darrellmaurina
Puritan Board Freshman
Good evening, everyone.
I want to express my thanks to Pastor Kwangyoung Park, mission worker at Bethel Canadian Reformed Church in metro Toronto, for helping me find these YouTube files of all 150 Psalms from the Genevan Psalter in Korean.
Here's a link:
Far and away the largest number of confessional Calvinists today are in Korea, a country that it's almost certain John Calvin had never heard of when he commissioned the Genevan Psalter in 1539. Ironically, sitting here in a part of the Missouri Ozarks where the first settlers were Scots-Irish Presbyterians but where the Reformed faith is today all but unknown, I am now faced with the need to get Genevan Psalters in Korean and Mandarin Chinese since I have people who speak very little English. While English-speaking relatives can translate the message and teaching into their native language, being able to sing in their native language is a huge blessing. Getting Korean and Chinese editions of the Heidelberg Catechism is easy. The Genevan Psalter was more challenging, but thanks to Dr. Karlo Janssen of the ICRC and Frank Ezinga putting me in touch with Rev. Park and relevant Chinese resources, I should have what I need for this Sunday evening.
Before people scratch their heads and think singing in multiple languages is something new, it was actually normal in Reformation and post-Reformation Europe. The Genevan Psalter was widely translated into every major language of Europe that had a sizeable Reformed church presence, and that meant traveling merchants visiting a Reformed church in a country other than their own, even if they couldn't understand the local language very well, would be able to sing from the Psalter that in many cases they had memorized.
That's something we've never had in the English-speaking world because the Scots didn't think the Genevan Psalter was a sufficiently literal translation and produced their own Scottish Psalter, which went through numerous revisions with the result that there was never the sort of standardization of a common Psalter in the English-speaking world that was common in most of the rest of the Reformed world that looked to Geneva.
I'm quite aware that the Genevan Psalter, while available in the three major languages of Asia (Chinese, Korean and Japanese) is not widely used in any of them. I hope the Reformed churches in all three countries, and members of other denominations that value singing God's Word, find these Psalters to be useful in their church work.
BTW, I'll repeat what I've said before -- if anyone has friends or relatives who are military personnel stationed at Fort Leonard Wood (home of the Army's engineer, chemical and military police schools), or students at Missouri University of Science and Technology, or vacationing at Lake of the Ozarks, or living in the Lebanon-Waynesville-St. Robert-Rolla corridor, I'd like to come in contact with you.
I want to express my thanks to Pastor Kwangyoung Park, mission worker at Bethel Canadian Reformed Church in metro Toronto, for helping me find these YouTube files of all 150 Psalms from the Genevan Psalter in Korean.
Here's a link:
Far and away the largest number of confessional Calvinists today are in Korea, a country that it's almost certain John Calvin had never heard of when he commissioned the Genevan Psalter in 1539. Ironically, sitting here in a part of the Missouri Ozarks where the first settlers were Scots-Irish Presbyterians but where the Reformed faith is today all but unknown, I am now faced with the need to get Genevan Psalters in Korean and Mandarin Chinese since I have people who speak very little English. While English-speaking relatives can translate the message and teaching into their native language, being able to sing in their native language is a huge blessing. Getting Korean and Chinese editions of the Heidelberg Catechism is easy. The Genevan Psalter was more challenging, but thanks to Dr. Karlo Janssen of the ICRC and Frank Ezinga putting me in touch with Rev. Park and relevant Chinese resources, I should have what I need for this Sunday evening.
Before people scratch their heads and think singing in multiple languages is something new, it was actually normal in Reformation and post-Reformation Europe. The Genevan Psalter was widely translated into every major language of Europe that had a sizeable Reformed church presence, and that meant traveling merchants visiting a Reformed church in a country other than their own, even if they couldn't understand the local language very well, would be able to sing from the Psalter that in many cases they had memorized.
That's something we've never had in the English-speaking world because the Scots didn't think the Genevan Psalter was a sufficiently literal translation and produced their own Scottish Psalter, which went through numerous revisions with the result that there was never the sort of standardization of a common Psalter in the English-speaking world that was common in most of the rest of the Reformed world that looked to Geneva.
I'm quite aware that the Genevan Psalter, while available in the three major languages of Asia (Chinese, Korean and Japanese) is not widely used in any of them. I hope the Reformed churches in all three countries, and members of other denominations that value singing God's Word, find these Psalters to be useful in their church work.
BTW, I'll repeat what I've said before -- if anyone has friends or relatives who are military personnel stationed at Fort Leonard Wood (home of the Army's engineer, chemical and military police schools), or students at Missouri University of Science and Technology, or vacationing at Lake of the Ozarks, or living in the Lebanon-Waynesville-St. Robert-Rolla corridor, I'd like to come in contact with you.
