Spotlight interview: John Dickson on resurrecting the oldest known hymn for the Church today

What’s the oldest hymn you love to sing? I can still hear my grandmother Robina singing the Old Rugged Cross. Even though she died when I was 11 or 12, I can hear her voice right now singing it. 

What are some of the old hymns that you love to sing? Have you ever wondered, what’s the oldest hymn?  I mean, this isn’t like what was the first song that was ever sung in the Days of Creation, but when you think about the early church, do we know what they sang?

We know that the early church sang. We read in Acts 16:16-40 that Paul and Silas are singing hymns in prison, but do we know what they sang and what it sounded like? If somebody rediscovered not just the manuscript of a hymn, but the actual musical notations, would you be excited to know about that? 

Well, that has got Australian writer, theologian and Wheaton College professor John Dickson very excited and he joined me to talk about the First Hymn Project, the work to track down a second century Christian hymn and resurrect the song for the modern Christian church, just in time for Easter.

This is an edited transcript of Carmen’s interview with John Dickson on The Reconnect with Carmen. Listen to the entire interview on MyFaithRadio.com or wherever you get podcasts.

Carmen: Okay, so maybe we aren’t talking about what Paul and Silas were singing in prison, but tell us about the first hymn that has now been rediscovered.

John: Yeah, I should say that it was originally discovered by two Oxford archeologists at the dawn of the 20th Century. They were digging in Oxyrhynchus in Egypt 200 kilometers, or I guess I should say 120 miles south of Cairo. And they uncovered eight feet of dirt mounds packed with ancient papyri. And among the papyri were things like corn contracts, a contract to rig a wrestling match, the front page of Mark’s Gospel was there. But they also found this piece of paper, this ancient papyri from the 200s AD that has a beautiful Greek hymn to the Trinity praising the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. 

But above the words are the ancient Greek notation. Nothing like our modern notation— those who can read music today wouldn’t be able to read this. But it was a full system that told you the exact note and timing to sing around each word. And this fragment has been sitting in an Oxford vault for, well, more than a century, and a group of musicians and producers and I have been working our little hearts out over the last two to three years to try and bring it back to life.

Carmen: So first of all, I mean how cool, right? These people who dug something up a long time ago, and now it’s being dug up again—I mean really brought to the fore. What has you so excited about this? What are you hoping is going to happen when this is actually brought out into public and what’s that process look like and when’s it going to happen? When can we sing it? Can we hear it? All of those things. All of those things.

John: You’ll be able to sing it the week of Easter. So that’s pretty good timing. 

Just a couple more months to go. And the thing we’ve done is we’ve translated the hymn into English. Obviously we’ve taken as much of the melody as we could, given that it’s an ancient Greek melody. It sounds a little bit weird to our ear, but we’ve given that to two of the greatest Christian songwriters in the world today, and that’s Ben Fielding who wrote “What a Beautiful Name” and Chris Tomlin who’s written everything else. And we locked them in a room as it were, and asked them to come up with what they could come up with. And they have written the most gorgeous contemporary church praise song all about the creation being told to be silent as we praise the Father, Son and Holy Spirit, the only Giver of all good gifts. 

That’s the lyric— that the Father, Son and Spirit is the only Giver of all good gifts. And the thing I love about the hymn is that this is Christianity before there were denominations. I mean there wasn’t the Catholic church, the Orthodox Church, the Protestant church, when this hymn was being produced. This was a period when Christians were being persecuted by the Romans. So this is the middle of the two hundreds ad, but they so connected with that traditional biblical theme of the Trinity. So the Trinity that we believe today was believed way back at the beginning, and this is even before the Council of Nicaea, before Emperor Constantine, Christians worshiped the Trinity and we’re giving this song back to the whole Church, a song that predates really all of the denominations.

