The singing of
psalms was included in the
synagogue service at the time of Jesus.
Early Christians continued this tradition, as well as many other elements of synagogue worship. The
whole congregation may have sung, or there may have been a
cantor who would sing each verse with the congregation responding by singing "
Hallelujah." Such a pattern appears outside the psalms; each song in the obscure early Christian poetry collection known as the
Odes of Solomon concludes with a "Hallelujah", indicating a similar liturgical purpose for its ancient users. The Psalms of David formed the core of
liturgical music for the early church, to which other songs from the
Old and
New Testaments (
canticles) were added.
Anglicans had no theological objection to hymns, but they failed to nurture a tradition of English-language hymnody. Works like the 1562 English
Sternhold and Hopkins Psalter were popular among the Reformed. Literal translations of the Psalms began to be preferred by the Reformed over the looser translations of the
Genevan and
Sternhold and Hopkins psalters in the latter part of the sixteenth century.
Benjamin Keach, a
Particular Baptist, introduced hymn-singing in his congregation in 1673, leading to a debate with
Isaac Marlow, who opposed congregational singing altogether. By the end of the seventeenth century, hymn-singing was on its way to being acceptable among English Baptists. In 1719,
Isaac Watts, an early eighteenth-century English
Congregationalist minister, published
Psalms of David, Imitated in the Language of the New Testament, in which "imitated" means "interpreted," rather than being a strict translation. Some complained that his psalms were not translations at all, but paraphrases. Watts also wrote many hymns, many of which imitated the psalms. The rise of
pietism in the eighteenth century led to an even greater dominance of hymns, and many of the Reformed reintroduced hymns in the early eighteenth century. Hymnody became acceptable for
Presbyterians and Anglicans around the middle of the nineteenth century, though the
Reformed Presbyterians continue to insist on exclusive
a cappella psalmody. ==Possible Biblical basis==