Our daily Psalms

No wonder this was the first book the Puritans printed | Joel Belz

I should have known, but didn't until last week, that the very first book published and printed in New England by the Puritans was the Bay Psalm Book. Now, almost 360 years later, it would be easy to misunderstand why those hardy but harried people rushed that particular volume into print.

By today's standards, saying they "rushed" the Bay Psalm Book into print may seem like a stretch. After all, having arrived at Plymouth Rock in 1620, the Puritans didn't actually get the book out until 1640. But still, it was the first book published, and that tells us something.

They did, after all, have a few other things to do. There were no printing presses to unload from the Mayflower when it first arrived, for the tiny ship was crammed instead with its cargo of people, foodstuffs, tools, seed for the first year's crops, guns, and ammunition.