By Alyssa Bender
We print many different types of bibles here at Oxford University Press, one popular line being our Book of Common Prayer. While this text is used worldwide, you may not know about its interesting history. From the fact that there are a half a dozen books in print with this title, or perhaps that it is not so much a collection of prayers as a sort of “script” to be used, there is much you may not know about this text. Take our quiz below to learn more.
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Alyssa Bender is a marketing coordinator at Oxford University Press. She works on religion books in the Academic/Trade and Reference divisions, as well as Bibles.
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By Kirsty Doole
Religion has provided the world with some of the most influential and important written works ever known. Here is a reading list made up of just a small selection of the texts we carry in the series, covering religions across the globe.
The Ecclesiastical History of the English People – Bede
Bede’s most famous work was finished in 731, and deals with the history of Christianity in England, most notably, the tension between Roman and Celtic forms of Christianity. It is one of the most important texts in English history. As well as providing the authoritative Colgrave translation of the Ecclesiastical History, the Oxford World’s Classics edition includes a translation of the Greater Chronicle, in which Bede discusses the Roman Empire. Meanwhile, Bede’s Letter to Egbert gives further reflections on the English Church just before his death.
The Varieties of Religious Experience – William James
This work is William (brother of Henry) James’s classic survey of religious belief in its most personal aspects. Covering such topics as how we define evil to ourselves, the difference between a healthy and a divided mind, the value of saintly behaviour, and what animates and characterizes the mental landscape of sudden conversion, The Varieties of Religious Experience is a key text examining the relationship between belief and culture. At the time James wrote it, faith in organized religion and dogmatic theology was fading away, and the search for an authentic religion rooted in personality and subjectivity was something deemed an urgent necessity. With psychological insight, philosophical rigour, and a determination not to jump to the conclusion that in tracing religion’s mental causes we necessarily diminish its truth or value, in the Varieties James wrote a truly foundational text for modern belief.
On Christian Teaching – Saint Augustine
This is one of Saint Augustine’s most important works on the classical tradition. Written to enable students to have the skills to interpret the Bible, it provides an outline of Christian theology. It also contains a detailed discussion of moral problems. Further to that, Augustine attempts to determine what elements of classical education are desirable for a Christian, and suggests ways in which Ciceronian rhetorical principles may help in communicating faith.
The Book of Common Prayer
Along with the King James Bible, the words of the Book of Common Prayer have permeated deep into the English language all over the worldFor countless people, it has provided the framework for a wedding ceremony or a funeral. Yet this familiarity also hides a violent and controversial history. When it was first written, the Book of Common Prayer provoked riots, and it was banned before eventually being translated into a host of global languages. This edition presents the work in three different states: the first edition of 1549, which brought the Reformation into people’s homes; the Elizabethan prayer book of 1559, familiar to Shakespeare and Milton; and the edition of 1662, which embodies the religious temper of the nation down to modern times.
The Qur’an
The Qur’an, the Muslim Holy Book, was revealed to the Prophet Muhammad over 1400 year ago. It is the supreme authority in Islam and the source of all Islamic teaching; it is both a sacred text and a book of guidance, that sets out the creed, rituals, ethics, and laws of Islam. The greatest literary masterpiece in Arabic, the message of the Qur’an was directly addressed to all people regardless of class, gender, or age, and this translation aims to be equally accessible to everyone.
Natural Theology – William Paley
Natural Theology is arguably as central to those who believe in Intelligent Design as Darwin’s Origin of Species is to those who come down on the side of evolutionary theory. In it, William Paley set out to prove the existence of God from the evidence of the order and beauty of the natural world. It famously starts by comparing our world to a watch, whose design is self-evident, before going on to provide examples from biology, anatomy, and astronomy in order to demonstrate the intricacy and ingenuity of design that could only come from a wise and benevolent deity. Paley’s work was both hugely successful, and extremely controversial, and Charles Darwin was greatly influenced by the book’s accessible style and structure.
The Bhagavad Gita
‘I have heard the supreme mystery, yoga, from Krishna, from the lord of yoga himself.’
So ends the Bhagavad Gita, the best known and most widely read Hindu religious text in the Western world. It is the most famous episode from the great Sanskrit epic, the Mahabharata. Across eighteen chapters Krishna’s teaching leads the warrior Arjuna from confusion to understanding, raising and developing many key themes from the history of Indian religions in the process.
It considers religious and social duty, the nature of action and of sacrifice, the means to liberation, and the relationship between God and human. It culminates in an awe-inspiring vision of Krishna as an omnipotent God, disposer and destroyer of the universe.
Kirsty Doole is Publicity Manager for Oxford World’s Classics.
