Sing for Covenantal Stability: The Worldwide Significance of the Service of Levitical Singers in the Book of Chronicles

Abstract

This study focuses on the Chronicler’s special interest in Levitical singers. It takes into consideration the socio-ideological milieu of the Jerusalem temple community in the Persian period and the circumstantial Mesopotamian elite professional norms and practices that nourished the prominence of singers and music. It also explores the temple as realised template and the way in which it shaped the Chronicler’s theological frame of reference for understanding the service of Levitical singers in Chronicles. The main thesis is that the service of Levitical singers involved a profound theological significance in their threefold service (educational, scribal, and liturgical) for promoting the conditions necessary for worldwide stability.
Chapter One sets the discussion in scholarly context and considers how my concerns have been previously under-explored. The research will be divided into two parts. Part I explains the flourishing of music in Chronicles through a circumstantial examination on the Mesopotamian scribal-musical background with two chapters. Chapter Two surveys the norms and practices of the Mesopotamian scholars and singers. Chapter Three explains the way in which Jewish elite professionals socially engaged with Mesopotamian scribal-musical culture during the Babylonian exile; this influenced the ongoing intra-Jewish reflections of the temple as realised template and music in the temple community during the process of its identity making. Part II explains the Chronicler’s ideological perspective with four chapters. Chapter Four examines the language of the temple as realised template in Chronicles. In Chapters Five to Seven, each chapter will be devoted respectively to the educational, scribal, and liturgical services of Levitical singers. Each considers how they sought to foster worldwide stability in the conditional terms of the Davidic covenant by focusing on the characterisation of the Levitical singers in light of the Mesopotamian counterparts.