{"id":31975,"date":"2022-11-22T02:21:00","date_gmt":"2022-11-22T02:21:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/?p=31975"},"modified":"2022-11-23T12:00:33","modified_gmt":"2022-11-23T12:00:33","slug":"thanksgiving-hymns-are-a-few-centuries-old-tops-but-biblical-psalms-of-gratitude-and-praise-go-back-thousands-of-years","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/thanksgiving-hymns-are-a-few-centuries-old-tops-but-biblical-psalms-of-gratitude-and-praise-go-back-thousands-of-years\/","title":{"rendered":"Thanksgiving hymns are a few centuries old, tops \u2013 but biblical psalms of gratitude and praise go back thousands of\u00a0years"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

David W. Stowe<\/a>, Michigan State University<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Thanksgiving doesn\u2019t ring in the ear for months on end, unlike another holiday that lies just ahead. Yet readers may remember a couple of hymns that roll around each November in church, around the dinner table, or even \u2013 for readers of a certain age \u2013 in school. One I remember well is \u201cCome, Ye Thankful People, Come<\/a>.\u201d Then there\u2019s \u201cWe Gather Together<\/a>,\u201d or \u201cWe Plough the Fields and Scatter<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Interestingly, for songs associated with a distinctly American holiday, none have American origins. \u201cCome, Ye Thankful People\u201d was written by Henry Alford, a 19th-century English cleric who ascended to become dean of Canterbury Cathedral<\/a> and supposedly rose to his feet to give thanks after every meal and at the close of every day<\/a>. \u201cWe Gather Together<\/a>\u201d is much older, written in 1597 to celebrate the Dutch victory over the Spanish in the Battle of Turnhout. \u201cWe Plough the Fields<\/a>\u201d was written by a German Lutheran in 1782.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As someone who studies<\/a> American culture and religious music<\/a>, I\u2019m interested in the backstory of the songs that we have come to take for granted. Someone wandering into a church and picking up a hymnal will likely find a handful of hymns filed under \u201cthanksgiving,\u201d but many more express a general sense of gratitude, such as \u201cNow Thank We All Our God<\/a>\u201d and \u201cFor the Beauty of the Earth<\/a>.\u201d Even more hymns fall under the related category of praise \u2013 after all, a common response to feeling blessed or rescued is to offer praise to the higher being thought to bestow those gifts.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

None of these impulses are uniquely Christian, or even religious. But hymns of praise and gratitude have been central to Jewish and Christian worship for millennia. In fact, they go back to one of the best-known scenes in the Hebrew Bible.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Fleeing Pharaoh<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

The earliest musical performance mentioned in the Hebrew Bible is \u201cThe Song of the Sea,\u201d referring to two songs Moses and his sister Miriam sing to celebrate the Israelites\u2019 escape from Egypt. As Pharaoh\u2019s army pursues the fleeing slaves to the edge of the Red Sea, God opens a dry path for them before closing up the sea to swallow the soldiers, according to the Book of Exodus<\/a>:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Then Miriam the prophet, Aaron\u2019s sister, took a timbrel in her hand, and all the women followed her, with timbrels and dancing. Miriam sang to them: \u2018Sing to the Lord, for he is highly exalted. Both horse and driver he has hurled into the sea.\u2019<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Jewish singer Debbie Friedman<\/a>, who died in 2011, wrote \u201cMiriam\u2019s Song<\/a>,\u201d adapting these lines from Exodus into a modern favorite.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"A
\u2018The Chludov Psalter,\u2019 a book of psalms, shows \u2018The Song Of Moses and Miriam,\u2019 from around A.D. 850. Found in the Collection of State History Museum, Moscow. Fine Art Images\/Heritage Images\/Getty Images<\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Temple worship<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

One research project<\/a> took me deep into the world of the Hebrew Psalms, which originally were sung mainly during rituals at the temple in Jerusalem. Scholars have speculated for centuries over the composition and sequencing of these Hebrew poems<\/a> that form one book of the Bible. The 150 psalms include a great many laments, expressions of praise and gratitude, and quite a few texts that combine both.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Hermann Gunkel<\/a>, a pioneering Bible scholar at the turn of the 20th century, developed a system<\/a> of classifying the texts in the Book of Psalms by genre, which experts still use today. What Gunkel called \u201cThanksgiving\u201d psalms are texts that celebrate God\u2019s actions to bestow blessings and alleviate affliction in particular times and places: healing from a serious illness<\/a>, for example. Gunkel\u2019s categories also include psalms that refer to gratitude for more general divine actions: creating the cosmos and the wonders of the natural world, or protecting the ancient Israelites from foreign enemies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s hard to find a text more brimming with gratitude than Psalm 65<\/a>, which includes verses very suitable for Thanksgiving Day:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