For over 100 years Oxford World’s Classics has made available the broadest spectrum of literature from around the globe. Each affordable volume reflects Oxford’s commitment to scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth of other valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, voluminous notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more. You can follow Oxford World’s Classics on Twitter, Facebook, or here on the OUPblog. Subscribe to only Oxford World’s Classics articles on the OUPblog via email or RSS.
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Image credit: Saint Augustine of Hippo. Public domain via Wikimedia Commons
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This Day in World History
March 23, 1743
Handel conducts London premiere of Messiah
Source: NYPL.
On March 23, 1743, composer George Frideric Handel directed the first London performance of his sacred oratorio,
Messiah. While the composition has become revered as a magnificent choral work — and a staple of the Christmas holiday season — it met some controversy when it first appeared.
Remarkably, Handel needed only three weeks in the summer of 1741 to write Messiah. As his text, he used a libretto compiled by Charles Jennens from verses of the Bible and from the Church of England’s Book of Common Prayer. Jennens was apparently upset that Handel wrote the work in such a short time; he thought the sacred subject needed more time.
He was also annoyed because Handel debuted the work in Dublin in the spring of 1742, not reserving it for a London premiere. Leading Irish clerics (led by Jonathan Swift) insisted that, if their church choirs were to be used to sing the oratorio, ticket sales had to go to charity. That precedent established a longstanding tradition for Messiah.
When Handel finally prepared to present the work in London, more controversy arose. Some people objected to a work on a sacred theme being performed in a secular setting — London’s Covent Garden Theater. The controversy disappeared with the popular acceptance of Handel’s music, however. Even Jennens became reconciled to the composer, in part because Handel rewrote some sections his collaborator considered poor.
Today’s performances do not reflect the scores of these initial performances. Handel revised the piece often, and current productions use one or another of these later versions. The full Messiah tells not only the Christmas story but also of Jesus’s crucifixion and resurrection. Groups that perform the oratorio at Christmas generally only perform the first part.
“This Day in World History” is brought to you by USA Higher Education.
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By Brian Cummings
Like many people I first came across the Book of Common Prayer in a church pew; I must have been in my late teens. But it felt as if I already knew the book: many things in it were already familiar, like the marriage vows ‘for better for worse, for richer for poorer, in sickness and in health, to love and to cherish, till death us do part.’ To me, brought up an atheist, other parts seemed very strange. Yet even as a non-churchgoer, the book felt as if it belonged to me. It announced itself as ‘common’ prayer, and also as somehow quintessentially English, everyday, ubiquitous. The Book of Common Prayer wasn’t just a church book; it contained so much else that was evocative of our culture and history – prayers to be said at sea, ways of calculating Easter dates, lists of members of the family you were forbidden to marry.
When I was a student, I was surprised to find that there wasn’t an edition of the text available which also explained the history, interpretations and significance of the Book of Common Prayer. The book was still in print, of course, but only in church editions. By now I knew that what I had thought of as a book of the 1660s was in fact much older, going back to Thomas Cranmer and the beginning of the English Reformation; and also that it had existed in a number of different forms. My favourite guide to this was a huge two-volume book called The English Rite by F.E. Brightman, by now long out of print. This printed different versions of the Book of Common Prayer in parallel text, and also contained a monumental introduction. It had the sprawling, hefty form of old-style scholarship which nobody seemed to author anymore, and no publisher could afford to print in any case. There was also an Everyman edition comprising the 1549 and 1552 texts, which I found in a second-hand bookshop and I continued to treasure for many years, using it in teaching in due course.
When asked by OUP if I was happy to prepare a new edition of the Book of Common Prayer, I immediately accepted despite foreseeing that the work would be very time-consuming. It just felt like something you don’t say no to, and I couldn’t help but think of this new edition also ending up in second-hand bookshops in time. The sense of familiarity and commonness I had developed with the text over the years also inspired me to provide an edition for the common reader; one which would explain its contexts, controversies and historical importance as well as the unnoticed ways in which the book has been part of shared experience and lived emotion over several centuries.
I print the text in three versions – a little like Brightman’s old book, only my choice of texts is different. In between the first edition of 1549 and the Restoration text of 1662 my edition contains the Elizabethan version of 1559. This was the text Shakespeare would have been familiar with – and also the one used by John Donne when he was Dean of Old St Paul’s in the 1620s. I also include more or less a small book of explanatory notes, in which I endeavour to explain the politics which brought it into being, the religious motivations which inspired it, its revisions, and how it caused trouble right through the Civil War and beyond.
In my mind, I fostered the simile of the Book of Common Prayer as an English church building such as St Paul’s Cathedral. There is what you see at first sight – how this monument appears today; but there is also a kind of visible archaeology of
