Cantillon Melodies

    When reading The Rise and Fall of the Bible, the most interesting part for me was when Beal was mentioning how Jesus would have read the Bible. I never put any thought into how Jesus would have read the Bible to the masses. I guess I always imagined him surrounded by a lot of people just preaching to the masses. The fact that Jesus was first and foremost a Jew, never fully registered in my mind.
    On page 95, Beal states that "Jesus would have chanted the passages in an elevated, melodic style. He would have sung it into speech." This idea seems really intriguing to me so I went ahead and did some research. The majority of synagogues still use cantillon melodies. Two of the many melodies are the Torah and Haftarah. Within both of these styles of chanting, there are variations when reading different scriptures. To read from the Song of Songs and then to read from the Luke, the melody would change.
    In today's society, the different ways of chanting are more than likely different from the chanting that Jesus did, however, it is nice to have an idea of how it was done. Both in the Greco-Roman world and the twenty-first century, the chanting assisted those who were not literate. The speakers needed ways to capture their audience's attention, and what better way is there to do that than through music/melody. Below I have inserted a video of a man going through a few of the different chants as well as a link that you can use to compare the different accents that are used in both the Torah and Haftarah melodies.

Cantillon Chanting