  The streams of God are filled with water\n      to provide the people with grain,\n      for so you have ordained it. \n  You drench its furrows and level its ridges;\n      you soften it with showers and bless its crops.\n  You crown the year with your bounty,\n      and your carts overflow with abundance. \n<\/code><\/pre>\n\n\n\n
A new idea: Songs about Jesus<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Though the original tunes of the psalms have been long lost, their words are still a mainstay of religious singing for both Jews and Christians.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Their key role in Protestant churches today owes partly to the Reformation of the 16th century<\/a>. During the Renaissance, Catholics had developed more ornate musical forms for the Mass, including the use of polyphony<\/a>: songs with two or more simultaneous interwoven melodies. Protestants, on the other hand, decided that unadorned psalms, put into standard musical meters that matched existing tunes, were optimal for church.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Reformation leader Martin Luther<\/a> loved music<\/a> and wrote his own hymns with original words that are still popular today, such as \u201cA Mighty Fortress is Our God<\/a>.\u201d As far as the more austere reformer John Calvin was concerned, however, the plainer the better<\/a>. Unharmonized a cappella psalm singing was plenty good for the sabbath, he insisted.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Calvin\u2019s judgment carried the day in New England, which was settled largely by Puritan Calvinists. In fact, the first book published in North America was \u201cThe Bay Psalm Book<\/a>,\u201d in 1640. It took a century for hymns with new words to start finding acceptance in churches, and even longer for organs to make an appearance there.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\"A
An illustration from an 1866 edition of hymn writer Isaac Watts\u2019 \u2018Divine and Moral Songs for Children.\u2019 Bridgeman\/Culture Club\/Hulton Archive via Getty Images<\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
Gradually these restrictions began to soften, even in New England. During the 1700s, hymns began to compete with psalms in popularity. The key innovator was Isaac Watts<\/a>, a talented poet who wondered why Christians couldn\u2019t sing worship songs that referenced Jesus Christ \u2013 since the Book of Psalms, written before his birth, did not. John and Charles Wesley, founders of Methodism, were also inveterate hymn writers<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Praise yesterday and today<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
To modern ears, the difference between psalms and hymns is barely perceptible. Hymns often draw heavily on the images and tropes of the psalms. Even a simple-sounding Thanksgiving hymn like \u201cWe Gather Together\u201d contains no fewer than 11 allusions to particular psalms<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Watts, the Wesley brothers and several other hymn writers were part of movements that helped birth modern evangelical Christianity<\/a>. Some of the most famous hymns of thanksgiving and praise have been popularized by evangelical revivals over the centuries: \u201cAmazing Grace<\/a>,\u201d by an 18th-century English curate, and \u201cHow Great Thou Art<\/a>,\u201d the theme song of world-famous preacher Billy Graham\u2019s revivals.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Over the past 30 years, the booming genre of contemporary worship music<\/a>, often referred to simply as praise music, has become the standard heard in megachurches and other evangelical congregations across the world. Not surprisingly, praise and gratitude<\/a> are inescapable themes in this genre \u2013 whether or not they evoke a Thanksgiving feast.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
David W. Stowe<\/a>, Professor of Religious Studies, Michigan State University<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n
This article is republished from The Conversation<\/a> under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
David W. Stowe, Michigan State University Thanksgiving doesn\u2019t ring in the ear for months on end, unlike another holiday that lies just ahead. Yet readers may remember a couple of hymns that roll around each November in church, around the dinner table, or even \u2013 for readers of a certain age \u2013 in school. One […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":44,"featured_media":31976,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[293,8025],"tags":[12966,12968,1829,12967,3805,388,12955,2368,53,11742,7145,8158,12969,386],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31975"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/44"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=31975"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31975\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":31978,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31975\/revisions\/31978"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/31976"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=31975"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=31975"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=31975"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}