There are three Greek verbs and their cognate nouns that are used in connection with singing or melody in the church. They are ado, humneo and psallo. Kurfees says:
“There has never been any controversy over the kind of music, in general, indicated by the first two of these verbs and their nouns, nor, indeed, has there been any, until recent years, over the meaning of psallo with its noun” (p. 4).
Kurfees, after an exhaustive study of this word psallo has most ably presented his finding in the first nine chapters of his Instrumental Music in the Worship (pp. 397). We shall content ourselves with merely stating his conclusions.
“All lexicographers and theologians agree that at the opening of the New Testament period, psallo had come to mean ‘to sing.’ ”
“John Henry Thayer, the author of the New Testament Lexicon which, by the unanimous decision of present-day scholarship, stands not only at the head, but far above all other authorities in the special field of New Testament lexicography, was a Congregationalist; but nevertheless refused, as some others failed to do, to be influenced by theological consideration, and so put down in his now famous lexicon a faithful record of the true meaning of words” (pp. 69-70).
Let us quote Thayer in loco on psallo.
Dr. James Begg in his work entitled, The Use of Organs, quotes approvingly from the Scottish Presbyterian theologian, Dr. William Porteous of Glasgow (1735-1812), regarding the meaning of psallo in the New Testament:
“It is evident that the Greek word psallo signified in their [Greek fathers’] time singing with the voice alone. . . . Psallo never occurs in the New Testament in its radical signification, to strike or play an instrument” (quoted in Kurfees, pp. 60-61).
We conclude our brief examination of the New Testament meaning of psallo by this pungent summary from Kurfees:
“When Thayer comes to the New Testament period, he says it [psallo] means, ‘In the New Testament, to sing a hymn; celebrate the praises of God in song.’
“Then, as if to put an end to the controversy, the great lexicon of Sophocles, devoted exclusively to the Roman and Byzantine periods, and thus covering the entire period of the New Testament and patristic literature, says he found not a single example of the word having any other meaning” (Kurfees, p. 48).
Thus we can dismiss from our minds, as being pure conjecture or wishful thinking, any justification of musical instruments in the church on the ground of such supposed connotation in the Greek words used.