5824.BAY PSALM BOOK IN METRE 1640_LOGOS PB.docx
The Bay Psalm Book of 1640 was the first book printed in America.
"It's a book that was not created to be fancy or splendid or valuable in any way other than the significance of its content," says Derick Dreher, the director of Philadelphia's Rosenbach Library, one of the few institutions to hold a Bay Psalm Book. But because the congregation for which it was created literally used the book to death, very few of the copies have survived.
One of the few remaining copies was sold last November for 14.2 million dollars.
"If therefore the verses are not alwayes so smooth and elegant as some may desire or expect; let them confider that Gods Altar needs not our pollishings: Ex. 20. for wee have respected a plaine translation then to smooth our verses with the sweetnes of any paraphrase, and soe have attended Conscience rather then Elegance, fidelity rather then poetry, in translating the hebrew words into english language, and Davids poetry into english meetre…" [Bay Psalm Preface, page 13]
- Format this book as a Bible.
- The title page of the BAY PSALMS found within this Logos Personal Book may be used as a book cover.
- I've carefully checked the Psalms text against two different scans for accuracy but won't admit to perfection. Don't automatically assume a word was misspelled in the digitalized text, the original has numerous spelling variances, sometimes even within a single verse.
- The formatting of each psalm varies widely. I've tried to reproduce the general formatting of each psalm.
- Pages of the original text were not numbered. I've added page numbers to the digitalized text to differentiate where the page changes.
- I've replaced the "long s" (ƒ) in the text with our modern "s" and dismissed the artistic "ct" ligature. I've maintained the sporadic use of the letter "v" in place of "u" (note Ps 29:1, 71:18, and 142:1 where both were used in a single verse) and kept the odd line above some letters which apparently was shorthand for the letter "n" or "m".
- There are a number of psalms that were translated twice within the Bay Psalm Book (51, 85, 100, 117, 133, 138). There is even a verse number not normally found in bibles (50:24).
