[resolved]Re: Lectionaries BCP

No one has added to this in a long time, and without starting a new thread, I had a few questions mostly in two areas

1) Why is it the BCP daily doesn't match up with the BCP Sunday on the Sundays. I see that they are both 1979 but that the Sunday only is the three year cycle whereas the daily is the two year cycle. Of these two is there one that reflects the older BCP more? I also noticed that while there were differences, the BCP Sunday only and the RCL matched up which to me means RCL is related to BCP Sunday. And a request from Logos is whatever they based their current BCP Sunday on, could we please have *that* in daily replacing what is there now.

2) The second issue is I've been doing BCP daily because there are more scripture selections than RCL daily. But all the lectionary commentaries I have are RCL and none are BCP so far as I know. And related to this is wondering if BCL daily ends up reading/covering more of the Bible than RCL daily. All I have found on the internet and which crunches the numbers and arranges all scripture references is

http://catholic-resources.org/Lectionary/Statistics.htm

but was really looking for a BCP/RCL comparison table

Thanks

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MJ. Smith

Scott, when switching to a new issue it is better to start a new thread rather than attach it to another thread. I'll see it I can get it split. It could be either under general or under the appropriate software. You'd placed it under Logos 5 so I left it there.

MJ. Smith

I don't know where else to put this, but why is it the BCP daily doesn't match up with the BCP Sunday on the Sundays. I see that they are both 1979 but that the Sunday only is the three year cycle whereas the daily is the two year cycle.

The second issue is I've been doing BCP daily because there are more scripture selections than RCL daily. But all the lectionary commentaries I have are RCL and none are BCP so far as I know. And related to this is wondering if BCL daily ends up reading/covering more of the Bible than RCL daily.

The Readings as far as I can see correspond to the readings provided by the Book of Common Prayer Online site http://www.bookofcommonprayer.net/index.php Can you give me an example that is an error? Or are you looking at the primary service readings rather than the Daily Office? The Sunday Primary Service often uses the RCL 3 year cycle. Daily Office based on the Latin Breviary is a two year cycle.

The only BCP traditional cycle commentaries that I am aware of are the various sermons for the church year type collections.

Scott Groethe

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/717976#Comment_717976

I was raised Lutheran but have been at a non-traditional Lutheran church since 1984, so I'm just getting into the lectionaries out there, having read book by book for years and not familiar with all the ins and outs. So your answer took care of the what part. Could you explain why the Sundays don't match between BCP daily and Sunday only?

As someone not raised Episcopalian this question might seem dumb. What is the difference between Daily Office and Sunday Primary Service?

Googling around I found your comments at https://community.logos.com/forums/t/32695.aspx

esp these

Non-primary Sunday services lectionaries:

In the Catholic tradition, the weekday lectionary is independent of the Sunday cycle; the new RCL weekday cycle is tied to the Sunday readings. The first half of the week the readings point back to the previous Sunday's readings; the second half of the week points forward to the upcoming Sunday. This provides a seven day set of readings which are read and interpreted in the context of the entire set.

Another question, why hasn't BCP weekday done what RCL weekday did? Does that have to do with personal use versus what is covered on Sunday. I guess the crux of it is, I like BCP, the coverage is better. If they could start with the BCP Sunday Service based on RCL and then fill in everything else daily wise then I would use BCP. As it is now, I will probably just move to RCL daily since I know on Sundays the texts chosen will be the ones I have commentaries for. PS I will just start a new thread next time as you suggested

MJ. Smith

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/718060#Comment_718060

I need you to give me a concrete example of what you mean by the Sunday mismatch as they match as I expect and I don't know what you are looking at.

The Lutheran, Anglican and Catholic Sunday lectionaries have always been very similar. Both the Lutherans and the Anglicans modified the readings/lessons for Morning and Evening Prayer and made them the primary daily lectionary. The BCP terminology of "primary service" is basically their Eucharistic service.

The RCL daily lectionary broke with tradition by tying the daily readings to the Sunday readings. This was primarily for two reasons (a) the RCL was needed primarily for churches that had lost the daily prayer tradition and found the ISSL readings too short and (b) Gail Ranshaw had prototyped a very good daily lectionary based on the Sunday readings. Note the ISSL is the international standard Sunday school lessons which has readings for the entire week geared towards the passage studied on Sunday.

Anglicans have a choice of what lectionary they use (a) the traditional BCP lectionary which is similar to the Lutheran 1 year lectionaries (b) their version of the 3 year RCL lectionary or (c) a British Joint (ecumenical) lectionary (JLG) including a 4 year form if I recall correctly. Note that I say "their version of the RCL" - most of the churches using the RCL have modifications to meet their needs. The 2 track system for Old Testament readings is primarily a Lutheran adaptation that met the need of several other denominations.

