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We understand that God spoke the Universe into creation.
In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.
Genesis 1:1
Further emphasizing the point, the gospel written by John says that Jesus was the Word with God at the beginning, and God spoke Creation into existence.
In the beginning was the Word,
and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.
He was in the beginning with God.
All things were made through Him,
and without Him nothing was made that was made.
And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us,
John 1:1-3,14
When God spoke the ten words of creation, it was Jesus, the Word, Who was with God at the beginning, Who created all that there is.
Other religions like Islam, and Hinduism all agree that God created the world by words just as Judaism and Christianity does.
The word AbraKadabrah comes from, the Hebrew word אבראכאדברא meaning "I create as I speak. (1)"
“For He spoke, and it came to be. He commanded, and it stood firm.”
Psalm 33:9
Pythagorus is the one who made the connection between mathematics and music. From this eventually came musical timing, etc.
Music plays a large part in the Christian faith, and there may be a direct reason why.
Jewish tradition holds that God sang the Universe into being as opposed to just speaking it.
In a list of literature's best selling books/series in the history of the world (of which the Bible sits king at number one (2)), two other of the Top 15 listed have an unusual connection. They unified with a single thread: their backstories describe God singing creation to be.
BEST-SELLING INDIVIDUAL BOOKS IN HISTORY
The Bible (5 billion)
The Quran (3 billion)
The Little Red Book: Quotations from Chairman Mao (900 million)
Don Quixote (500 million)
Selected Articles of Chairman Mao (450 million)
A Tale of Two Cities (200 million)
The Lord of the Rings (150 million)
Scouting for Boys: An Instruction in Good Citizenship (150 million)
The Book of Mormon (150 million)
The Little Prince (140 million)
Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone (120 million)
The Truth that Leads to Eternal Life (107 million)
Alice in Wonderland (100 million)
Dream of the Red Chamber (100 million)
The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe (85 million)
JRR Tolkien and C S Lewis each wrote historically best selling series. Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings, the 7th best seller of all tome, and Lewis, The Chronicles of Narnia, the 15th.
In each, they tell of a character based upon the God of the Bible that sang Creation into existence.
Let's look at each one.
TOLKIEN’S AINULINDALË IS A MUSIC-BASED CREATION STORY
The creation story of Middle-earth told in The Silmarillion (Tolkien, 1977) is explicitly music-based. Music is part of the mechanism of creation, and musical concepts such as dissonance are used to illustrate themes common to other creation stories.
J.R.R. Tolkien’s Ainulindalë depicts a musical creation in the first chapter of The Silmarillion, illustrating a relationship between music, Creation, the created, and the Creator.
The Ainulindalë explains why there is music built into the fabric of the universe and humanity: because the Creator made it so.
ASLAN SINGS CREATION INTO BEING
In the 5th book of of the Narnia series, The Magician's Nephew, Narnia is sung into existence by Aslan.
Aslan is a lion patterned after Jesus of the Bible, the Lion of Judah.
Here is a description of the Creation process from the book.
Then two wonders happened at the same moment. One was that the voice was suddenly joined by other voices; more voices than you could possibly count. They were in harmony with it, but far higher up the scale: cold, tingling, silvery voices. The second wonder was that the blackness overhead, all at once, was blazing with stars.
Here is another account.
“[The second song] was softer and more lilting than the song by which he had called up the stars and the sun; a gentle, rippling music. And as he walked and sang the valley grew green with grass.
It spread out from the Lion like a pool. It ran up the sides of the little hills like a wave. In a few minutes it was creeping up the lower slopes of the distant mountains, making that young world every moment softer. The light wind could now be heard ruffling the grass. Soon there were other things besides grass.”
It is a beautiful account of a world's creation and has many biblical components to it, including a tree to protect and of which a command to not eat its fruit, a warning about evils that can befall a world through tyranny.
Of all the metaphors for God and His works, my favorite is the image of God’s voice issuing forth and taking shape in creation, as depicted by Aslan singing Narnia into existence in The Magician’s Nephew.
Joel Strand, Research Physicist, Iowa State University, "The Song That Sustains Creation" (3)
If you count the Bible, then 3 of the Top 15 best-sellers of all time speak of God singing creation into existence.
Why is that? Maybe a point is being made.
The Eternal Song
“Your word is spoken eternally, and by it all things are uttered eternally…No element of your word yields place or succeeds to something else, since it is truly immortal and eternal.
