Bible Sunday Songs of Praise

It's an epic tale of the struggle between good and evil.

Telling stories of love and hatred,

sex and violence...

..self-sacrifice and betrayal.

It's not just a good book -

it's THE good book.

Today is Bible Sunday, when many Christians celebrate

the biggest-selling book in the world -

The Holy Bible.

Tonight, congregations from all over the country

sing songs of praise inspired by some of the Bible's most beautiful poetry.

And a performance from Grammy Award winners The King's Singers.

Made of up 66 books written by many different authors

between 2 and 3,000 years ago, the Bible as we know it today

has been translated into more than 2,000 different languages.

This year, we're celebrating the 400th anniversary

of the most famous of all English translations -

the beautiful words of the King James, or Authorized, version,

were translated from the original Hebrew and Greek

by a group of scholars based in Westminster, Cambridge,

and here in Oxford.

Colleges including St John's and New College provided

their finest Old and New Testament scholars for this mammoth task.

Interpreting the word of God in poetry and music is, of course,

what hymns and psalms are all about.

So let's begin with words based on Psalm 150, O Praise Ye The Lord!

As a novelist and scriptwriter for film and television,

Frank Cottrell Boyce knows what makes a convincing story.

I think first and foremost,

what's great about the King James

is that wherever you open it, it feels like someone is talking to you.

It may be someone from the past,

and you might have to listen a bit harder than you would listen to me,

but it's a person speaking to you.

For any written thing to walk off the page into the real world -

that's the thing you're aiming for,

and I think the King James does that time and time again.

For me, if there was nothing else left

apart from the fact of Jesus' life and the story of the Prodigal Son,

that would be enough, to me.

I think the Prodigal Son is an astonishing thing.

As a writer, it's miraculous. It's one paragraph long,

but it's more emotionally complex than any Shakespeare play

or any novel that you read.

Everybody feels this sort of amazing rush at the end

when the father runs to meet his lost son.

Everybody recognises all the emotions in it - sibling rivalry,

and love of a parent.

It's this amazing moment in human thought,

that you will call God "Father".

He won't be some avenging thing that you've got to placate,

it will be someone who's waiting for you, who's desperate to see you,

who loves you more than you can possibly imagine.

Time and again, the Bible speaks of the good shepherd

searching for his lost sheep to welcome them home.

Psalm 23 has been made into one of our most beloved hymns.

Its familiar lines are a paraphrase of the words

and imagery used in the King James Version.

Right at the heart of Christianity is the Easter story.

It's the ultimate example of devoted self-sacrifice.

But who would have thought that a book with such a message of love

at its heart could have caused so much strife?

There's a connection in my mind between the historical context

of the King James Bible and the Easter story itself.

St James's Piccadilly is an oasis of calm amidst the noise

and conflict of central London.

Theologian Lucy Winkett is the rector of this busy parish.

The King James Bible straddled two centuries of horrendous

religious conflict in this country where Catholics and Protestants

were attacking one another and burning one another.

The King James Bible is right at the heart of that maelstrom

of religious conflict.

And the Easter story itself is a four-day story

of dreadful political manoeuvring

and abusive actions by religious leaders

to bring this innocent person to the point of crucifixion.

There is a kind of a link between those two stories,

centuries apart as they are.

As a courtier of King James I, the composer of our next hymn tune,

Orlando Gibbons, experienced the political unrest

that gave birth to the King's version of the Bible.

In later centuries, wordsmith Charles Wesley

and his brother John also lived through turbulent times.

Wesley's words remind us that, as Christians,

we're required to reflect our faith in all aspects of everyday life.

As well as presenting the BBC Proms,

journalist and classical music enthusiast Katie Derham

is also a member of the King James Bible Trust.

By happy genius, the 47 scholars who sat down to translate

the Bible into English happened upon forms of words

that lent themselves to not just reading out loud, but to being sung.

Composers have always wanted to set wonderful words to music,

they are always looking for sources of inspiration -

poetry, plays, dramas.

Wonderful composers, music we're very familiar with

if you enjoy going to church or listening to choral music,

and they're all using these words from the King James Version.

Let's take Handel, for example.

Some of his most wonderful, famous anthems - Zadok The Priest,

sung at every coronation - words from the King James Version.

Messiah - we all know the Messiah.

That's entirely from the King James Version.

# And the glory The glory of the Lord

# And the glory The glory of the Lord

# Shall be revealed

# Shall be revealed

# Shall be revealed

# And the glory The glory of the Lord

# And the glory The glory of the Lord

# Shall be revealed

# Shall be revealed

# And the glory The glory of the Lord

# Shall be revealed

# And all flesh shall see it together

# And all flesh shall see it together

# For the mouth of the Lord hath spoken it

# And all flesh shall see it together

# For the mouth of the Lord hath spoken it

# And all flesh shall see it together

# And all flesh shall see it together

# For the mouth of the Lord hath spoken it

# And the glory The glory of the Lord

# And all flesh shall see it together

# The mouth of the Lord hath spoken it

# And the glory The glory of the Lord

# Shall be revealed

# And all flesh

# And all flesh

# And all flesh

# Shall see it together

# For the mouth of the Lord hath spoken it

# The glory, the glory of the Lord shall be revealed

# And all flesh

# And all flesh

# And all flesh

# Shall see it together

# The glory, the glory The glory of the Lord

# And the glory The glory of the Lord

# Shall be revealed

# Shall be revealed

# And all flesh shall see it

# Together, together

# For the mouth of the Lord hath spoken it

# For the mouth of the Lord

# The mouth of the Lord

# Hath spoken it. #

Ready? And...

THEY SING

The King James Bible Trust held a competition

to encourage young composers.