The Catholics complicate matters by having both daily Mass and the Daily Office - Logos does not carry the lectionary (1 or 2 year) for their daily office which is a sequential reading of books but it provides the most complete coverage of the Bible. A number of Anglicans use the Catholic Daily Office.

Summary:

Traditionally Sunday primary readings are "hand picked" with the Gospel being the most influential in affecting what other readings are read
The Vatican ii/New Liturgy movement moved to a 3 year Sunday cycle keeping much of the traditional structure but modifying so that each year concentrated on a particular synoptic Gospel, epistles are semi-continuous readings and the Old Testament reading relates in some way to the Gospel; A number of churches dropped their lectionaries and adopted the RCL modification of the Vatican II Sunday lectionary.
Catholic Daily Mass adopted a two year cycle with semi-continuous readings both of the Gospel and the First reading (Old or New Testament). Other Western churches generally don't have Eucharistic services on a daily basis.
Churches with a Daily Prayer tradition (Lutheran, Anglican, Catholic) retained their tradition with modifications - generally a sequential reading of Biblical books. For Catholics this is in the Office of Readings; for others in Morning and Evening Prayer These services provide the most complete coverage of Bible readings.
Churches without a Daily Prayer tradition adopted (quite recently) an RCL Daily Lectionary of readings relating to the Sunday readings.

Louis St. Hilaire

1) Why is it the BCP daily doesn't match up with the BCP Sunday on the Sundays. I see that they are both 1979 but that the Sunday only is the three year cycle whereas the daily is the two year cycle. Of these two is there one that reflects the older BCP more? I also noticed that while there were differences, the BCP Sunday only and the RCL matched up which to me means RCL is related to BCP Sunday. And a request from Logos is whatever they based their current BCP Sunday on, could we please have *that* in daily replacing what is there now.

Hi Scott. It sounds like (with MJ's input) you may have puzzled your way to the answer to your initial question, but I wanted to add some clarification. The reason that the BCP daily office readings don't match the BCP Sunday readings is that they are intended for distinct services.The Sunday lectionary provides readings for the Sunday Eucharist, while the Daily Office lectionary provides readings for Morning Prayer or Evening Prayer services (part of the Divine Office).

So, on a Sunday, if a church celebrated both services, it would most likely use the Sunday lectionary (or, in recent years, the RCL) for the Eucharist, and it would use the Daily Office lectionary for Morning Prayer or Evening Prayer. So, the intention is to provide two sets of readings for Sundays for two distinct liturgies, and our lectionary resources reflect this. As you've noted, the cycle of Sunday Eucharist readings and the cycle of daily office readings are distinct and they aren't really coordinated--probably because the number and types of readings used in each liturgy are different, and the Sunday Eucharist readings have to stand on their own as a cycle, since most people will only hear those.

I'm not an expert on the history of the Anglican/Episcopalian lectionary and office, but the older editions of the BCP also have two distinct cycles of readings, one for the Sunday Eucharist, one for the daily office, like the 1979 BCP. My impression is that both the 1979 Sunday lectionary and the 1979 daily office lectionary are pretty dramatically different from what was in the older editions of the BCP.

Scott Groethe

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/718543#Comment_718543

I haven't gotten back to this in a couple days - in that time the thought came to me as well that the daily and Sunday readings int he BCP were for two different purposes and so your comments Louis confirm this.

That puts my mind at ease. I'm learning a little more each day about lectionaries from Logos and the internet. Using the lectionary is such a new thing for me. I would be surprised to find one in a hundred evangelicals using the daily lectionary for their Bible readings, due to the popularity of the daily Bibles and for some, the McCheyne (M'Cheyne, see D. A. Carson and Ravi Zacharias).

Somewhere else I commented that I've tried to do the RCL daily twice but even after two days go back to daily BCP because it does not repeat one Psalm for three days. You can't cover the Bible well doing that and so the daily RCL is a disappointment to me.

Five years from now I don't know what I'll be doing but for now are just loving the lectionary - mostly due to the Advent through Pentecost season and the selections of texts. There's no connection with the Church Year in the readings from those daily Bibles, and I think that's a weakness that probably doesn't cross the mind of the average Christian Bible reader, even the committed ones.

Scott Groethe

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/718120#Comment_718120

Thank you MJ, that was very helpful.

David Ames

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/718543#Comment_718543

RE: Logos Bible Software Wiki at https://wiki.logos.com/

If there is a section on Lectionaries in the Logos Bible Software Wiki perhaps a summary of the posts by both MJ. Smith and Louis St. Hilaire should be added. Perhaps titled Differences between the Daily and the Weekly Lectionaries. This information needs to be made available other then buried in a forum post.

Scott Groethe

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/719264#Comment_719264

Is this a good location

https://wiki.logos.com/Lectionaries

Dave Hooton

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/719446#Comment_719446

That should be OK. Let me know if you need any help