Freeing Biblical Poetry to Sing

This article claims that the cognitive effects of music on the brain reinforce the Biblical exhortation to “Sing to the Lord a new song” (Psalm 96:1, Colossians 3:16). Then it explores how this is borne out in poetic translations of Biblical Hebrew poetry into indigenous song forms in Natügu [ntu] and English [eng]. The numerous positive results of using sung poetic translations support the psycholinguistic literature, and suggest that to achieve similar benefits it should become standard best practice in Bible translation to set Biblical poetry translations to music.