Chris Tomlin Helps Bring 1,800-Year-Old Hymn Back to Life: ‘Fear and Trembling’

Michael Foust

Audio By Carbonatix

By Michael Foust, Crosswalk.com

Grammy-winning singer Chris Tomlin has long been a fan of hymns, but when a friend contacted him about bringing new life to an ancient, 1,800-year-old hymn, he was both honored and a little intimidated by the task.

The hymn traces back to a fragment known in academic circles as P.Oxy 1786, discovered on parchment more than a century ago in Egypt but only recently brought to life as a modern song by Tomlin and another singer/songwriter, Ben Fielding.

Dated to the third century A.D., it is the oldest known Christian song with both its lyrics and musical notation intact. While the Bible is filled with songs, their original melodies have long since been lost to history.

A new movie, The First Hymn, traces the song’s journey from its desert origins to its modern rediscovery, culminating in a concert where thousands sing a hymn rooted in the early church. It’s in theaters March 24 and 26.

“It was fear and trembling for me,” Tomlin told Crosswalk Headlines. “That's a massive responsibility.”

The project is the brainchild of Australian historian John Dickson, the film’s host, who enlisted Fielding and Tomlin to breathe new life into the song and give it a melody for modern ears.

“He said, ‘What you need to know is this melody – although it's foreign to us – was a common melody of the day.’ It would have been like a pop melody of the day,” Tomlin said. “This would have been just a common song of the day. He said, ‘So I want you to have the freedom to make it in the common language of today, a common melody that people would think of today.’”

The magnitude of the hymn’s history impacted Tomlin, who noted it was written and sung by Christians who lived centuries before the various strands of the faith – long before there were Baptists, Methodists, and Pentecostals, for example.

“This predates all of it,” Tomlin said. “This is just the early band of believers who would have maybe lost their life for their faith.”

The song is theologically significant, too, referencing the Trinity and Christ’s divinity a full century before the Council of Nicaea (325 A.D.) formally affirmed that key biblical doctrine. It would have been sung roughly two centuries following Christ’s death and resurrection.

Tomlin said he and Fielding were praying and “just asking God for a melody.” They also added a few lines of text to “make it feel like a song for today.”

“I'm really pleased with how it came out,” Tomlin said.

The lyrics to the original hymn read: “Let all be silent: The shining stars not sound forth, all rushing rivers be stilled, as we sing our hymn to the Father, Son and Holy Spirit, as all powers cry out in answer, ‘Amen, Amen.’ Might, praise, and glory forever to our God, the only Giver of all good gifts. Amen. Amen.”

“Hymns have always been a big part of me,” Tomlin told Crosswalk Headlines. “I feel like, as a songwriter, you need to immerse yourself in what's come before you.”