_Spem in alium_, Thomas Tallis' forty-part motet, composed
fifteen-hundred-and-something. Beautful music. "Spem in
alium" is "hope in another," highly suggestive from the gnostic
perspective. Other gods, strange gods, foreign gods are a
theme in the OT, and even the canonical NT in some places talks
about the Father as a hidden or unknown God, in obvious
contrast to the Creator's celebrity: a thought that gnosticism
intensifies.
But read in context the words mean the opposite: "Spem in
alium numquam habui praeter in te/Deus Israel" or "I have
never put my hope in any other but in you, God of Israel." And
there's no question which god that is, since he's called
"Creator of Heaven and Earth" (Tallis was borrowing freely from
the Book of Judith 8). Not hope in another deity: an
expression of faith in the same old same old god of pillage and
slavery, fire and sword.
-- Catawumpus
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