What Psalter Is in Your Prayer Book

I do not know who else out there struggles with this one, but wouldn't it be a beautiful world to have the same version of the Psalms used in our personal prayer books, as in the many Psalms read in church, and as in the innumerable uses of Psalms throughout the services? Such consistency would, that much more easily, bring those hymns to our lips throughout the day. We would accidentally memorize large chunks of the Psalter. And what unspeakable aid would that provide to our path toward union with Christ?

But alas! How many versions of the Psalter are out there? I don't know. Even of something much more limited like the Septuagint Old Testament, there are still way too many. One of the most widely used Psalters in Orthodox churches, at least in my experience, is the Holy Transfiguration Monastery (HTM) Psalter. It is a beautiful, poetic rendering of the Psalms from the Septuagint (or "LXX"). That is what I am used to. It is used in the HTM prayer book and the Jordanville prayer book, and those are two of the most-used prayer books out there.

So, here it is...if you are looking for a complaint I have of the new prayer book from St. Tikhon's Monastery, this is it. It does not use that HTM, closer-to-universal-than-anything-else Psalter. In my personal estimation, which is not worth much, I know, this book would be as close to perfect as I could ever expect, IF it had that version of the Psalms in there.

Now, if it is any consolation, it is actually quite close, in style, to the HTM version. I cannot decide if that is a good thing, or just an additional set of problems, because, at times, a certain phrase will set me off into the familiar HTM phrase, then I get stuck in the middle of a sentence and cannot finish it out quite right.

If the wording of the Psalter is a big issue for you, you would have to take a look yourself and see what you think. If it means anything, even someone like me, who is quite accustomed to a different version, has still chosen to use St. Tikhon's prayer book. It has so many positives that this negative is outweighed, in my book...oh, sorry, pun not intended.

Comments

  1. Just this past week, I had a conversation which somewhat changed my view about my favorite Psalter. Now, I was careful in this post to say that the HTM Psalter is "closer-to-universal-than-anything-else" but not that I particularly love it. Well, I did say it was a "beautiful, poetic rendering", which is high praise that I should probably reserve. The person to whom I was talking said that one of the main reasons it is so widely used is because it was first, but not necessarily the best.

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  2. I have just received another Psalter in the mail. I have been wanting, for a few weeks now, to give it a try and see what I think. I bought the The Psalms of David translated and poetically rendered by Donald Sheehan. It is also based on the Septuagint (LXX) and shows the kathisma divisions to be used for the daily Psalter readings in Orthodox worship. I will certainly check back in and post some thoughts, once I have actually used it some.

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