In ancient times, the texts of scripture were known to the people through being proclaimed out loud in the churches; and the Jewish tradition of chanting or singing sacred texts goes back at least 3000 years.

Words which are sung are heard with greater clarity in a large assembly of people than those which are spoken or even shouted: thus in many ancient oratorical traditions even political speeches may have been chanted. For scriptural texts, however, where music has the power to suggest hidden depths of meaning and to express the heights of human emotion, it is only to be expected that music and text have been united from the earliest times.

The first Christians maintained many of the liturgical customs they had inherited from their own Jewish origins, including that of chanting. Indeed, some chants still in use in the Christian Church are remarkably similar to Jewish chants, most notably the tone used for the chanting of Psalm 113, known in Gregorian Chant as the "Tonus Peregrinus".

For a more detailed account of the evolution of Christian liturgy from Jewish worship, read "The Sacred Bridge" by Eric Werner (Shocken Books, 1970)