The topic “music” in early Christianity is associated with a few difficulties, namely diversity of definitions, blurred boundaries between singing and speaking, terminology, and last, but not least, the scarce findings on music in the sources from the first three centuries CE.

Firstly, “up until today, there is no valid definition [of music]” (Sührig & Hüschen, 1997, 1197; trans. C. Oefele). Already in antiq…