[Trombone-l] Scriptural reference for the sackbut

[Michael Shoshani]

On Wednesday 03 May 2006 21.00, Bill Dinwiddie wrote:
> OK, I know this list is not a religious resource, but, wasn't the majority
> of the bible rewritten in English as the King James Version? Many of these
> instrumental references are very likely translated from Latin or Greek or
> some other language, and so we see references to cornets and sackbuts, and
> dulcimers, etc., which were actually current at the time of the
> translation, perhaps in the 1400's. I doubt the sackbut existed in 535 BC,
> but the shofar, or ram's horn, probably existed a lot earlier. Some of our
> Jewish members may have in fact played a shofar, as they are still used in
> religious cermonies...I hear they are pretty tough to get a good sound on.
>

The shofar has been around at least since it was blown by Joshua & Co. to 
trigger the collapse of the walls of Jericho.  It is actually quite simply 
blown - it's pressed against the fleshy part of the inner lips, which are 
blown against the mouthpiece to sort of force the buzzing.

The KJV was finished in 1611 and borrowed very heavily from earlier English 
translations, including the Geneva Bible and especially the Bible of William 
Tyndale.  It is quite common for the KJV (and I presume the earlier English 
translations) to use contemporary images to represent items or objects in the 
original texts that would perhaps be obscure to the reader at the time. Thus 
you will find trumpets, cornets, sackbuts, etc, replacing the shofar (which 
is the horn of a ram, goat, or ibex) , and psaltries  augmenting the 
hand-held harp.  

The very last Psalm (150) is a song of praise invoking a whole litany of 
instruments.  In  the third verse the Hebrew for 'praise Him with blasts of 
the shofar' becomes 'praise Him with the sound of the trumpet'.  Few people 
in early 17th Century England knew what a shofar was, but nearly everyone 
could identify the heraldic trumpet. The spirit of the psalm was kept intact, 
even as the phraseology was altered.

The KJV is remarkably inconsistent in this sort of thing, however...in the 
Pentateuch it retains the ancient Israelite units of weights and 
measurements, but elsewhere trades them in for weights (such as pounds) and 
measurements more familiar to the reading audience of the day.

Michael Shoshani
Chicago