Augustine of Hippo, Confessions, trans. Henry Chadwick (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998) Book XI.vii, 226
An eternal word makes sense, especially when we compare it to what Scripture declares about Jesus.
We know that Jesus created everything that is.
For by [Jesus] all things were created that are in heaven and that are on earth,
visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or principalities or powers.
All things were created through Him and for Him.
And He is before all things, and in Him all things consist.
Colossians 1:16-17
However, it makes more sense when the "eternal word" becomes an "eternal song." Strand says.
A note of a song being sustained for a long time is a familiar concept (4), especially in light of the above Colossians reference.
The book of psalms (a song book) even tells us what instruments to play.
Why is Christianity so focused on music in worship? Why does song play so much a part of Christianity?
Wordplay
In Genesis 11:7, God uses this verb to talk about confusing the people of bavel. For that reason, 11:9 reads as follows: “Therefore it was called Babel [bavel], because there the LORD confused [balal] the language of all the earth;
Schlimm, Matthew Richard. 70 Hebrew Words Every Christian Should Know (p. 5). Abingdon Press. Kindle Edition.
The lyrical poetic flow of Hebrew.
Ed - Eden
Adam - Adamah
arom - arum
bavel - balal
mishpat - mispakh
tsedaqah - tseagah
According to one scholar, there are more than five hundred cases in which the Old Testament text plays with how words sound in order to drive home a larger point.
Schlimm, Matthew Richard. 70 Hebrew Words Every Christian Should Know (p. 2). Abingdon Press. Kindle Edition.
The Hebrew word for “stream” or “mist” is ed (2:6), which sounds like a shortened form of eden, the name of the garden (2:8, 10, 15; 3:23-24; 4:16). The ed gives life to eden.
Schlimm, Matthew Richard. 70 Hebrew Words Every Christian Should Know (p. 4). Abingdon Press. Kindle Edition.
The text describes the human beings as “naked” in 2:25 (see also 3:7, 10-11), and the next verse describes the snake as “crafty” (3:1). The Hebrew words for “naked” (arom) and “crafty” (arum) are nearly identical. The arom humans are vulnerable to the arum snake.
Schlimm, Matthew Richard. 70 Hebrew Words Every Christian Should Know (p. 4). Abingdon Press. Kindle Edition.
In Genesis 11:7, God uses this verb to talk about confusing the people of bavel. For that reason, 11:9 reads as follows: “Therefore it was called Babel [bavel], because there the Lord confused [balal] the language of all the earth;"
Schlimm, Matthew Richard. 70 Hebrew Words Every Christian Should Know (p. 5). Abingdon Press. Kindle Edition.
Take a familiar song "Dust in the Wind" and read the lyrics.
Same old song
Just a drop of water in an endless sea
All we do
Crumbles to the ground, though we refuse to see
Dust in the wind (ah, aah, aah)
All we are is dust in the wind
Oh, oh, oh
Beautiful rhymes and patterns can be seen. However, it just a lyrics sheet until the music is added. Once the melody is added, it becomes a powerful timeless classic.
Likewise the Bible read is just a lyrics sheet in our services anymore. It is a book that should be sung and add music to it, and it becomes a powerful timeless classic, a worship experience, and that is why music play such a vital role in the Christian faith: it is looking to the eternal song that created the Universe.
Jewish tradition holds that God sang, not spoke creation into being.
The concept of music being at the very core of creation and of God speaking, or singing, the world into being can be seen from how music manifests itself. Music at its most fundamental level consists of sound waves formed by various vibrations and frequencies emanating from a musical instrument or from our vocal chords.
Trugman, Avraham Arieh. The Mystical Power of Music: The Resonant Connection Between Man and Melody (Kindle Locations 763-765). Ohr Chadash. Kindle Edition.
Paul Davies in his book Other Worlds describes how atoms and their subatomic particles can be compared to organ pipes which produce sound only according to certain well-defined notes that fit the geometry of the shape of the pipes. So, too, each atom is characterized according to its energy vibration or frequency, which he calls “subatomic music”
Other Worlds [New York: Simon and Schuster, 1980]).
String theory is a collection of ideas in theoretical physics in which the fundamental building-blocks of nature are not particles (such as the point-like electron) but instead strings. Imagine microscopic wiggling rubber bands. In effect, they are strings that vibrate, and vibrations produce electromagnetic waves for example, or sound.
String theory points to the idea that there is sound in the Universe's makeup which directly underlines that he Universe has sonic qualities to it, almost as if it were spoken or sung in being.
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