emiah. | _d._ ___________________________

CHAPTER XXIV

HYMN AND PRAYER BOOKS FOR THE NEW WORSHIP

We have seen that a new kind of public worship of God had been growing
up among the Hebrews, beginning with the time when the prophets began
to condemn the misuse of the old animal sacrifices. The new worship
consisted chiefly of prayer. We have seen how the exiles in Babylon
began to come together on the Sabbath days to study the law and other
sacred writings, and also for prayer. Those exiles who returned to
Judaea brought this custom with them. Special buildings, called
synagogues, were erected in Judaea as well as wherever there were
faithful Jews in other lands. These synagogues rather than the temple
gradually came to be the real home of the Jewish religion even in
Jerusalem itself. The chief part of the synagogue service was always
the study of the Scriptures. But prayer was also given an important
place.

In the temple also, after it was rebuilt, public prayer was regarded
as very important--even if not quite so important as the regular
burnt-offerings. There were also prayer-hymns, sung by the people and
by special choirs.

=Making hymnals and prayer books.=--In our churches, to-day, we could
scarcely conduct our services without the hymn books scattered through
the pews. In some denominations there is a prayer book, which is
considered just as necessary as the book of hymns. In those ancient
synagogues and in the temple service the Jews found such books
needful. Had we gone into one of their meetings, we would not indeed
have found a book waiting for us in the seat or handed to us by the
usher. The art of printing was unknown. Books could not be purchased
cheaply by the hundred. Each copy had to be written out by hand with
pen and ink on a roll of papyrus. But we would probably have
discovered that the leader of the worship had a book of prayers and
hymns before him. He would read them, line by line, each Sabbath for
the others to memorize. To make this task of memorization easier many
of the Jewish hymns were written in acrostic form--that is, each line
or stanza began with a different letter in the order of the Hebrew
alphabet.

HYMN AND PRAYER BOOKS IN THE BIBLE

Our book of Psalms is a collection of smaller collections of just such
hymns and prayers to be used in worship. Each one of these smaller
collections came out of some synagogue or group of synagogues, or was
p