The 1928 Book of Common Prayer: The Psalter · The 1928 Book of Common Prayer: Morning Prayer

The Book of Common Prayer

	The Psalter
	from the 1789, 1892 and 1928 U. S. Books of Common
	Prayer

The
Psalter used in the Episcopal Church, until the revision of 1979 was essentially
that of Coverdale's translation of the Bible, which had been used as the
Psalter in all previous Books of Common Prayer, back to the first in 1549.	First page of the Psalter, from an BCP printed in
Over the years, however, changes were made in the American Psalter —	1865
particularly with the introduction of the 1928 BCP, which made a great
many changes.
The text given here
is that of the 1928 BCP, with changes made earlier (back to and including
the 1775 printing of the English BCP used as a basis for the American
BCP) noted in sidebars.
Note that, while
the 1928 BCP uses an asterisk as a breath-mark to divide the verse, the
1892 Book used the musical colon, and prior to that no breath-marks were
used.
Also, in 1928, a
blank line was introduced to divide some of the longer psalms. The division
of the Psalter into "Books" was additionally introduced in 1928.
Prior to 1892, the
psalms were identified with lower-case roman numerals (as may be seen
at right).
Due to its length,
the Psalter is divided into three parts:
Psalms
1-50
Psalm
51-100
Psalms
101-150
The 1892 Psalter
additionally had tables of Proper
Psalms for certain days, and of Selections of Psalms.
The 1789 Psalter
had the Selections of Psalms printed
out in full.
We also have a table
summarizing the (relatively minor) changes made to the Psalter prior
to 1928.

Return to the U. S. Book of Common Prayer: 1789; 1892; 1928