A pipe organ crafted some 1,000 years ago for Bethlehem’s Church of the Nativity made music once more on Tuesday, as the instrument was unveiled at Jerusalem’s Terra Sancta Museum. It was hailed as the “oldest organ in Christendom.”

“These pipes are a thousand years old, yet their preservation is extraordinary; many look as though they were made yesterday,” said Dr. David Catalunya of the Complutense Institute of Musical Sciences (ICCMU) in a video statement. “Eight pipes have fully retained their sound. That can only be described as a true miracle.”

The organ is among the world’s oldest musical instruments, with a rudimentary version first appearing in Greece in the 3rd century BCE. Played through a keyboard that channels pressurized air into its pipes, the instrument later found a lasting home in churches and monasteries.

Byzantine communities were already using organs as early as the 4th or 5th centuries CE. Yet, according to Álvaro Torrente, director of the Complutense Institute of Musical Sciences, the next oldest surviving examples in the Christian world only date to the 15th century.

Scholars believe the organ was brought to Bethlehem — revered in Christian tradition as the birthplace of Jesus — during the Crusader period, when European armies reached the Holy Land in 1099 seeking to reclaim Jerusalem and its sacred sites after centuries of Muslim rule.

The following two centuries were marked by fierce political upheaval and brutal violence, including massacres that also devastated Jewish........

© The Times of Israel