Favorite Lutheran Epiphany hymns

Last Tuesday, the listeners of Issues Etc. answered an open call for their favorite Epiphany hymns. Host Todd Wilken hosted a 56 minute session with the various listener comments.

As Pastor Wilken noted, Epiphany has three roles in the liturgical year

• The eponymous feast, commemorating the visitation of the Magi, representing more broadly the expansion of the mission of the Church to reach the Gentiles.
• The transition between Christmas and Lent (which IMHO is more about Christmas at the beginning and explicitly pre-Lent at the end)
• The home of specific feasts, such as the Baptism of our Lord and (for Lutherans) the Feast of the Transfiguration

As with other shows, the audience was primarily (if not entirely) Lutheran — and thus the votes represent a LCMS audience (presumably picking their hymns from the Lutheran Service Book or The Lutheran Hymnal).

The two most popular choices (with four votes each) were the first two Epiphany hymns in the LSB:

• “Songs of Thankfulness and Praise” (LSB: 394; TLH: 134; H40: 53): text by Christopher Wordsworth. In the LCMS hymnals they use a St. George by 19th century English organist George Elvey. However, the Anglicans (ironically) use Salzburg, written by 17th century German Protestant composer Jacob Hintze (working for the Calvinist Great Elector of Brandenburg) and harmonized the great Lutheran Kapellmeister — J.S. Bach himself.
• “O Morning Star, How Fair and Bright” (LSB: 395), with text and tune by 16th century Lutheran pastor Philip Nicolai. The earlier translations were “How Lovely Shines the Morning Star” (TLH: 343) and "How Bright Appears the Morning Star” (H40: 329),

Other hymns from the Epiphany section of the LSB that were mentioned (and would be familiar to Anglicans) were As with Gladness Men of Old (LSB: 397, TLH: 127; H40: 52), Hail to the Lord's Anointed (LSB: 398; TLH: 59; H40: 545) and Brightest and Best of the Sons* of the Morning (LSB: 400, TLH: 128; H40: 46).

Note that for the latest hymnal for the “conservative” LCMS, the title phrase “Sons of the Morning” in Reginald Heber’s 1811 text was inexplicably changed to politically correct "Stars of the Morning" in the LSB.

As was true seven years earlier, the German Lutherans (and their hymnals) omit two of our favorite Anglican hymns for the season: “What star is this, with beams so bright” (H40 #47) and “Earth has many a noble city” (H40 #48).

I want my, I want my NIV!

Technology changes society — often in unexpected ways, and sometimes not in good ways.

In 1981, the music industry was changed forever. MTV premiered on cable channels, and all of a sudden consuming music wasn’t just listening, but watching. (As Dire Straits famously proclaimed: “I want my MTV.”) Major acts ended devoting up to half their production budget for video promotions — videos for which they don’t receive a penny.

Today, people are shifting to electronic books for their tablets. When visitors come to our house for the first time, I point out the bookshelves in my office (custom-built last year) and joke that my grandchildren will ask: “Grandpa, why did you need so many shelves to store books on your iPad?” Others may use online services, such as BibleGateway.com.

This brings me to the February decision (which I only recently noticed) made by the NIV copyright owners (and its allies) to discontinue availability of the 1984 NIV and only offer the 2011 edition. While I’m more of an RSV/ESV kinda guy, we did give our eldest a pocket 1984 NIV for confirmation and expected it would get decades of use.

The copyright owner is Biblica (née the International Bible Society), the translation was developed by the Committee on Bible Translation (CBT), while the publisher Zondervan has exclusive North American rights.

The 2011 translation is controversial mainly (but not entirely) because it substituted inclusive language for male nouns and pronouns. The language is a compromise between the original 1984 NIV and the (even more aggressively gender neutral) TNIV, but it appears it’s more like the latter than the former.

I found summaries of the controversy on Diane Montgomery’s blog and Michael Marlowe’s Bible Researcher site. In June 2011, the largest US Protestant body (the Southern Baptist Convention) disapproved the new NIV for its members and (unsuccessfully) for its LifeWay bookstore chain:

WHEREAS, Many Southern Baptist pastors and laypeople have trusted and used the 1984 New International Version (NIV) translation to the great benefit of the Kingdom; and

WHEREAS, Biblica and Zondervan Publishing House are publishing an updated version of the New International Version (NIV) which incorporates gender neutral methods of translation; and

WHEREAS, Southern Baptists repeatedly have affirmed our commitment to the full inspiration and authority of Scripture (2 Timothy 3:15-16) and, in 1997, urged every Bible publisher and translation group to resist “gender-neutral” translation of Scripture; and

WHEREAS, This translation alters the meaning of hundreds of verses, most significantly by erasing gender-specific details which appear in the original language; and

WHEREAS, Although it is possible for Bible scholars to disagree about translation methods or which English words best translate the original languages, the 2011 NIV has gone beyond acceptable translation standards; and

WHEREAS, Seventy-five percent of the inaccurate gender language found in the TNIV is retained in the 2011 NIV; and

WHEREAS, The Southern Baptist Convention has passed a similar resolution concerning the TNIV in 2002; now, therefore, be it

RESOLVED, That the messengers of the Southern Baptist Convention meeting in Phoenix, Arizona, June 14-15, 2011 express profound disappointment with Biblica and Zondervan Publishing House for this inaccurate translation of God’s inspired Scripture; and be it further

RESOLVED, That we encourage pastors to make their congregations aware of the translation errors found in the 2011 NIV; and be it further

RESOLVED, That we respectfully request that LifeWay not make this inaccurate translation available for sale in their bookstores; and be it finally

RESOLVED, That we cannot commend the 2011 NIV to Southern Baptists or the larger Christian community.

Don’t get me wrong. We live in a free country. Publishers should be allowed to distribute and preachers and laity are entitled to use whatever worship resources they desire.

What bothers me is the discontinuation of the previous edition. In January, blogger Zania, a Christian computer scientist from New Jersey, highlighted the problem:

The NIV 1984 Bible is all but gone. I don’t know if it’s a homicide or suicide. I don’t know if I should phrase that it started falling ill in 2010 and now died at the end of 2012. I don’t know if we intentionally or unintentionally let the enemy change an integral translation that fed the souls of many for 28 years. Its traces can still be seen on biblegateway.com and in popular mobile Bible applications such as Lifechurch.tv’s Youversion. You can also snag one from Christianbook.com’s NIV 1984 Closeout sale. But it’s all but gone from giant online retailers like Amazon.com and when I visited my local brick and mortar Christian book store last week they told me that NIV’s United States publisher, Zondervan, ordered them to turn in all 1984 versions in exchange for 2011 equivalents. As one of my beloved translations of the Protestant’s Bible I will miss it.

Worse, Bible Gateway — which a year ago offered the 1984 NIV, TNIV and 2011 NIV on its website — in February was forced by Biblica to discontinue offering the two older editions:

The NIV remains the most popular English contemporary translation, with more than 450 million copies distributed since it was first published in 1978. During the transition to the most recent edition of the NIV (first published in 2010), the older 1984 edition and the TNIV were made available for more than two years on Bible Gateway to make it easy for people to compare the upgrades in the text as they transitioned to the current edition. This transition period mirrors the earlier two-year transition from the 1978 version to the 1984 version. Now that this transition period is over, the NIV’s worldwide publisher, Biblica, has requested that we remove the older 1984 and TNIV editions from Bible Gateway, and we are complying with their wishes.

Since the latest edition of the NIV was published in December 2010, over 11 million copies have been distributed and it has been adopted by thousands of churches, ministries, authors and other publishers around the globe. We understand your disappointment that the 1984 edition of the NIV is no longer available, but we hope you’ll grow to appreciate the updated NIV, as many other Bible Gateway visitors have done.

The justification by Biblica comes across as self-important at best and arrogant at worse:

It is customary for Bible publishers to focus their efforts on the most current edition of their translation, and to make available only the best, most up-to-date work of their translators. This is the case with the updated NIV, as it is for most other major Bible translations. For example, seven different editions of The Message have been published since 1993, but the only one available today is the most recent, published in 2002. The same is true for the NASB (last updated in 1995), the NLT (last updated in 2007), and the ESV (last updated in 2011).

There is only one NIV, which was commissioned by a broad coalition of evangelicals in the 1960's. The original charter of the NIV called for rigorous, ongoing attention to both the source languages of Hebrew, Greek and Aramaic, as well as the target language of English as it is spoken today. The current, updated NIV represents the best available NIV translation, and is thus the edition Biblica is committed to continue publishing and has chosen to make available on websites.

Biblica can't remove the two paper copies of the 1984 NIV from our house, and I just ordered a third. However, they can (and did) remove the Internet copies on BibleGateway.com and other websites. And since there is no vendor that offers used e-books, the e-book NIV I could have bought 8 months ago is no longer available. Biblica has also forced Bible software publishers to drop the old NIV, which from my own experience means previous customers who paid for it will be unable to access it when they buy a new machine with a new OS that doesn’t run the old software.

(This seems to be trend specific to gender-inclusive translations, although a quick visit to Amazon suggests that the NRSV has not completely extinguished the RSV. Still, TEC is happy to sell Hymnal 1940 to us bitter clingers.)

This is also ironic given the trends of the Internet towards making all versions of historic worship resources available to scholars and laity. Today, the 1549, 1552, 1559 and 1662 CoE prayer books are available online, as are the 1789, 1892 and 1928 US prayer books. But then current bible translations are treated more like commercial products — complete with planned obsolescence — than worship resources.

To me, this seems very much like the New Coke debacle. (A history lesson for millennials: after introducing New Coke in 1985, Coca-Cola first offered Coca-Cola “Classic” in parallel and then soon abandoned New Coke). However, Biblica doesn’t have the visibility of Coca-Cola and thus it’s less likely to prompt a public rebellion; many unsuspecting Christians will wander into their local bookstore and buy the “new and improved” NIV without knowing the controversy.

For the objections to the NIV to have meaning, the market share formerly held by the NIV will have to be replaced by other translations. The KJV provided a common understanding of the Bible for 300 years or so, when it was replaced by 3 or 4 20th century translations (of which the NIV was the most popular in the US). Perhaps this mark the end of the unity of the NIV (at least among American evangelicals) for some 30 years. As Trevin Wax wrote on The Gospel Coalition:

I am at a loss as to why the NIV 2011 will force the original NIV out of commission. Why not keep both in circulation? Goodness, we can still read translations like the King James which are hundreds of years old.

It’s ironic that the NIV 2011 revision is scheduled to coincide with the 400th anniversary of the King James Version, the most popular and most influential English translation of all time. Unfortunately, the launch of this new revision will have the opposite effect of the KJV. The King James Version united Bible readers around a common text. I’m afraid the NIV 2011 will speed up the growing fragmentation of evangelicals in regards to Bible translations.

Unless Biblica admits their mistake, my grandchildren won’t be reading the Bible that our eldest uses. But fortunately they will have many other fine translations to choose from.

True to Mrs. Alexander

Today we attended Easter Services at the most Anglo-Catholic of San Diego’s ACNA parishes, Holy Trinity Anglican Parish of Ocean Beach. The services were held in the LCMS parish across the alley from their decades-long sanctuary that they walked away from in 2010 after losing their property fight with the local ECUSA diocese.

However, today was the first major feast with their “new” hymnals.  When they surrendered their building to the rump ECUSA parish, they also surrendered their copies of Hymnal 1982. Since then, they tried to make do with the LCMS Lutheran Service Book, but it was just enough different to be confusing.

When it came time to buy their own hymnal, they had a choice — but it was no choice at all. Using Hymnal 1982 had always struck me as incongruous at the only Rite I ACNA parish in San Diego. So they took donation to buy copies of Hymnal 1940 and the solicitation was oversubscribed. (We bought five). Even today, with more than 80 in the sanctuary, they didn’t even use half their collection of brand new hymnals.

(I’d like to think this was a trend, but before the Schism II exodus in San Diego there were only two Rite I parishes — Holy Trinity in San Diego and St. Michael’s in Carlsbad — and St. Michael’s decided to split rather than leave.)

Unlike our previous visits at Christmas, the traditional language felt right in conjunction with the “bells and smells” traditional liturgy and theology. They scheduled three familiar Easter hymns: “Jesus Christ is ris’n today” (#85), “The strife is o’er, the battle done” (#91) and “He is risen, He is risen” (#90). (My wife would have liked some Vaughan Williams, but as visitors we can’t tell them what to do.)

The difference was immediately apparent when we sang the first verse of the final hymn (H40: #90), to Joachim Neander’s best-known tune:

He is risen, he is risen!
Tell it out with joyful voice:
he has burst his three days' prison;
let the whole wide earth rejoice:
death is conquered, man is free,
Christ has won the victory.

So unlike in my least favorite hymnal, Mrs. Alexander’s lyrics to her best-known hymn were presented with her original intentions preserved.

Her 1846 lyrics were published in Verses for Holy Seasons, a book of poetry for children’s christian education. It seems to have been introduced to Anglican worship in her native Ireland with the The Church Hymnal (1874) by the Church of Ireland. The Hymnal 1940 Companion says us ’Mericans picked up the hymn with Hymnal 1874 and remarks that the differences are minor except for the omission of Alexander’s second verse. The first appearance in the Church of England appears to be in 1906 The English Hymnal (#132).

Hymnal 1940 and TEH use the same words, except that TEH are missing the 4th verse. Both seem to be (as promised) minor changes to Mrs. Alexander‘s words of 166 years ago:

Verses for Holy Seasons (1846)

Hymnal 1940

He is risen, He is risen, Tell it with a joyful voice, He has burst His three days' prison, Let the whole wide earth rejoice ; Death is conquered, man is free, Christ has won the victory. Come, ye sad and fearful-hearted, With glad smile and radiant brow ; Lent's long shadows have departed, All His woes are over now, And the Passion that He bore ; Sin and pain can vex no more. Come, with high and holy hymning Chant our Lord's triumphant lay; Not one darksome cloud is dimming Yonder glorious morning ray Breaking o'er the purple East; Brighter far our Easter feast. He is risen, He is risen, He has oped the eternal gate ; We are free from sin's dark prison, Risen to a holier state, And a brighter Easter beam On our longing eyes shall stream.

He is risen, he is risen! Tell it out with joyful voice: he has burst his three days' prison; let the whole wide earth rejoice: death is conquered, man is free, Christ has won the victory. Come, ye sad and fearful-hearted, with glad smile and radiant brow! Lent's long shadows have departed; Jesus' woes are over now, and the passion that he bore-- sin and pain can vex no more. Come, with high and holy hymning, hail our Lord's triumphant day; not one darksome cloud is dimming yonder glorious morning ray, breaking o'er the purple east, symbol of our Easter feast. He is risen, he is risen! He hath opened heaven's gate: we are free from sin's dark prison, risen to a holier state; and a brighter Easter beam on our longing eyes shall stream.

Hymnal 1982 (#180) includes the full harmony for the hymn, and makes only one editorial change: due to the M-word, the first verse becomes “we are free.” Although it sticks in my craw every time I have to sing it, it is admittedly a relatively minor attack by the PC police. (Given that a woman wrote “man is free” in a children’s hymn, this would suggest her original language was intended to be inclusive, referring to the human race.)

What Isaac Watts says to "us"

Two years ago, I complained how Hymnal 1982 mangled the 2nd verse of everyone’s favorite Isaac Watts Christmas hymn to elide the dreaded “M” word:

Joy to the world! the Savior reigns;
let men their us our songs employ,
while fields and floods, rocks, hills and plains
repeat the sounding joy,
repeat the sounding joy,
repeat, repeat the sounding joy.

A quick Google search suggests that this particular hymnodic vandalism has not only spread throughout mainstream Protestant denominations, but also the American Catholic Church via the modern liturgy of Today’s Missal.

It was the topic of a blog posting Saturday at evangel, the wonderful ecumenical blog (hosted by the Catholic First Things) for right-thinking Christians everywhere. Biola University prof Fred Sanders first notes what my wife, I and everyone else born before 1965 knows deep down: for centuries the word “men” was used to refer to “human beings.” (Don’t get me started on the abominable non-word “humankind.”)

Sanders notes that in teaching on the original text (Psalm 98), Watts wanted to distinguish between the animate human beings and the inanimate remainder of God’s creation. We sing to the Lord because that’s why we were created: to praise God. Watts wants to make sure we’re clear that it’s the people (and not fields, floods, rocks, hills or plains) that are employing songs — rather than “all the earth” of the psalm.

I wish Sanders’ arguments would be enough to win over the inclusive language crowd in the ACNA and other groups, but I’d bet he’s just preaching (or at least drawing) to the choir. Unfortunately, being right nowadays isn’t enough.

Inclusive language

One of the objectionable problems of modern PECUSA (and later TEC) liturgy is the rush to gender inclusive language. For example, the RSV was retired in favor of the NRSV, mainly to change a lot of “men” to “people” (and of course to sell new books). Fortunately, the ESV has the translation corrections to the RSV without the political correctness of the NRSV.

