Mena'anim: Musical Instruments of the People (original) (raw)
2021, Jewish Bible Quarterly
Following the defeat of the Philistines and their expulsion from Israelite territory, David and his troops brought the Holy Ark to Jerusalem. This momentous occasion, marking the city as Israel's administrative and cultic center, inspired great joy and revelry: "David and all the House of Israel danced before the Lord [to the sound of] all kinds of Cyprus wood [instruments], with lyres, harps, timbrels, mena'anim, and cymbals" (II Sam. 6:5). The enigmatic term "mena'anim" is left untranslated here. While the other instruments occur in numerous biblical texts and have generally accepted translations (kinnorot were lyres, nevalim were harps, tuppim were timbrels, and tzetzelim were cymbals), mena'anim do not appear elsewhere and, as a result, have attracted a range of interpretations. This paper explores the nature of the instrument, its place in Israelite culture, and why it is mentioned in just one biblical passage.
Related papers
Sounds from the Divine: Religious Musical Instruments in the Ancient Near East
Music in Antiquity, 2014
These identifications are based on linking the biblical names to the contemporary musical instruments of the areas in which the scholars lived. See, for example, the identifications of musical instruments by Saadia Gaon in his Judeo-Arabic translation of the Bible (Shiloah 2004), those in a Moroccan Judeo-Arabic translation of the Bible (Bar-Asher 1998) and the identifica
Review of Biblical Literature 8, 2007
Like speech, music unfortunately escapes the excavator's trowel, leaving us with fragmented representations of the ancient Near Eastern soundscape to reconstruct from texts, images, and artifacts. In a recently published book, Listening to the Artifacts: Music Culture in Ancient Palestine, Theodore Burgh argues that such a reconstruction is possible when we approach the data in a nuanced and interdisciplinary light. A revision of his dissertation, Burgh's book is divided into six chapters that convincingly demonstrate how important and complex music was in ancient Israel. Chapter 1 sets out to justify why the investigation of ancient Israelite music culture is necessary and what problems such an endeavor entails. Chapter 2 segments instruments from their artifactual and performance contexts for the sake of setting out a typology that Burgh divides between chordophones, aerophones, membranophones, and idiophones, a typology he collectively labels as CAMI. In chapters 3 and 4, the author recontexutalizes these instruments in ancient Near Eastern society, first examining performers' identities and later the religious and secular contexts of performance. In chapter 5 Burgh cleverly brings his data together to calculate the minimum performance space needed for ensembles and then tests his measurements using ritual contexts. Finally, chapter 6 considers further avenues for investigation and concludes with an interesting project that investigates instrument construction using experimental archaeology.
Musical Performance in Ancient Israel
2016
Archaeological and textual data demonstrate that ancient cultures shared many distinct similarities and differences. Architecture, pottery, and figurines help define elements of these enigmatic groups. Scholars work diligently with fragmented, complex puzzle pieces to understand subtle and overt intricacies in these areas. Music is also one of those fascinating, yet challenging realms. Although the precise sounds of music from the past are lost to us, archaeological and textual data show that ancient Near Eastern cultures possessed distinct characteristics and differences in musical instruments and performance. This paper offers unique questions to the available data in an effort to further our understanding of musical practices in antiquity among these complex groups/cultures/societies. 1) Did musicians perform melodies but interject them with regional or cultural flavor? 2) Did musicians
Music in ancient Israel/Palestine (AIP) with reference to tonality and the development of the Psalms
2018
Music has formed a part of human life as far back as demonstrable. Music existed long before musical instruments made their appearance. The examination of textual evidence read in conjunction with the available archaeologic evidence from the time and area clearly demonstrates which musical instruments were available and the instances they were used at. It clearly points to the lyre as the primary proponent of the musical culture of the time with regards to melodic music. This is confirmed from what we learn from the ancient tuning tablets. There thus is a direct demonstrable connection between the instrument and the theory of the time. Work done on the musical elements of the cantillation marks of the Hebrew Bible comfortably fits into this framework and appears to be a direct influence on the manner in which the Psalms were sung and composed. A combination of literary, archaeological and musical sources can thus be used within a literary and historical approach to demonstrate the availability of musical instruments in AIP, the manner in which tonality was recorded and its influence on the development of the Psalms.
Music in ancient Israel/Palestine with reference to tonality and development of the Psalms
2018
Includes bibliographical referencesPages not numberedMusic has formed a part of human life as far back as demonstrable. Music existed long before musical instruments made their appearance. The examination of textual evidence read in conjunction with the available archaeologic evidence from the time and area clearly demonstrates which musical instruments were available and the instances they were used at. It clearly points to the lyre as the primary proponent of the musical culture of the time with regards to melodic music. This is confirmed from what we learn from the ancient tuning tablets. There thus is a direct demonstrable connection between the instrument and the theory of the time. Work done on the musical elements of the cantillation marks of the Hebrew Bible comfortably fits into this framework and appears to be a direct influence on the manner in which the Psalms were sung and composed. A combination of literary, archaeological and musical sources can thus be used within a ...
Musical Instruments in the Sephardic Illuminated Bibles
Espacio Tiempo y Forma. Serie VII, Historia del Arte
Some Iberian Hebrew Bibles produced from the thirteenth to the fifteenth century feature depictions of musical instruments within the full-page illustrations of the Temple implements. These instruments have been found to be similar to those in two contemporary Iberian Christian manuscripts: Cantigas de Santa Maria Codex E and Peter Comestor’s Historia Scholastica. The trumpets and ram’s horn appear next to one another in the Bibles and their appearance together is a unique feature in Jewish art. Also noteworthy is the fact that most of the trumpets have some gold or are entirely of gold or are gilded whereas the Temple’s and Tabernacle’s trumpets were specifically said to be made of pure silver. This article suggests that these two features reflect an attempt on the part of Iberian Jews to associate their music with that of the court of King Alfonso X and his heirs, as the illustrations imply that they and the king had shared musical roots.
Ph.D. Thesis, 2019
The object of this dissertation is to elucidate various aspects related to trumpets from the Second Temple period to the end of the Tannaitic period. The study investigates the roles of these instruments, the identity of their players, the different types of trumpets and the materials from which they were made, their design, their manner of construction, the sounds they produced, and their symbolic meaning. There are numerous texts, as well as archeological findings from the Second Temple and the Tannaitic period, describing trumpets in their various facets. Some of these sources have been discussed extensively by scholars who addressed specific (mostly limited) aspects of these instruments, yet a comprehensive picture of the subject has so far been lacking. This dissertation is in fact the first study to focus exclusively on the trumpet in ancient Jewish history and on the issues related to it, in a research model that integrates several methods (critical textual analysis, an examination of archeological findings, and various research tools from the field of musicology, used to study the textual and archeological data). This combination of research methods contributes to the understanding of the information revealed in the different sources, leading to insights and innovations that could not have been attained otherwise.
Loading Preview
Sorry, preview is currently unavailable. You can download the paper by clicking the button above.