Baffled by a liturgical psalter

I’ve just come back from a few days away, staying in an Anglican nunnery.  My girlfriend wanted to attend a retreat there, and my role was to act as chauffeur, factotum, and otherwise to stay out of the way.  Which I did.

I did attend one service, and found myself reading responses from a modern ring-bound book of psalms.  Here is a picture of psalm 1 in that book.

The asterisk in the middle of the line marks a long silent pause, which kept catching me out; and the two sides of the congregation read alternate lines.

Inevitably I found myself wondering what I was looking at.  Often behind modern prayer books there lurks the ghost of very ancient Latin versions.  I already knew that in the Anglican world, the psalter is not from the King James Bible, but rather from Miles Coverdale’s “Great Bible” of 1540 as suitably amended by Cranmer, and this, in a revised form, appeared with the 1662 Book of Common Prayer.  The people were used to it, and it read more smoothly, and so it was retained.  This decision was made in the Savoy Conference of 1661, apparently.

But where does this particular text come from? That’s a modern set of pronouns there.  Nor is this the text in the new “Common Worship” that is being introduced, for that begins with “Blessed”, not “Happy.”  But then this “Common Worship” is trying to get closer to the modern biblical text.

The book that I held in my hand contained no information as to its origins, no ISBN, no printer, nothing.  It was possibly from some ecclesiastical supplier, or even printed themselves from somewhere.

Next I went to the library and started looking at their collection of service books, in the hope of enlightenment.  I pulled down the 1980 Alternative Service Book:

Well, it’s not this.  We’re still “Blessed.”  But there are now seven verses, not six; verse 3 has been split, and “It’s leaves also shall not wither” is a new sentence.

A modern reprint of the 1662 Book of Common Prayer was no more helpful:

Again, we are “Blessed.”  The “Happy” version must be a modernisation from somewhere.  Here “His leaf also shall not wither…”

I then went online and found a copy of the 1540 Great Bible:

This is of course “Blessed”.  There are no verse numbers.  But “His leaf also shall not wither…” appears as a separate sentence.

Eventually I resorted to Google, and I found this page which contains exactly the text above, minus the antiphon.  It informs us that the version is from the 1979 Episcopal Book of Common Prayer.  I found this online at Google Books here, on p.585:

Psalm 1
Beatus vir qui non abiit

1     Happy are they who have not walked in the counsel of the wicked, *
nor lingered in the way of sinners,
nor sat in the seats of the scornful!
2     Their delight is in the law of the LORD, *
and they meditate on his law day and night.
3     They are like trees planted by streams of water,
bearing fruit in due season, with leaves that do not wither; *
everything they do shall prosper.
4     It is not so with the wicked; *
they are like chaff which the wind blows away.
5     Therefore the wicked shall not stand upright when judgment comes, *
nor the sinner in the council of the righteous.
6     For the LORD knows the way of the righteous, *
but the way of the wicked is doomed.

As far as I can determine, the preceding US Episcopalian prayer book was the 1928, which had the traditional “Blessed” and “His leaf.”

Like most people I know very little about the history of the prayer book, and indeed the history of liturgy.  It was news to me that Cranmer’s prayer books were basically a translation of the medieval “Sarum usage” prayer books, suitably revised for protestant ideas.  These also had a psalter.  Cranmer saved himself effort by using Coverdale’s existing translation.

Coverdale himself knew relatively little Hebrew, and inevitably this made him dependent on the Latin vulgate.  This rather unpleasant site – beware adverts – interleaves the Latin of Jerome’s translation of the Hebrew; the Latin of his translation of the Greek LXX; and the literal Douai translation.  Verse three in Coverdale is illuminated a bit by the comparison:

3.

et erit tamquam lignum transplantatum iuxta rivulos aquarum quod fructum suum dabit in tempore suo et folium eius non defluet et omne quod fecerit prosperabitur

et erit tamquam lignum quod plantatum est secus decursus aquarum quod fructum suum dabit in tempore suo et folium eius non defluet et omnia quaecumque faciet prosperabuntur

And he shall be like a tree which is planted near the running waters, which shall bring forth its fruit, in due season. And his leaf shall not fall off: and all whatsoever he shall do shall prosper.

“Folium” is singular, hence “his leaf.”

That was more work than it might have been!