field of psalmody (not only the singing of psalms but of any text sung in the fashion of psalms); (c) the litany, or congregational prayers of supplication and intercession; and (d) the chanted prayer of priest or precentor. These together form the primary areas of liturgical music to this day (Eric Werner, The Sacred Bridge [New York: Schocken Books, 1970]).