Why do we cherish Coptic Church Hymns? Is it permissible to translate them into the language understood by the people?

First: Our pride in our Coptic Church Hymns does not mean that we should belittle or ignore the Church Hymns of other traditions, such the Syriac, Armenian, Ethiopian, or others. At the same time, we must consider those faithful who participate in worship, and we must make the effort to translate these Church Hymns into the languages spoken by the local people, as currently happens in the diaspora.

Second: The ancient pharaohs believed in a kind of heavenly afterlife in another realm, although this belief was corrupted by some errors. Thus, the children of the pharaohs, the Copts who were attracted to the Christian faith, adopted pharaonic melodies and gave them a deep and heavenly tint. Some people even say that they “baptized” these melodies. Also, some of the Church Fathers eliminated the heresies that troubled the Church through songs and Church Hymns for the congregation that employ expressions that communicate the true faith.

Besides all this, the Copts were inflamed with love for heaven and quiet worship. The large number of vowels in the Coptic language gives it a kind of sweetness and flexibility in hymnology. I recall, for example, that a young man, an army officer, was staying with a nonChristian officer in a tent in the desert of Marsa Matruh. As he was washing his face one morning, he was humming one of the Church Hymns from the Holy Week. His colleague asked him, “What is that beautiful song?” The Christian asked him, “How does it make you feel?” He responded, “It has a sad tune, but it gives peace to whoever hears it.” He then asked the Christian to sing it with words, and the non-Christian felt an amazing peace.

A man in New Jersey told me he had a little boy who had not yet learnt to speak, whom he was taking to the Pascha prayers. After several days, he found him humming the hymn of “Thine is the power” from Holy Week, without being able to pronounce a word of the hymn.

Third: We cannot deny that when the early [Coptic] Church spread to Ethiopia it did not force them to adopt the simple musical tradition of the Copts, even if some Ethiopians enjoyed our Coptic Church Hymns. Also, during conferences with our beloved [Christians] of other denominations, some of our bishops and priests liked some hymns from other traditions so much — Syrian tradition, for example — that they began to sing them in their own time and in their private prayers.