The First Hymn

2025

Action / Documentary / History / Music

Rotten Tomatoes Audience - Upright 96% · 50 ratings
IMDb Rating 6.3/10 10 59 59

Please enable your VPΝ when downloading torrents

If you torrent without a VPΝ, your ISP can see that you're torrenting and may throttle your connection and get fined by legal action!

Get Surf VPΝ

Plot summary

In the ancient ruins of Oxyrhynchus, Egypt, archaeologists unearthed a papyrus scrap containing the earliest known Christian hymn, complete with both its lyrics and musical notation. Analyzed at Oxford University, this discovery challenges traditional views of church history by revealing the rich musical practices of early believers. Hosted by Australian historian John Dickson, the feature-length documentary “The First Hymn” chronicles the hymn’s journey from its desert origins to its modern resurrection, as acclaimed composers Chris Tomlin and Ben Fielding transform the ancient melody into a contemporary worship piece, culminating in a live concert performance.

Director

Mark Hadley Photo
Mark Hadley

Top cast

John Dickson Photo
John Dickson as Self
Chris Tomlin Photo
Chris Tomlin as Self
Ben Fielding Photo
Ben Fielding as Self
720p.WEB 1080p.WEB
796.8 MB
1280*720
English 2.0
G
us  
25 fps
1 hr 26 min
Seeds ...
1.6 GB
1920*1080
English 5.1
G
us  
25 fps
1 hr 26 min
Seeds 7

Movie Reviews

Reviewed by CinemaSerf

John Dickson is quite an engaging host here

John Dickson is quite an engaging host here, but I was still pretty disappointed with this documentary. It centres around a scrap of papyrus discovered by a couple of British Egyptologists just over a century ago that depicts not only a Greek lyric to a Christian song, but also an early form of musical notation. The task? Well that is to try and recreate the hymn so we can listen to it again after almost two millennia. What we get, though, isn’t quite that. After a fairly perfunctory history lesson via Egypt and the University of Oxford, we are introduced to acclaimed songwriters Chris Tomlin and Ben Fielding who then proceed to craft a piece of music that is certainly celebratory, but any connection with the original Oxyrhynchus document seems tangential at best. I would have liked to have had some linguistics experts explain just what the writings actually said and then, more interestingly for me, an explanation of just how these latter day equivalents of crotchets and minims were decoded to give us some sort of idea as to how they provided a soundtrack to the words. Instead, we head to Nashville for an admittedly celebratory song, but one that had nothing of the sounds of the original upon which is was supposedly based. There is an effort to draft in an American-Egyptian singer to give it some semblance of authenticity, but we never get to hear the completed work with her contributions included so are really only presented at the end with a rousing anthem for ten thousand committed Christians in Fort Worth who could be singing along to just about any of Tomlin’s compositions. From what I know of the complete original text, it also looks like they have been fairly selective about the phrases they have chosen to interpret and so have essentially ensured that these are used to illustrate the message Dickson et al had determined to convey right from the start. It’s far too long and had it lost half an hour, perhaps even more as there is a fair degree of repetition amidst the increasingly evangelical commentary, then it might have worked better as a short-form film. As it is, I felt the story of P. Oxy 1786 rather neglected. Was it restored to something akin to it’s third century self here or was it simply hijacked? Hmmm…!
Reviewed by snagssharkteeth-23785 1 / 10

Clueless Christians.

Over 500000 fragments have been found at the site that this song was found and not all are found. Over 80 large volumes have been published from the oxyrhyncus site.Egypt is the home of ancient manuscripts that have been found, two major ancient Christian discoveries are the cheniboskion and askewinian codexes aka gnostic manuscripts which have also been found where they found this hymn.Btw this hym has no biblical basis what so ever yet the narrator of the documentary seems to think the father son and holy spirit is strong evidence for the late Catholic Trinity doctrine while utterly ignoring the rest of the content.The entire song reads:. . . Together all the eminent ones of God. . . . . Night nor day ... Let it/them be silent. Let the luminous stars not . . .. . . Let the rushings of winds, the sources of all surging rivers ...cease...While we hymn Father and Son and Holy Spirit, let all the powers answer, "Amen, amen, Strength, praise, and glory forever to God, the sole giver of all good things. Amen, amen."As you can read the song has already under gone heavy perversion.Yet Tomlin and his friends seem to be able to twist this evidently gnostic song into their own corrupted pentecostal framework. The gnostics exemplify the pure state of righteouss silence our father resides in which is a state we ought to seek and clearly dictated in the song, but this sensationalized melody is far from silence rather it is nothing more than turbulent sound pollution and an insult to the ears of mind, heart and soul. The sound of matter, idolised text and a perverted doctrine that reflects anything other than the purity of truth.
Reviewed by JoshuaL-245 6 / 10

The authenticity of Christianity across time

The First Hymn is the latest Dickson/Hadley film presentation of the Christian faith, after The Christ Files (2007), The Life of Jesus (2008) and For the Love of God (produced with the Centre for Public Christianity, 2018). This film follows Dr John Dickson from Egypt to provide the context of Oxyrhynchus Papyri, and of one fragment of papyri includes a fragments of a trinitarian hymn with words and notation dating from the 3rd century; earlier than the Apostles and Nicene creeds shared by christian denominations today. Dickson then commissions Ben Fielding and Chris Thomlin to write a contemporary worship song based upon the lyrics.I went into this film expecting a presentation on early christian music and worship, then comparing this to a modern rendition. What instead I got was the best defense of Contemporary Christian Music today; how it links historically to the church and how it functions as a creative endeavor.It is a nerdy documentary for sure, but it is set at an introductory tone. There is much further to be explored of the original hymn than what is presented. For example, we don't hear the original hymn performed until close to the end of the film, and not within its historical context. This might look like the way it could be performed in the Egyptian church or tavern in the 3rd Century. Other early trinitarian hymns such as "Hail Gladenning Light" could have been explored to compare and contrast with this hymn.I also have to comment on the films choice on There are some choices made in this doco which do detract from viewing the film. Some photographs taken during the discovery of the Oxyrhynchus Papyri were 'enhanced' using AI by turning them into video and other stock footage. The output, rather than being 'enhanced,' looked smeared and inauthentic, taking me out of the story. When the team produced "For the Love of God," the team was able to gain the full size licenses for the images they were using, creating a very crisp and authentic image there.
Read more IMDb reviews

3 Comments

Be the first to leave a comment