A Book of Psalms, by Edward Clarke

Author: Edward Clarke. Review by Jonathan Wooding

by Jonathan Wooding 8th January 2021

Do Friends still know the Psalms? They aren’t mentioned in the subject index to Quaker faith & practice. Do we still care about Myles Coverdale’s translations of them in the Book of Common Prayer (transferred wholesale into the King James Bible)? If Quakerism is a flowering from the stem of the mediaeval Devotio Moderna – the rediscovery of genuine pious practices such as humility, obedience, and simplicity of life, bringing God home to roost in the individual’s heart – then so surely are such courageous and tragic translators of the scriptures in the sixteenth century. Where would any reasonable dissenter have been without their Englishing of the texts?