Carmen: I am hoping that Jenny Allen already knows about this and that somehow this can be woven into the Gather 25 global prayer event that’s going to happen for 25 hours. I mean it’s coming up in just a few weeks. I’m like, this is so global. I mean, I was going to use the word universal, but I don’t want people to hear that inaccurately. This is so comprehensive. This is so much for everyone. It’s such a gift of God to have preserved it. I just think about the way that God preserved this over time, the people who initially wrote it down, but then those who buried it carefully enough that it could stand the test of time and then the gift of discovery and now the gift of not only rediscovery but translation and making it contemporary so that it sounds like praise to our ears today. That’s so good. I mean, when you talk about the Father, Son and Holy Spirit being the only giver of all good gifts, this is an awfully good gift.

John: It is indeed. And there’s a little cheeky background to that line, the only giver of all good gifts, because in the ancient world, Zeus was often called the giver of good gifts. It was one of his epithets, and this songwriter has said, “Nope, the Trinity is the only giver of all good gifts.” So it seems like very bold Christianity right in the midst of persecuted Christianity. So I think it’s got all this lovely resonance for us today, not just that it’s the shared Christianity we all have in common, but that it’s a confident Christianity you can sing even if you feel anxious in the world. We can still look to the only Giver of all good gifts.

Carmen: I love that it’s confident. I love that it’s consistent with God as we know him today. I appreciate that. I know God as Father, Son and Holy Spirit, and it’s just so, I mean— I’m clutching my heart right now!

John: I’m so glad because it’s lovely to hear that you feel the same. Yeah, it’s so sweet. And Chris Tomlin and Ben Fielding have both repeatedly told me the shivers they’ve had down their spines as they’ve worked on this and how they feel the burden of it. Not to mess this up. This is a precious gift. What would the original songwriters think of what they’ve done? This was sort of constantly in their mind as they recreated it, but I can assure you what they’ve pulled off is gorgeous. I just can’t get it out of my head.

Carmen: So when you say that we can hear it and we can sing it by Easter, does that mean that there’s going to be a way for the person that leads worship at my church to have the music? Is this just something online? Tell us what to expect and maybe how to get our worship leaders connected?

John: Yeah, so the recreated first hymn is going to be on Chris Tomlin’s next album, which drops Easter week. You’ll be able to listen to that on the Monday of Easter week. So, what’s that— The 14th of April. That is also when the documentary about the whole process is coming out. So on Monday of Easter week, you’ll be able to watch a 90 minute documentary film shot in Egypt, in Oxford, in studios in Nashville, and a huge concert in Dallas, where you’re going to see how this first hymn was brought back to life. And you’ll also, in the documentary itself though, not on Chris’s album, be able to hear the original Greek hymn sung by the Wheaton College choir. So they actually rehearsed exactly as it was sung back in the 200s AD. So some people will have that sort of antiquarian interest of hearing.

Carmen: This is thrilling.

John: I’m so pleased you think so because I’ve had my head in this for so long. It’s hard to know really what the outside world’s going to react, but bless you, it’s fantastic. We really are excited and the tune and the way they have crafted this hymn for public singing, I think is just going to lift people’s souls. Because the brief we gave to Chris and Ben was, look, you’ve got to try and preserve as much of the mood and melody of the ancient, but it has to be a modern singable hymn. We want it to be a really contemporary hymn, but we also want it to have gravitas. So how’s that for a brief? And they have pulled it off.

Can I tell you a fun thing about the original, original hymn, please? We interviewed a whole bunch of experts of ancient Greek music. We have about a hundred songs that have been discovered over the last century from the ancient world, all in this Greek notation style. This is the only Christian one that we have. But the scholars that we talked to at Oxford University and elsewhere said the amazing thing about this Christian hymn is that it is the style of music that ancient pagans would’ve totally recognized. It’s not like holy monkish music from the Middle Ages. It’s far more like the music Greeks sang in the tavern. How about that?

Carmen: Right. It was like contemporary worship music! 

John: And good on them. They were trying to reach their world. They were trying to reach their world by having a tune everyone could get into. But also these really cool ideas like the Trinity being the only giver of all good gifts that the pagans would recognize. Hang on, Zeus is called to give good gifts, but you are saying that Trinity is? So the Christians would be saying, “you bet.” So it’s got so many dimensions that excite me.

Carmen: John, thank you so much. What a gift. What a delight. We love this. Thank you for inviting us into it and now we can just hardly wait.