Singing A Life Into Existence

In a recent post on Facebook about abortion and when life begins, I stumbled across a premise that should’ve been extremely evident yet had evaded me about the exceptional similarities between the creation of life via sperm fertilizing and egg and the creation of a life created by the binding of two adults in marital relationship. They are in essence the exact same thing.

Please allow me to explain.

I stated in my original post that life starts at conception. Specifically and scientifically at the zygote. Greek ζυγωτός zygōtos "joined" or "yoked", from ζυγοῦν zygoun "to join"). I believe there is a direct correlation to the passage about man being joined to his wife. Likewise, man will leave his parents and be cleaved προσκολληθήσεται from the root proskollaō (joined to) to his wife (Genesis 2:24, Mark 10:7).

One must leave one’s parents and join to one's spouse. Just as a sperm must leave the body of a man and reside within the woman. Israelite marriage was usually patrilocal or man continued to live in the same community or even home of the man’s parents. It was the wife who left home to join her husband. There is literally an exchange. Man would need to differentiate himself from his parents but the woman would geographically need to leave her parents. Literally, in becoming one there first needs to be division. Just as for a human embryo to produce sustainable stand-alone new life its cells must first completely divide to become independent. Yet it is still a merger of two different. Just as a marriage. Distinct from one another but unique in merger.  It was the idea that the combination was to be permanent like the merging of a seed and an egg in conception. Once together it cannot be taken apart unless death intervenes.

In both there is the assumption and evidence of something completely new…from the old. There is a genealogical continuity. A continuation and a departure. A permanency of lineage but also a diversification. Created from two differentiated individuals yet absolutely unique. New life/lives. Another very close parallel world is the Greek σύνδεσμος sundesmos or 'to stick together' in a manner in which it is nearly possible to distinguish the original components of the amalgamation. Whose identity produces such a close harmony between members joined together that one note merges seamlessly into another as notes do in music. As one letter merges together into words and then sentences in Scripture. Like one lettered nucleotide merges into another in DNA to form the genome. 

Quite literally σύνδεσμος sundesmos means to ‘sing in’. Singing…as in music. A congruence and flow of a symphony. A symphony that literally means συμ syn/sym together; synthesis and φωνή /phone meaning voice or sound. Together sound. A sound or melody caused by being together. If they’re not put together they do not form the music. In Greek medical terms it also meant that which binds together, a band of the ligaments by which the members of the human body are united together…ζυγωτός zygōtos, σύνδεσμος sundesmos and προσκολλώ proskollaō. Joined in harmony. Every time a new life is created it is as if God is singing another person into existence. Just as He spoke the Universe to fruition. Poetry in motion...literally, forever.

As the tape passes through the head of the recorder it is 'read' and converted into music or other sounds. Thus magnetic markings are 'translated' into notes. When a 'string ' of mRNA passes through the 'playing head' of a ribosome, the 'notes' which are produced are amino acids, and the 'pieces of music' which they make up are proteins. Thus DNA as the base code provides the structural framework, thus the notes of amino acids are formed into are proteins or 'pieces of music'. Douglas Hofstadter. Godel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid. (New York: Vintage Books Edition, (1980)

… the principle of repetitious recurrence pervades both the construction of coding sequences in the genome, which can be regarded as being representative of nature and musical composition which can then be regarded as the most abstract and therefore the most intellectual expression of nature.' ~Dr. Susumu Ohno, Geneticist-Beckman Institute of the City of Hope Hospital, Duarte, California (1988).

Cleaving or the joining referred to in zygōtos/proskollaō resembles weaving two threads into one new piece of cloth. Like a DNA helix. Two completely different symphonies weaving together. Also referred to as antiphony/antiphons in music. The anti/ἀντί meaning "opposite" and phone/φωνή again meaning "voice". The texts of antiphons are in the Psalms in the Old Testament. When a chant consists of alternating verses (usually sung by a cantor) and responds (usually sung by the congregation), a refrain is needed. Antiphonal music is music that is performed by two choirs in interaction, often singing alternate musical phrases. Not unlike the different interactions of a husband and wife or parent and child and the very DNA within them. Therefore, word zygōtos suggests the ideas joining passion and permanence. In marriage a man's priorities change. Before they were primarily to his parents, but now they are primarily to his wife. This can then be extended to an even larger group in community and this is called polyphony or a musical texture consisting of two or more simultaneous lines of independent melody. Within these layers can be symphony and/or antiphony. Weaving, interacting forming new creation. Like music. Like relationship. Like life. Expressive. Unique. Beautiful. I am convinced this is why music impacts people so profoundly. It is literally in our DNA.

Genesis 2:24 Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and join to his wife, and they shall become one flesh.

A modern reader needs to realize that "one flesh" is not the same as marriage (1 Cor. 6:16). For a marriage to exist there must also be a commitment to "leave" one’s family and create a new one by joining to what is essentially a complete stranger prior to meeting. In this way it can then also be reasoned that the bond of spouse is even more functionally important than that of parent-child. Why? Because the child will essentially do the same when it is presented with the same choice at adulthood. Everything is secondary outside of the προσκολλώ proskollaō of the parents. We are only stewards of our children for a short time. At the same time though it should be understood that the child’s identity is a result of that one flesh that the union produced. The children possess a special genetic makeup and markers that identify it as unique but also carries vestiges of what constituted it before being sung together in the mother’s womb like the ligaments tying muscles to bones.

It is as if the mother and father are instruments and the children are the chords of the song. The combined notes forming more than the sum of its individual components. These individual notes make up the family. These families make communities. The community at large is a constitution of all these individual melodies. A unified communal symphony of flesh and blood. This helps us understand why a divided community causes such pandemonium. We now can see that when some of these elements become out of synch with others a cacophony occurs. Instead of harmony we only hear dissonance, discord or noise. Diverse but unified in strength. We are indeed one body yet utterly unique.

1 Corinthians 14:26 What then shall we say, brothers and sisters? When you come together, each of you has a hymn, or a word of instruction, a revelation, a tongue or an interpretation. Everything must be done so that the church may be built up.