I am delighted to share the news and help spread the word that Delvyn Case is now a Patheos blogger! His blog will focus on the Bible and music, a longstanding interest we both share, which is what led to us making one anotherโs acquaintance in the first place. His blog is called Alleluia! Music and the Christian Life, and by the time I realized it was live, it already had several interesting posts on it. Take a look!
Del and I had a great conversation about our shared interests and distinct but related projects on his wonderfully-titled Deus ex Musica podcastย a while back. Have a listen to the episode!
The name of the podcast comes from an organization that Delย founded. Check out their website to learn more, perhaps starting with their project In the Shadow of Your Wings, which has been conducted in person in the past but is now online. It provides an interactive way of engaging with the Psalms through music as well as text.
Del is a faculty member at the Wheaton College in Massachussetts (not to be confused with the one near Chicago). Some of Delโs own compositions explore biblical texts. If youโd like to explore beyond what is on his website, try the albumย Strange Energy.
A new composition of Delโs was originally planned to be performed in Boston in conjunction with AAR/SBL. The conference was supposed to be held there in November of this year, but has now been moved online due to the pandemic. That new work explores the version of the Akedah or Binding of Isaac in one of the sources of the Pentateuch. That was previously hypothetical, but has now apparently been confirmed by other evidence in the form of an Egyptian papyrus. In that version of the story, Isaac is not spared from being sacrificed!ย Jim Davila mentioned it in responding to a blog post at The Anxious Bench. Iโm not sure when weโll all get to hear the work performed given the impact of the pandemic on both academic conferences and the arts, but I look forward to it and will share any additional news that comes my way.
Let me include some other things of interest at the intersection of the Bible and music that have come to my attention. To begin with, Leonard Cohen has also offered his own exploration of the Isaac story:
https://brucegerencser.net/2018/03/songs-of-sacrilege-story-of-iaac-leonard-cohen/
More on Cohen and his music here:
Leonard Cohen is also a source in this:
โThere is a Crack in Everythingโ : Pandemic Overload and the path to a โNewโ Normal?
The story of Abraham and Isaac also comes up in this post by Tim Gombis, part of a series on why we should not think (much less say) โGod is in controlโ:
Another biblical piece that I came across just recently is Israeli composer Ella Milch-Sheriffโs work based on Song of Songs, โDark Am Iโ:
Just in the interest of sharing more biblical music here, let me also include these settings of the Ave Maria by Romanian composer ศerban Nichifor.
Delโs project and interests are not at all limited to โClassicalโ or โart music.โ And so to provide a well-rounded post that reflects that, let me end with Shakira and the Bible, since things written both about her early work with biblical allusions and resonances, and about her more recent halftime Super Bowl show, have come to my attention:
Sojourners on the Garden of Eden and Shakira.
Here is a leading New Testament scholar talking about the Bible and Beyoncรฉ:
And hereโs another Patheos blog that focuses on music: