"
If we may judge by his name, the Semitic king who bore the name of
Cinyras was, like King David, a harper; for the name of Cinyras is
clearly connected with the Greek _cinyra,_ "a lyre," which in its
turn comes from the Semitic _kinnor,_ "a lyre," the very word
applied to the instrument on which David played before Saul. We
shall probably not err in assuming that at Paphos as at Jerusalem
the music of the lyre or harp was not a mere pastime designed to
while away an idle hour, but formed part of the service of religion,
the moving influence of its melodies being perhaps set down, like
the effect of wine, to the direct inspiration of a deity. Certainly
at Jerusalem the regular clergy of the temple prophesied to the
music of harps, of psalteries, and of cymbals; and it appears that
the irregular clergy also, as we may call the prophets, depended on
some such stimulus for inducing the ecstatic state which they took
for immediate converse with the divinity. Thus we read of a band of
prophets coming down from a high place with a psaltery, a timbrel, a
pipe, and a harp before them, and prophesying as they went.
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