John Hobbins, proprietor of Ancient Hebrew Poetry has just started a sister site, Ancient Hebrew Dancing.
He writes:
“In the same way that an intrinsic appreciation of the inherent prosody of the internal structure of Hebrew poetry helps us to highlight the epistemological apparition of superimposed semantic stuff in Semitic and Ugaritic sacred texts, learning to move your hips and clap your hands in authentic ancient ways opens up a hitherto undiscovered aspect of cultic literature which in its earliest forms was simply a big dance party.”
(Prelude to existential ergonomy, John Hobbins)
Far from being a dry scholarly site, he brings in interesting examples of how Ancient Hebrew Dancing has been preserved in certain Italian villages to this day:
“Paola and I found ourselves in the midst of a throng of dancing Italian peasants singing Psalm 137 with their heads tipped back and their fingers snapping. There was much singing of “la-la-la-la” which is a characteristic mark of Hebrew dancing to this day (witness the movie “Fiddler on the Roof”).
(Dance like David danced, John Hobbins)
I’m looking forward to many more posts on this topic.
Check it out and share your favorite quote or post title.
Man, you had me going there for a minute.
Keep dancing!
I know – I am so naive that I clicked on the links to see for myself. Duh.
That’s me. I used Sue once and my computer won’t let me forget it.
First rule of reading/interpreting/making sense of Lingamish, in his own words, in answer to my question a while ago. on this topic (because I can’t count how many times I’ve taken him very seriously, only to end up laughing my head off at how gullible I was, again):
He is Always joking. He is always serious. Whenever I read a Lingamish post, I ask, what is joking Lingamish saying here, what is serious Lingamish saying here?
And then I click the links anyway. I don’t care that Lingamish is sitting back laughing as he counts how many gullible people clicked on a link that wasn’t. Becomes sometimes, he’s got some pretty funny links on his spoofs, and they’re not worth missing. As a matter of fact, Lingamish, stat-addict that he is, with false link gullibility meters–THAT makes me laugh. I wish I could be half as funny myself, but the world would be lopsided, wouldn’t it, if we are all were so funny?
Why can’t I see errors in my comment until AFTER I submit it?!?! Some sort of proofing Murphy’s Law?
The sad thing is, Lingamish, I wanted it to be true. You have dashed my hopes that we might find another way to worship with the spoken Word–if you check out my most recent blog post you’ll understand why you got my hopes up.
I might just suggest we try this out in our small group anyway. I’ll let you know if a bunch of Norwegian-German-Celts can get the hang of it. Starting with Psalm 137? a-one-anda-two-anda…
Less talk, more dancing!
Hey Lingamish,
Been lurking around here a lot, laughing at your humor, and finally decided to join in.
You all say these links don’t work, which is true, but I’d check his site a little closer if I were you.
And does anyone know how to do the Hokey-Pokey, in Hebrew?
Bob
You people are crazy. Lingy is the Devil! Or at least a minion. And, as readers of the NT know, the devil is a fibber…
It won’t be long, and the dancing will start. Lots of amens and hoots during the wedding itself. 11 young men and 11 young women stood up for Jason and Lorraine. Many of them, like Jason and Lorraine, are about to leave for mission fields far and wide.
Lorraine’s Mom thanked me ever so much because I described a Serbian Orthodox wedding during the wedding sermon. She remembers being an Orthodox bride, the wearing of the crowns and circling the altar three times.
Lingamish, you might correct your first link. I do have a post up entitled “Ancient Hebrew Dancing.”
Here’s John’s post: Ancient Hebrew Dancing
He was too busy boogying to give us the link.
Harrumph! My church taught me that dancing was a sin! They must have only been using the N.T.
Havah Nagilah, …
Wayne, your church might have been reading the Russian Synodal Bible, in which all the OT references to dance have been translated with an obsolete Slavonic word liki which no modern Russian understands. An interesting translation strategy!
So, here’s a question for all of Lingamish’s readers: which word in the Bible would you choose to translate with something totally meaningless, so that no one would know that the Bible has anything to say about it? For example, would you prefer to replace “adultery” with something meaningless so that no one would understand that commandment?
Oo, I like this. All sorts of commands that make me uncomfortable: poof!
But isn’t a Bible translated in awkward language a macro instance of this. Since it isn’t translated in language the way people use it, they aren’t able to draw a connection between Biblical exhortations and prohibitions and their own behavior and attitudes.
You have disappointed me. I thought I was going to get som real infomation about hebrew dance so I can incorparate it into the Praise dance ministry that is at are church.
Sorry, Angelica. We also don’t know the melodies to any of the psalms so we have to make them up ourselves. That might be what you need to do for your dance ministry. Or alternatively you can just get some ideas from Fiddler on the Roof!