Comments on: History of the Daily Devotional Reading of the Bible

By: Bill Heroman

Bill Heroman — Fri, 23 Jan 2009 02:25:27 +0000

Just a thought – try digging up the origins of the British Bible Society and the American Bible Society, around 1900-ish(?). It would be interesting to see if they used the term devotional or it’s equivalent in their early literature.

By: Gilbert Wesley Purdy

Gilbert Wesley Purdy — Tue, 13 Jan 2009 04:01:32 +0000

Thomas More and family read the Bible daily but in Latin (which More’s wife did not understand). They were by no means alone and many from the bougeoisie read it in the Wycliffe translation. Nor were the English alone. The Dutch were avid readers of the Bible, though I am not familiar with the date of the first Dutch translation. As for average man (and woman) on the street, America was the first society to have general literacy and there was a Bible in nearly every home.

If you are asking when the first daily schedules were issued for readers to follow systematically, in private, from translations in their own language, I suspect the Bible tract societies were the originators of the practice, first in the 1830′s, and, then, in wide distribution, in the 1870′s.

By: Professor

Professor — Sun, 11 Jan 2009 10:39:39 +0000

Мог бы долго с вами спорить на эту тему

By: Tyler F. Williams

Tyler F. Williams — Tue, 30 Dec 2008 03:33:46 +0000

Thanks for the clarification, Jim. That’s exactly what I was trying to get at, though obviously I was not clear enough. I am interested in when individual devotional reading emerged as an ideal. I am not sure that it would have been before the Reformation, since the key is to have inexpensive copies of the Scriptures available for the masses in an accessible language.

By: Jim Watts

Jim Watts — Mon, 29 Dec 2008 22:09:02 +0000

Tyler:

The problem is that using words like “average / individual Christians” introduces a subjective bias. Do you really think the average Christian, or even the average evangelical, reads the Bible daily? Have you got the Gallup polls to prove it? And even if you do, can you believe what people tell pollsters? So given the uncertainty even with contemporary social-science research tools, it’s quite impossible to talk about “average” behavior in earlier times.

The more interesting (and controllable) question is: when did regular (daily) private bible study emerge as an ideal? And when is there evidence that at least some people were trying to live up to it? The answers given by your other respondants began to sketch that out. I would point particularly to the late middle ages / early renaissance (before the Reformation!) when the monastic tradition of lectio divina (which, by the way, since it was performed in community, did not require individuals to be literate in order to participate) seems to have been laicized with the popularity of the books of hours. Not only are many manuscripts and early printed books of hours extant from those centuries, but contemporary portraits frequently shows their subjects reading books of hours. For example, note that paintings of the annunciation from the late middle ages on almost always show Mary with an open book in her hands or beside her. Thus the ideal of lay devotional reading seems well ensconsed in late medieval Christianity.

Of course, it’s apparent a thousand years earlier in rabbinic Judaism …

By: John

John — Mon, 29 Dec 2008 21:13:44 +0000

Since the daily practice of reading scripture goes back to the earliest Christians, I imagine it was adopted by the “average” Christian when scriptures became available to them and they became literate. The Bible was not available to the commoner until the invention of the printing press (1450). The Gutenberg Bible was the first book ever printed. Once Bibles were available to the commoner, it would only have been a matter of literacy for daily Bible reading to begin. I don’t have any data, but I would bet it became a common practice among “average” Christians sometime in the 1500s–maybe late 1400s.

By: Russell Williams

Russell Williams — Mon, 29 Dec 2008 20:58:10 +0000

Apologies that the previous post made no sense. What I meant to write was:

…impression that personal (as opposed to liturgical) bible reading within the English church came with the emergence…

Apologies once again.

By: Russell Williams

Russell Williams — Mon, 29 Dec 2008 20:55:41 +0000

I agree with the previous post that there’s a strong heritage of daily devotional activity. But I was under the impression that within the English church the emergence of the noncomformists and particularly was significant in the Methodist tradition.

But I wouldn’t claim to be widely read. Looking forward to further comments.

By: Tyler Williams

Tyler Williams — Mon, 29 Dec 2008 20:42:48 +0000

Thanks for the replies thus far. What I am wondering is when the practice of the average *individual* Christian reading the Bible by him or herself started.

By: John

John — Mon, 29 Dec 2008 20:04:30 +0000

From The Liturgy of the Hours FAQ [PDF File]:

All Christian prayer, including the
Divine Office, has its roots in Jewish prayer, which is based upon
the singing of the psalms at fixed times and the reading of Holy
Scripture. Setting out from this Jewish tradition, Christians during
the first centuries of the Church developed four basic times of
prayer in common: morning and evening prayers, daytime prayers,
and night prayers. Generally, only the first two were practiced
regularly by the Christian community, and from the outset they
were liturgical; i.e., they were formalized, had structure, and were
prayed communally.