Written By: Bob Gordon
When reading the book of Acts, have you ever wondered what it was like as a follower of Jesus in the early Church? What were their gatherings like?
While we have the details the Bible shares, have you thought about things like music? Were there hymns or did those come much later in Church history?
THE FIRST HYMN is a new documentary in theaters March 24 and 26 only. It shares the story of the archeological discovery of the earliest song of our Christian faith—from approximately 200 AD.
Before you go to the theater, be sure to check out the recent Faith Film Fan Podcast with Dr. John Dickson, who shared with Rick Altizer what the movie encapsulates.
“Well, there are two ways of thinking about it,” John says. “It’s a nerdy historical documentary film about the oldest Christian hymn, complete with music notation that is written on the ancient papyrus, filmed in Egypt and Oxford, and, you know, Indiana Jones.
“And then it suddenly morphs into a music documentary as we engage Chris Tomlin and Ben Fielding, two of the greatest songwriters in the world today, to take this ancient hymn, whose melody and words we know, and put it into a modern singable praise song. And then we track the whole songwriting, recording, and then performance process.”
How cool is that: Indiana Jones meets Chris Tomlin?! (Okay, Chris Tomlin as Indiana Jones might be even cooler, but we digress.)
John shares with Rick the journey you will be part of when you see THE FIRST HYMN.
“It starts in Cairo and in Oxyrhynchus, which is 200 kilometers south of Cairo. Used to be the second largest city in Egypt in the ancient world. Now it’s just a ruin. But we went there and just captured the most amazing scenes.
“Then, we went to Oxford University because that’s where this manuscript and thousands of other ones that were also found. … We, of course, went to Australia and talked with Ben Fielding, and kicked him off on the songwriting process. And then we just ran around America, filming fun things, including Nashville, where Chris Tomlin is.
“And then down to Texas a few months later to film a concert in front of 10,000 people, where the song was first performed in front of 10,000 people.” (You can experience the song in concert here.)
In the podcast, we discover that Dr. Dickson was the right man to create this documentary.
“Here I was, someone who was formerly a musician, who was an ancient history nerd, and had made films before, and was a Christian,” he shares. “So here are those four things. And there they are on this single page.”
We hope you enjoy the podcast as much as we did … and be sure to experience THE FIRST HYMN in theaters! Learn more and get your tickets at FaithFilmFan.com.
