"Contemporary Worship Advocates and Their Dancing King"
Contemporary Worship Advocates and Their Dancing King
From the comments to this article:
I think it bears mentioning that the sort of liturgical dancing happening in Israel’s cultic worship was nothing, absolutely nothing, like what we would imagine as dancing today. It would have been a very specific, choreographed movement done together, that would have been a beautiful, unified sight, not the frenetic foolishness that people take part in today in most charismatic and pop worship venues. Which, of course, looks a lot like the “dancing” that takes place in secular pop concerts.
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Rajesh, not having video or contemporary accounts giving the “play by play” of Israeli liturgical dancing, precisely how would we know if the contentions of Mr. Aigner (the comment writer) are true? The Scripture does not exactly give us sheet music and a sheet with dance steps on it! We might infer some things from pagan sources at the time, but of course that’s got the problem that….it’s not Israel, so we really don’t know how applicable those sources might be, if even they exit.
Hence we might be better to go from the Scriptures on this. If David’s dancing was choreographed, then….we’d have to assume he practiced his steps in the palace, perhaps much to the amusement of the other residents and servants, no? In the same way, if the dancing referred to in the last two Psalms, or by the women at the end of Judges, or by the women welcoming soldiers home for war, were choreographed….again, precisely how would this be organized?
No doubt the Hebrews would have had certain patterns of dance that might have given the impression of choreography, but the actual examples we have of dance in the Scriptures indicate to me something far more spontaneous than Mr. Aigner suggests. Hopefully something a bit different than this, or this, though.
Aspiring to be a stick in the mud.
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