On Sept. 2, the Issues Etc. gang hosted an interview with Vern Poythress of Westminster Seminary-Philadelphia on gender inclusivity in the next translation of the NIV. The MP3 file and more information are available at the Issues Etc. archives. Dr. Poythress is co-author of a book on the gender controversy in the previous update of the NIV.


Dr. Poythress does a great job of spelling out the four possibilities for mapping Greek (or other) original text onto the English

1. The original is unambiguously masculine.
2. The text is unambiguously masculine, but the point made could apply equally to both sexes
3. The text is masculine, but ambiguously so (for example, if “brothers” normally means males but could also be used for a mixture of males and females)
4. The original does not have a gender indication, and thus would most accurately be translated as gender neutral

Despite the obvious sympathies of Dr. Poythress (and host Pastor Todd Wilken) against gender inclusivity, this seems to be a fair discussion of the issues involved — except for those that want all or none of the four cases translated with inclusive language.

Of course, the issues for hymns are even more daunting, because the meter means that the writer lacks the option of using “brothers and sisters.” Hymnal 1982 certainly mangled most of the high-profile Christmas carols, and showed even less restraint in cramming gender inclusivity into less-known hymns.

This is going to be a huge issue for when (or if) North American Anglicans produce a new hymnal, since the evangelical wing of ACNA (let alone their female clergy) are much more sympathetic to gender inclusivity than the three FiFNA diocese or any of Schism I.

Not my favorite hymnal

We are traveling to visit family and friends during the 12 Days of Christmas, away from our home parish. For Christmas Day services, we went to former PECUSA parish that's now continuing Anglican under Abp. Gregory Venables. Alas, before they fled PECUSA they had switched to the 1979 BCP and 1982 Hymnal. The Christmas service gave me several reminders of why I dislike the 1982 Hymnal.

The first thing I noticed was the musical typography. When I tried to sing the carols, the 1982 Hymnal used very small note symbols that were impossible to read in the low light of the church. I don't have my library of hymnals in my suitcase, but I checked the 1940 Hymnal at our relative's house and the staff spacing appeared to be 20-25% bigger. (I will have to lay them side-by-side when I get home).

The other problem was the politically correct Christmas carols. Under Hymn #87, Charles Wesley’s Christmas megahit has been further mangled:

Hail, the heaven-born Prince of Peace:
hail, the Sun of Righteousness.
Light and life to all he brings,
risen with healing in his wings.
Mild he lays his glory by,
born that man we no more may die,
born to raise the sons of us from the earth,
born to give them us second birth.
Hark, the herald-angels sing
glory to the new-born King.

In searching for the exact PC words, I found an Englishwoman (and poet) who objected to this abomination as grocery story background music. She should count her blessings: at least in England grocery stores play Christ-mas carols.

The next mangled hymn was in the second verse of Isaac Watts' all-time favorite, Joy to the World! As printed in the 1982 hymnal, the m-bomb has been edited out:

Joy to the world! the Savior reigns;
let men their us our songs employ,
while fields and floods, rocks, hills and plains
repeat the sounding joy,
repeat the sounding joy,
repeat, repeat the sounding joy.

This still conveys the original sense of praising God, but to me the imperative seems much weaker since it is directed to the first person plural.

I had forgotten about this bowdlerization of traditional carols, and thus was not prepared to belt out the correct wording when the time came. The congregation seemed unsure as to whether to use the old or the new words, but obviously a generation of Americans is being raised to assume that the PC words are the correct way to sing these hymns.

From Tuesday's selection of six hymns, I had assumed the pattern was that the PECUSA hymnal committee would not change the first verse of a hymn because it was too visible, but were tinkering with the second verses. However, in the final hymn — O Little Town of Bethlehem — the dreaded m-word made it through intact. Verse 2 of Hymn #79 reports

For Christ is born of Mary;
and gathered all above,
while mortals sleep, the angels keep
their watch of wondering love.
O morning stars, together
proclaim the holy birth!
and praises sing to God the King,
and peace to men on earth.

I don't know why this use of the m-word survived but others did not.

All told, this reconfirms my opinion that Hymnal 1982 is an interesting supplemental book, but dubious as a primary pew hymnal.