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On the
bulletin board called BaptistBoard, a member asked his fellow board
members if they had heard of Suzanne Haïk-Vantoura’s work, The Music
of the Bible Revealed. One of those who participated in the thread
(which you may find
here)
was Dr. James D. Price, Professor of Hebrew and Old Testament at Temple
Baptist Seminary in Louisville.
In the days
before easy Internet access (at least for me!), Dr. Price and I
exchanged several lengthy letters by post regarding Haïk-Vantoura’s
work. When an interviewer asked me for an “opposing point of view”
regarding that work, he was the man I suggested. While he noted
(correctly) in that interview that most Hebraists have not accepted Haïk-Vantoura’s
arguments, he added (also correctly) that most Hebraists do not have the
musical knowledge to follow them. Given what I saw on Dr. Price’s side of the debate during our mutual letter-writing
campaign, I have to agree. I also agree with him that more needs to be
done to address specific issues raised by Masoretic scholars, and I am
attempting to do this.
A member of
the Music of the Bible Revealed Group on Yahoo.com (who is
also a member of BaptistBoard) provided JDP’s comments to me. My
reply to those comments may be found
here.
Supplementary texts to the
discussion include an article announcing the decipherment of the
Armenian liturgical notation (in
English); a review of Haïk-Vantoura’s work by CRNS Research
Fellow Denise Jourdan-Hemmerdinger (in
French); Haïk-Vantoura's
academic paper The Real Meaning of the Musical Signs of the Bible
(in
English); and a translation of
her Resume of the Deciphering Key (in
English). I have put all these texts in PDF format for ease of
maintenance (on my part) and of cross-platform availability (on the part
of the reader).
John
Wheeler
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