Chris Totney won the Royal School of Church Music category

for a simple four-part anthem

with words taken from the King James Version.

I think it's very important to bring music into the Christian faith.

The sort of choirs that would sing my piece

are parish church choirs, possibly even school choirs,

and amateur choirs who would like

to include a sacred piece of music in their concert, maybe.

I love the fact that something so ancient as the King James Bible

can speak to people today.

The words "the mystery of Christ" really made a statement,

and encouraged one, I thought,

to ponder what that sort of thing might mean.

I think the opportunity to write this composition

has probably deepened my own faith.

That's probably because faith, for me, is based on experience,

and I'm very lucky in an environment like Dauntsey's School

to be able to work in so many different walks of the school community,

whether it's a classroom situation, musical activities outside

of teaching time, just making a difference to an individual

or whether it's enjoying a concert performance.

# I have long time holden my peace

# Now will I cry... #

The texts I chose for this piece, there are actually three of them.

One from Isaiah, one from Revelation and one from the Book of Colossians.

I just love the way that they go together as one seamless story.

It's as if there's this person who has been waiting

very patiently to find the right moment to speak,

and when they finally do speak out, then Jesus leads them

to the water's edge and leads them over

across the water of life and into a new world

where they can go out and serve and be helpful to others.

That refrain, "let there be light",

is just one of the many phrases

made famous by the King James Version of the Bible.

I'm surprised every time by how fresh the language is,

how rich and lyrical and beautiful it is,

but also how very "un-churchy" it is in many ways,

and how many phrases that we use in everyday language

have come from this document

that was translated by committee - imagine that! - by 47 scholars

400 years ago.

Phrases that we use every day - "casting pearls before swine",

"the apple of his eye", "Jezebel",

"as old as the hills", "an eye for an eye".

And I think it fertilised English culture,

and I think a lot of the things we love,

whether it's a cup final or a coronation

or whatever it is, there's bits of the King James DNA in there.

It's got a kind of rhythm of speech

that sounds like someone talking,

and then suddenly a ringing phrase will come out of it -

"abide with me, because the evening is coming"

and just the way it will suddenly give that little twist

where the phrase will just lodge itself in your head

out of something very ordinary.

# Abide, O Lord

# Abide with me. #

After the invention of the printing press,

scribes no longer had to copy out the Bible by hand,

and the scriptures could be mass-produced across the globe.

A new project commissioned from the Queen's scribe,

the Saint John's Bible, will be the first illuminated manuscript Bible

to have been made since the Middle Ages.

I am now the ultimate cliche.

The bald-headed old guy who sits at his desk and is writing a Bible.

Calligrapher Donald Jackson and his team have now completed

their millennium project for the Benedictine monks

of Saint John's University in Minnesota.

Ever since I was a small boy, when I was encouraged to do calligraphy

and decorated letters at school,

one of the ideas at the back of my mind was I would love

to write and illuminate the whole Bible.

It's a calligrapher's dream. It's a calligrapher's Sistine Chapel.

How do you make something look sacred, as in a sacred text?

That is my job, to interpret that

in a way which you can read clearly in a modern day.

What calligraphy has, which type does not have,

is it has connection. It has a sense of touch.

You are maybe not aware of it intellectually,

but on one level you are drawn to the fact that somebody's breath

went into every mark,

somebody's hand made every shape.

Some of the stories and some of the texts

seem so insane to a modern person.

They have so little relevance on the surface.

But once you delve into it, the one thing

I would say about the whole experience

is how utterly pin-sharp relevant are those Bible stories,

those texts, for the present day.

So often you look and read a page out of the Bible

and it's just like looking at the nine o'clock news.

There's war, there's threats,

they're full of love, they're full of hate.

For instance, the parables about forgiveness.

I always felt that that Prodigal Son needed a good smacking -

in other words, it made me angry.

While I was doing that, it was a very short time after 9/11,

and I found myself saying, "What is impossible to forgive?

"What would I find it almost impossible to forgive?"

And I found myself putting in an image, a reference,

of the Twin Towers in gold in the background

of the illumination for the Prodigal Son.

How do you forgive the unforgivable?

And it came to me as I did it,

the words "you are going to have to love your way out of this one.

"You can't hate your way out of it."

# This is the truth sent from above

# The truth of God, the God of love

# Therefore don't turn me from your door

# But hearken all, both rich and poor

# The first thing which I do relate

# Is that God did man create

# The next thing which to you I'll tell

# Woman was made with man to dwell

# Thus we were heirs to endless woes

# Till God the Lord did interpose

# And so a promise soon did run

# That he would redeem us by his son

# And at that season of the year

# Our blest redeemer did appear

# He here did live and here did preach

# And many thousand he did teach

# Thus he in love to us behaved

# To show us how we must be saved

# And if you want to know the way

# Be pleased to hear what he did say. #

Blessed Lord,

who hast caused all holy scriptures to be written for our learning,

grant that we may in such wise hear, read, mark,

learn, and inwardly digest them,

that by patience and comfort of thy holy word,

we may embrace and ever hold fast the blessed hope

of everlasting life, which thou hast given us in our saviour Jesus Christ.

Amen.

The Bible is so much more than just a dusty old book -

the way God's word has been revealed throughout the ages,

by the Old Testament prophets, by Jesus himself,

and by those who followed him,

still has a massive influence on millions of people

all over the world.

Next week on Songs Of Praise,

my special guest is the tenor Alfie Boe.

In a classic rags-to-riches story,

Alfie was talent-spotted whilst working in a car factory.

Now he's a West End star.

He talks to me about the importance of his faith,

and he performs some of his favourite hymns and songs.

Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd

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