The Prayerbook of the Church

The opening section: the Psalter as the Church’s own prayerbook. It sets out the psalms’ descent from David and the Temple, their use in the synagogue and by Christ and the apostolic Church, and the reasons the Fathers held the Psalter to be a school of prayer unlike any other book of Scripture.

Tradition: Pan-Orthodox

Overview

Before tracing the shape of the Orthodox Psalter or the services built upon it, this section establishes what the Psalter is to the Church: not one book of the Bible among many but her prayerbook, the words she was given to say back to God. The first file follows the Psalter from David and the Temple choirs, through the synagogue and the psalmody of Christ and the apostles, into the daily prayer of the early Church. The second gathers the great patristic praises of the Psalms — above all St. Athanasius’ Letter to Marcellinus and St. Basil’s Homily on Psalm 1 — and asks why the Fathers singled out this one book as the mirror of the soul and the epitome of all Scripture.

Files

File Description
the-psalter-as-the-churchs-prayerbook.md David and the Temple; the psalmody of the synagogue and of Jesus; the apostolic Church at prayer; the Psalter as the Church’s inherited voice
the-fathers-in-praise-of-the-psalms.md Athanasius’ Letter to Marcellinus (the psalms as mirror, as words spoken for us); Basil on Psalm 1; Ambrose; the Psalter as an epitome of Scripture

See Also